Gendered Secularization and the Body Policing of Muslim Women

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raissa Killoran
Keyword(s):  
Muslim Women ◽  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Cultural Symbols ◽  
Religious Symbols ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
The Many ◽  
A Site

The many usages of the term ‘secularism’ have generated an ambiguity in the word; as a political guise, it may be used to engender anti-religious fervor. Particularly in regards to veiling among female Muslim adherents, the attainment of a secular state and touting of the necessity of dismantling religious symbols have functioned as linguistic shields. By calling a “burka ban” necessary or even egalitarian secularization, legislators employ ‘secularization’ as jargon for political ends, enacting a stance of supremacy under the semblance of progress. Secularization has come to function as a political tool - in the name of it, governments may prescribe which cultural symbols are normative and which are of ‘other’ cultures or religious origins. As such, the identification of some religious symbols as foreign and others as normative is a usage of secularization for normalization of dominant religious expression. In this, there is an implicit neocolonialism; by imposing standards of cultural normalcy which are definitively nonMuslim, such policies attempt to divorce Muslims from Islam.  Further, I intend to investigate the gendered aspect of secularization politics. By critiquing clothing and body policing of women, I will demonstrate how secularization projects use the female body and dress as a site for display. By rendering the female physically emblematic of the honor and virtue of an ‘other’ culture, those enacting secularization norms target women’s bodies to act as visual exhibitions of the dominant culture’s hegemony. Here, we see gendered secularization at work - female bodies become controlled by the antireligious zeal of the state, while the state carries out this control on the predicate that it is the religious group enacting unjust control. As such, the policing of female Muslim bodies is symbolic of the policing of Islam as a whole; it acts as an illustration of an imposed, gendered secularization project.

scholarly journals Recognizing Friend and Foe: Biometrics, Veridiction, and the Iraq War

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 516-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefka Hristova
Keyword(s):  
Iraq War ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Data Gathering ◽  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
Recognition Method ◽  
Unique Identity ◽  
Scientific Expertise ◽  
A Site ◽  
Identification Practices

In analyzing the deployment of biomertics in Iraq, argue that whereas the body was seen as a site of verification in 20th century surveillance and identification practices, in the ongoing War on Terror, and the Iraq War more specifically, it became a site of veridiction - a site in which the truth about the security of the state can be analyzed (Foucault 2008:32). The body thus became the basis for determining not so much one’s unique identity but one’s friendliness to the normative state order. Enemies could thus be identified and confined as a group, and in this process the state could be secured. In the ongoing of the War on Terror, the visual regime of veridiction has been further articulated to the logic of digital technologies in order to categorize an unfamiliar diverse population into a binary simplistic schema consistent of true and false, therefore friend or foe, and thus “go” - allowed to move through the country or “no go” - destined to be detained. In other words, the digitization of veridiction as the primary goal of biometrics is evident in the automation of the recognition method, the conversion of the archive into database, the transition away from the anthropological station onto mobile dispersed data-gathering enterprise, and replacement of scientific expertise with easy-to-use automated intelligence.

scholarly journals Shaping Toronto: female economy and agency in the corset industry, 1871-1914

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alanna M. M. McKnight
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
The Body ◽  
Fashion History ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Female Consumers ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
The Relationship

In amplifying the contours of the body, the corset is an historical site that fashions femininity even as it constricts women’s bodies. This study sits at the intersection of three histories: of commodity consumption, of labour, and of embodiment and subjectivity, arguing that women were active participants in the making, selling, purchasing and wearing of corsets in Toronto, a city that has largely been ignored in fashion history. Between 1871 and 1914 many women worked in large urban factories, and in small, independent manufacturing shops. Toronto’s corset manufacturers were instrumental in the urbanization of Canadian industry, and created employment in which women earned a wage. The women who bought their wares were consumers making informed purchases, enacting agency in consumption and aesthetics; by choosing the style or size of a corset, female consumers were able to control to varying degrees, the shape of their bodies. As a staple in the wardrobe of most nineteenth-century women, the corset complicates the study of conspicuous consumption, as it was a garment that was not meant to be seen, but created a highly visible shape, blurring the lines between private and public viewing of the female body. Marxist analysis of the commodity fetish informs this study, and by acknowledging the ways in which the corset became a fetishized object itself, both signaling the shapeliness of femininity while in fact augmenting and diminishing female bodies. This study will address critical theory regarding the gaze and subjectivity, fashion, and modernity, exploring the relationship women had with corsets through media and advertising. A material culture analysis of extant corsets helps understand how corsets were constructed in Toronto, how the women of Toronto wore them, and to what extent they actually shaped their bodies. Ultimately, it is the aim of this dissertation to eschew common misconceptions about the practice of corsetry and showcase the hidden manner in which women produced goods, labour, and their own bodies in the nineteenth century, within the Canadian context.

