Revolution and Feminist Reimaginations in Sudan

This article explores female revolutionaries’ political subjectivities during what is popularly known as the December Revolution. Young women played an especially important role in the revolution in ways that challenged prevailing political and social norms concerning what is considered ‘appropriate.’ Women’s peaceful protesting was seen as so threatening that their bodies came under attack, and were sidelined in the political settlement. Building on original interview data with female revolutionaries and feminist activists, this article suggests that the revolution and the subsequent backlash served as a significant force in creating a generational consciousness where young revolutionaries started to think of themselves as ‘feminists’ and distinct from the older generation of activists. Their emerging feminist reimaginations, now disrupted by war, are intimately entangled with the dismantling of the heteronormative, militarizing Arab-Muslim state-building project in Sudan and exposed how political elites, regardless of ideological belonging, have patriarchal dividends, including the historical women’s movement.