EUROCENTRIC ORIENTALIZATION OF THE ROJAVA REVOLUTION IN THE SERVICE OF DISABLING THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL ANTICAPITALIST FEMINIST STRUGGLE – AN ANALYSIS OF MEDIA REPRESENTATION

Abstract

Over the years, the Rojava Revolution has been the subject of many inadequate portrayals in the Western discourse – especially regarding it’s women and it’s anticapitalist nature. It is possible to say that the revolution in Rojava is presented in two main ways. On the one hand, the female revolutionaries become stereotypical male gaze “beauties with rifles“ who fill the headlines with their exotic, yet conventional beauty, docileness and tenderness which provides a counterbalance the barbarism of the Islamic State fighters. In this context, the armed revolutionaries deviate from patriarchal norms only enough to fulfill the male fantasy of the “warrior woman“. On the other hand, the “Western gaze“ reduces this movement to an “exotic experiment“ that cannot be seen as equal to the capitalist West and the privileged anticapitalist (feminist) left that opertes within it. The reason for this is orientalization which places eastern movements within the framework of “uncivilized savages“ and eastern women within the framework of “helpless victims“. These views hinder the cooperation of the West and the East, as well as efficient international action, while maintaining the existing patriarchal-capitalist status quo. The aim of this paper is to provide a critical review of the popular portrayals of the Rojava revolution, to analyze the modes of Eurocentric perception that occur in anti-capitalist/feminist movements, but also to offer adequate solutions to achieve efficient modes of unified, international cooperation against the common enemy – the existing domination-based hierarchy within patriarchal-capitalist societies which prevent the formation of true social equality.