Bourdieu and the Body

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Connell ◽  
Ashley Mears
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
The Body ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Class Reproduction ◽  
The Many

Chapter abstract The work of Pierre Bourdieu provides a framework to see how class position is written on the body and expressed through classed styles of walking, talking, gesturing, eating, drinking, and so forth. This chapter considers how Bourdieu’s work on the body has informed and advanced empirical research on the body. From Bourdieu’s perspective, each body is the visible product of the composition and volumes of class-specific capitals accrued over the course of a lifetime, and it can be a powerful resource, or liability, depending upon the fit between one’s bodily capital and the field in which one is positioned. In particular, the chapter considers how women’s bodies have signified status for men’s class projects far more than the reverse, one of the many gendered implications of bodily capital and class reproduction.

Learning One’s Cell, Learning Oneself

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Müller
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
Women Prisoners ◽  
Extreme Conditions ◽  
Adaptation Process ◽  
Hunger Strike ◽  
Cell Life ◽  
Social Visibility ◽  
A Site

This chapter is devoted to the process of adapting to cell life in an interrogation prison, the process throughout which the women were learning what their bodies could endure. It centers on how the women were recreating conditions of normalcy while adapting to the space. During even their first moments in prison, when they did not know the space or the capacity of their bodies to function under extreme conditions, women prisoners had to learn how to transform their cells into safe places to regroup and gather strength. Some women used their bodies to achieve social visibility as women. They also used their bodies to liberate themselves from the limitations prescribed by their physicality, for example, through a hunger strike, fasting, or suicide. Throughout this adaptation process, the body was becoming a site of transformation and emancipation from the state of being merely a prisoner.

Social Practice, the Bodily Professions and the State

1990 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Sparks
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
English Language ◽  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Sport Sociology ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between sport and the modern state has been a focus of increased theoretical attention in recent years, particularly with respect to the role of sport in hegemony. At the same time there has been mounting interest in the significance of the body and bodily practices (including sports) as a site of political struggle. Yet, not much work has been done on the connection between these two projects. A monograph written in French and published in 1983 draws together many of these themes but has remained neglected in English-language sport sociology. This paper reviews Le corps programmé and discusses some of the book’s theoretical implications.

scholarly journals State Policing: Moral Panics and Masculinity in post-2011 Egypt

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (Summer) ◽  
pp. 94-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariam Mecky
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
The State ◽  
Moral Panics ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
The Public ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
The Public Sphere

This article explores the interplay of the politics of moral panics, hegemonic state discourses, and the notion of masculinity in Egypt after the 2011 uprising. As sexual violence in the public sphere has become more visible in Egyptian mainstream public discourse post-2011, the state narrative was often anchored in morality and stability. Through examining three incidents of sexual violence, I attempt to unpack the state rhetoric that aims to police bodies, deeming certain female bodies violable, and vilifying male and female subjectivities. Through the logic of the masculinist state, I examine how the Egyptian state polices women’s bodies and consolidates male sexual dominance over women, using the politics of moral panics. The state, I argue, aims to reinforce its hegemonic masculinity to maintain control over the gendered public sphere and eliminate prospects of socio-political change, thereby consolidating the gendered architecture of citizenship.

scholarly journals Shaping Toronto: female economy and agency in the corset industry, 1871-1914

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alanna M. M. McKnight
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
The Body ◽  
Fashion History ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Female Consumers ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
The Relationship

In amplifying the contours of the body, the corset is an historical site that fashions femininity even as it constricts women’s bodies. This study sits at the intersection of three histories: of commodity consumption, of labour, and of embodiment and subjectivity, arguing that women were active participants in the making, selling, purchasing and wearing of corsets in Toronto, a city that has largely been ignored in fashion history. Between 1871 and 1914 many women worked in large urban factories, and in small, independent manufacturing shops. Toronto’s corset manufacturers were instrumental in the urbanization of Canadian industry, and created employment in which women earned a wage. The women who bought their wares were consumers making informed purchases, enacting agency in consumption and aesthetics; by choosing the style or size of a corset, female consumers were able to control to varying degrees, the shape of their bodies. As a staple in the wardrobe of most nineteenth-century women, the corset complicates the study of conspicuous consumption, as it was a garment that was not meant to be seen, but created a highly visible shape, blurring the lines between private and public viewing of the female body. Marxist analysis of the commodity fetish informs this study, and by acknowledging the ways in which the corset became a fetishized object itself, both signaling the shapeliness of femininity while in fact augmenting and diminishing female bodies. This study will address critical theory regarding the gaze and subjectivity, fashion, and modernity, exploring the relationship women had with corsets through media and advertising. A material culture analysis of extant corsets helps understand how corsets were constructed in Toronto, how the women of Toronto wore them, and to what extent they actually shaped their bodies. Ultimately, it is the aim of this dissertation to eschew common misconceptions about the practice of corsetry and showcase the hidden manner in which women produced goods, labour, and their own bodies in the nineteenth century, within the Canadian context.

