Acknowledging Afghanistan

Abstract

This article questions the privileging of gender as the primary axis along which the experience of being a woman in Afghanistan can be understood and attended to. I argue that the privileging of gender is part of a two-pronged problem: first, there is a substantial lack of current knowledge on everyday life and subjectivity of Afghans, and second, this lack of knowledge is held in abeyance, while a limited set of analytical concepts and clichés—especially gender and Islamic fundamentalism—occupy the respective discursive space. My claim is that knowledge of Afghanistan that lays emphasis on a limited set of analytical parameters ultimately results in an impossibility of acknowledging the experiences of Afghans—men and women alike. A discussion of ongoing ethnographic work in a widow-run bakery in Kabul will serve as an entry point to reconsider the ways in which Afghanistan may inhabit our imagination.