This paper brings together three distinct bodies of scholarship: feminist and critical race reading of cybercultures and on-line identities; feminist analysis of gender and racial passing, and scholarship on racism and nationalism as gendered and sexualised. The paper is part of a larger project on sexuality, immigration and nationalism in Israel/Palestine and in cyberspace and is based on cyberethnography of on-line bulletin board of Russian-speaking queer immigrants in Israel. At the centre of my discussion is an ambiguous figure, a participant with nickname “Daughter of Palestine” who appeared in one of the discussions and immediately caused waves of suspicion. Was she a Palestinian woman passing as a Russian? Russian-Jewish? Russian-Israeli? Or was she neither? And most importantly, does it matter? This paper approaches on-line passing and outing as performance of borders. I look at the ways imagined borders between Israel and Palestine and identity categories of “Jew” and “Arab,” “straight” and “queer” are questioned and reinforced, and how passing becomes the very tool of constituting the borders it aims to cross. I address sexual, racial and national borders as threateningly ambivalent, showing that Daughter of Palestine functions as a figure that makes both easy crossing and unproblematic protection of borders impossible.
Written In Blood
Abstract
This paper brings together three distinct bodies of scholarship: feminist and critical race reading of cybercultures and on-line identities; feminist analysis of gender and racial passing, and scholarship on racism and nationalism as gendered and sexualised. The paper is part of a larger project on sexuality, immigration and nationalism in Israel/Palestine and in cyberspace and is based on cyberethnography of on-line bulletin board of Russian-speaking queer immigrants in Israel. At the centre of my discussion is an ambiguous figure, a participant with nickname “Daughter of Palestine” who appeared in one of the discussions and immediately caused waves of suspicion. Was she a Palestinian woman passing as a Russian? Russian-Jewish? Russian-Israeli? Or was she neither? And most importantly, does it matter? This paper approaches on-line passing and outing as performance of borders. I look at the ways imagined borders between Israel and Palestine and identity categories of “Jew” and “Arab,” “straight” and “queer” are questioned and reinforced, and how passing becomes the very tool of constituting the borders it aims to cross. I address sexual, racial and national borders as threateningly ambivalent, showing that Daughter of Palestine functions as a figure that makes both easy crossing and unproblematic protection of borders impossible.Preview Only. This article cannot be rented because we do not currently have permission from the publisher.
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Written In Blood
Follow Feminist Media Studies
, Volume 8 (3): 267-283
Informa Healthcare – Sep 1, 2008
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