Occupying the Land, Grabbing the Body

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-110
Author(s):  
Nena Močnik
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Cultural Patterns ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Patriarchal System ◽  
Historical Continuity ◽  
Bosnian War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Voluntary Choice ◽  
The Military

This article traces trajectories of colonized bodies and (female) sexualities through the geopolitical and historical continuity in the territories of what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina. Starting with the historiographic overview of women under Ottoman rule, the author addresses the “patriarchal bargain,” that is, women’s (in)voluntary choice to accommodate the frame of patriarchal norms and restrictions. The second section moves to the period of the Bosnian war in the 1990s and turns to the study of female bodies subjected to “double colonialism.” If women had been previously codified, categorized, and disciplined through the patriarchal system, during the war, the author claims, the military, political, and cultural occupation of their “land” doubles the “colonialization.” In the third part of this study, the author observes how the history of (semi)colonial practices in Bosnia-Herzegovina is reflected in present cultural patterns and physical manifestations through women’s bodies as the phenomenon that some authors with (justified) hesitation call “neo-ottomanism.”

Sexuality as a Site of Memory and the Metaphysical Dilemma of Being a Colored Girl

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. H. Stallings
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Women Characters ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Alternative Model ◽  
The Body ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Black Aesthetics ◽  
National Ideology ◽  
A Site

This chapter discusses partying as an alternative model of intimacy, black aesthetics, and art inclusive of nonhuman being. It studies eroticism and representations of sex work through the plays of Lynn Nottage and the films of feminist pornographer Shine Louise Houston as cultural recognitions of sex that is mediated through “demonic grounds.” Nottage and Houston devise fictional plots and women characters that confirm how and why sexuality exists as a site of memory for some black women. Women's bodies and sexualities are their canvases and creative tools. Although the end result may become representations for national ideology or products to be consumed, the process of creating out of the body and sexuality is in and of itself evidence of power that exceeds the human.

scholarly journals Destruction, Reconstruction and Resistance: The Skin and the Protean Body in Pedro Almodóvar’s Body Horror The Skin I Live In

Humanities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 54
Author(s):  
Subarna Mondal
Keyword(s):  
Active Site ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Anatomy ◽  
Surgical Operation ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
History Of ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
A Site

The instinct to tame and preserve and the longing for eternal beauty makes skin a crucial element in the genre of the Body Horror. By applying a gendered reading to the art of destruction and reconstruction of an ephemeral body, this paper explores the significant role of skin that clothes a protean body in Almodóvar’s unconventional Body Horror, “The Skin I Live In” (2011). Helpless vulnerable female bodies stretched on beds and close shots of naked perfect skin of those bodies are a frequent feature in Almodóvar films. Skin stained and blotched in “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” (1989), nurtured and replenished in “Talk to Her” (2002), patched up and stitched in “The Skin I Live In”, becomes a key ingredient in Almodóvar’s films that celebrate the fluidity of human anatomy and sexuality. The article situates “The Skin I Live In” in the filmic continuum of Body Horrors that focus primarily on skin, beginning with Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” (1960), and touching on films like Jonathan Demme’s “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991) and Tom Tykwer’s “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” (2006) and attempts to understand how the exploited bodies that have been culturally and socially subjugated have shaped the course of the history of Body Horrors in cinema. In “The Skin I Live In” the destruction of Vicente’s body and its recreation into Vera follow a mad scientist’s urge to dominate an unattainable body, but this ghastly assault on the body has the onscreen appearance of a routine surgical operation by an expert cosmetologist in a well-lit, sanitized mise-en-scène, suggesting that the uncanny does not need a dungeon to lurk in. The exploited body on the other hand may be seen not as a passive victim, but as a site of alterity and rebellion. Anatomically a complete opposite of Frankenstein’s Creature, Vicente/Vera’s body, perfect, beautiful but beset with a problematized identity, is etched with the history of conversion, suppression, and the eternal quest for an ephemeral object. Yet it also acts as an active site of resistance.

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