Writing Lebanese Feminist History
In this chapter, Nicole Khoury analyzes the editorials in one of Lebanon’s most successful feminist journals, Al-Raida. Through examining the first decade of Rose Ghurayyib’s editorials, she recovers a part of Lebanese feminist history that has been largely ignored. The editorials illustrate that arguments for gender equality in the midseventies were grounded in liberal feminist theory. Written during the violent civil war, and the period of foreign influences, the editorials mark a shift in the focus of the Lebanese feminist movement to postcolonial feminist theory, a shift that changed the way the movement articulated its goals. While the editorials first addressed an English-speaking elite Lebanese audience, they later began to focus on a collective activism that defined women’s needs and goals within the larger national and international context, marking an important shift in Lebanese feminist history.