Western Ethnocentrism and Perceptions of the Harem

Ahmed, Leila

doi:10.2307/3177710

Cited by 179 publications

(51 citation statements)

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“…Consequently, the image of women in the harem was subjected to serious attacks (Ahmed 1982;Alloula 1986;Yeğenoğlu 1998). Influenced by two critiques of orientalist literature (Said 1978;Alloula 1986) in her book BColonial Fantasies^, Meyda Yeğenoğlu suggests that it is in the very foundation of the unconscious, where the (impotent) gendered orient is sexualised, fantasized, and eroticised as an object of desire (Yeğenoğlu 1998).…”

Section: The Second Wavementioning

confidence: 99%

Revisited: Muslim Women’s agency and feminist anthropology of the Middle East

Sehlikoglu

2017

Cont Islam

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This article locates imaginative aspects of human subjectivity as a feminist issue by reviewing the concept of agency in the genealogy of Muslim and Middle Eastern women in anthropological and ethnographic literature. It suggests that, if feminist scholarship of the Middle East would continue approaching to Muslim women's agency -as it has been doing for decades-, it should do so as an epistemological question and thus expand the limits of ethnographic and analytical focus beyond the broader systems, such as family, nation, religion, and state. As an example to this proposition, the article then discusses the recent work on aspects of selfhood that escape from the structures, rules, systems, and discursive limits of life but captures imaginations, aspirations, desires, yearnings, and longings.Keywords Agency . Muslim women . Anthropology of the Middle East . Desire . Feminist theory Women's Agency in Anthropology of the Middle EastIt would be reasonable to suggest that women's agency has been the primary focus in the anthropology of the Middle East since feminist anthropologists have entered into the area studies in late 1960s. Like much early feminist scholarship, the feminist anthropology of the Middle East also took a critical distance to the former scholarship and its Bmale bias^ (Reiter 1975, Moore 1988. As I discuss in following pages more extensively, the particular type of Cont Islam (2018) 12:73-92

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Section: The Second Wavementioning

confidence: 99%

Revisited: Muslim Women’s agency and feminist anthropology of the Middle East

Sehlikoglu

2017

Cont Islam

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“…(Kohl 1987: 356). For a critical discussion of Western perceptions of the harem see Ahmed (1982Ahmed ( , 1992, Förschler (2005), and Yeğenoğlu (1998). 86.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Germans, New Dutch : Literary Interventions

Minnaard¹

2009

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Foundation Palimpsest supports the publication of excellent scientific research in the academic discipline of cultural analysis, among other things by subsidizing the book series Palimpsest: Disorientation.The book series Palimpsest: Disorientation addresses the culture of war, civil war, violence and conflict. It aims to rethink the discourse of war and enmity, and in doing so it hopes to contribute to the undermining of the stereotyping frames, without which no war can be waged.The book series first term, Palimpsest, (the scraped-off parchment roll) suggests the layeredness, opacity and density of cultural objects and processes, and therefore also their rich possibilities towards rereading and revision. The second term, Disorientation, refers to the need to explore and subvert the expediently enforced boundary between East and West, a violent borderline that was incessantly addressed in the work of Inge E. Boer, in whose honour this book series is established. Disorientation, in its more common sense, is also a productive force. For disorienting forms of rereading disable the stereotypical ways of reading, which are so seamlessly evoked by dominant worldviews.

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“…The values and practices of Islam were seen to embody a backward culture which required women's passivity and submissiveness; European cultural norms, loosely identified with the liberal tradition, presupposed freedom in favour of individual autonomy and self-realization. Many western liberal feminists, perhaps unwittingly, back this discourse, portraying veiled women as indifferent, largely unaware of their oppression and docile toward the subordinating practices of Islam (Ahmed, 1982). To be free, Muslim women must resist Islamic norms and practices that privilege men.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, Mernissi (1996) argues, Muslim women's 'agency' presupposes resistance to a male-dominated hegemonic discourse that views women as subordinate. Ahmed (1982Ahmed ( , 1992 also argues that the veil has no innate meaning inimical to women's interests. She suggests that it is an historically specific symbol of women's oppression and inferiority constructed during the colonial encounter between Muslim societies and European powers.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Governing women's morality

Atasoy

2006

European Journal of Cultural Studies

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International audienceThe veiling of Muslim women is subject to strongly contested ideas about whether the veil is a symbol of women's subordination to an oppressive tradition or a means of emancipation from that tradition. This article suggests that women's own personal reasons for veiling must be analysed. Data collected from published documents from Muslim organizations allows for demonstration that the veil is configured as central to an Islamic moral code of female modesty. A further analysis of findings from interviews conducted with veiled Muslim women in Winnipeg shows the nuanced ways in which women enact this code

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Western Ethnocentrism and Perceptions of the Harem

Cited by 179 publications

References 1 publication

Revisited: Muslim Women’s agency and feminist anthropology of the Middle East

Revisited: Muslim Women’s agency and feminist anthropology of the Middle East

New Germans, New Dutch : Literary Interventions

Governing women's morality

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