Unveiling Saudi feminism(s): Historicization, heterogeneity, and corporeality in women's movements

Abstract

Background Current Western discourses on women's movements in Saudi Arabia proffer an understanding that is adverse to history and sidelines the region's local knowledges, replacing such knowledges with a techno-utopian assumption that technology would produce better social or political conditions, and exhibit a pattern of disembodiment. Analysis This article endeavours to disturb ahistorical, monolithic, and disembodied accounts of Saudi women's movements through three interventions: the historicization of the Saudi women's activism and feminist movements; the recognition of the heterogeneity of Saudi women's movements; and finally, the acknowledgement of the corporeality of Saudi women's resistance. Conclusion and implications These interventions facilitate a better, more nuanced, and more contextual understanding of revolutionary and feminist practices, not only in Saudi Arabia, but also elsewhere in the world.