Amidst ongoing wars and insecurities, female fighters, politicians and activists of the Kurdish Freedom Movement are building a new political system that centres gender equality. Since the Rojava Revolution, the international focus has been especially on female fighters, a gaze that has often been essentialising and objectifying, brushing over a much more complex history of violence and resistance. Going beyond Orientalist tropes of the female freedom fighter, and the movement's own narrative of the 'free woman', Isabel Kaeser looks at personal trajectories and everyday processes of becoming a militant in this movement. Based on in-depth ethnographic research in Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan, with women politicians, martyr mothers and female fighters, she looks at how norms around gender and sexuality have been rewritten and how new meanings and practices have been assigned to women in the quest for Kurdish self-determination. Her book complicates prevailing notions of gender and war and creates a more nuanced understanding of the everyday embodied epistemologies of violence, conflict and resistance.

Vorwort
Going beyond Orientalist tropes of female fighters, this book traces the history, ideology, and everyday practices of the Kurdish Women's Movement.

Autorentext
Isabel Käser is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and Research Associate at the University of Bern. She gained her PhD at SOAS University of London and has previously worked in journalism and diplomacy, most recently leading the research project 'Art in Peace Mediation' for the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. She has lectured at the University of Bern, and the University of Kurdistan Hewlêr (UKH), and is currently the Principal Investigator of a collaborative project between the LSE and the UKH entitled 'The Kurdistan Region of Iraq Post-ISIS: Youth, Art and Gender'.

Zusammenfassung
Despite international focus on Kurdish women revolutionaries, little is known about who these women are, where they came from and what keeps them engaged in this costly fight. This book traces the history, ideology, and everyday practices of women in the political, activist and armed branches of the Kurdish Freedom Movement.

Inhalt

Introduction; 1. The PKK - a woman's party? A history of the Kurdistan women's freedom movement 1978-2020; 2. Diyarbakir under fire: women at the barricades; 3. The mountain life: on learning to become free; 4. Mothers and martyrs: the struggle for life and the commemoration of death in Maxmûr camp; 5. Unmaking and remaking sexuality: body politics and the PKK; Conclusion.