Cautious enactments: Interstitial spaces of gender politics in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Chapter 6 explores the Women2Drive campaign and other online and offline interventions that challenge restrictions on women’s mobility in Saudi Arabia. It argues that the driving campaign is an example of cautious gender politics to demand the lifting of the ban on women driving in ways that circumvent state and clerical control. The chapter explores private cars, shopping malls, and online platforms as interstitial spaces and productive arenas where Saudi women engage in conversation with unrelated others, share grievances, express dissent, and mobilize around common causes. With these exchanges women constitute new forms of consciousness and community and create virtual heterotopias where less restrictive futures can be imagined and staged in the present.