“Vatan, the Beloved; Vatan, the Mother” revolves around the relationship of the citizens to their nation, and the gendered conception of this relationship. Iranian nationalism was conveyed through an idea of vatan, and in order for that idea to have power, vatan had to be characteristically “unmanly,” an embodiment of femininity. Invariably, “[vatan] is occasioned through a relationship with (un)manliness”; the idea of vatan itself requires a male figure as its complement (108). Patriotism revolved around providing for and protecting the motherland. In some circumstances, women associated themselves with this idea of the nation as a mother in order to exercise a kind of maternal authority; their expectations of their male counterparts dictated the due respect a citizen would give their motherland.
The word vatan generally means homeland, but it takes on a different meaning depending on its historical and social context. The homeland is meant to be cared for and protected. In Iran, the citizen’s relationship to the homeland was constructed on a basic male-female binary, resembling and symbolized by various relationships between a man and woman. This nature of this relationship would change depending on what aims the political elite were trying to achieve, alternating between the relationship between man and mother, and man and lover. Most often this relationship took the shape of a mother-son dynamic, which allowed for the citizens to imagine themselves as brothers. “Anticonstitutionalist monarch Muhammad Ali Shah was frequently addressed...as the father of Iranians...he referred to Iran as our dear Vatan,...his kind mother” (118-9). Other people’s reference to him as the father of the nation demonstrates that nationalism is gendered; the homeland is the female, in this case, the mother, and its citizens and ruler are the father. In circumstances in which vatan was portrayed as a lover, it created a love triangle “in which the love of the two men for a single female figure produces a patriotic bond between” (108). We remain skeptical about this perspective, because this complicates the fraternal relationship among citizens in ways that the image of a maternal homeland does not; in a case where two men love the same female figure, it seems as if this love would provoke a sense of competition between the men. Related to the idea of vatan, it seems this perspective may actually be detrimental to national cohesion, damaging the fraternal unity between citizens belonging to one nation.
The next three readings by Deniz Kandiyoti, Suad Joseph, and Maxine Molyneux discuss how conceptions of women’s role in politics changed depending on the goals of governing bodies.
The Kandiyoti reading discussed the political role of women in Turkey (and the Ottoman Empire). In many ways, women were the vehicles for larger political missions. Male reformers during the Tanzimat Era often cited the plight of women as archaic and anachronistic Islamic Ottoman principles, which prevented the progress of the nation. During the rise of the Young Turks and World War 1, women achieved more liberties in that they were expected and encouraged to enter the workforce to both create a new Muslim Turkish middle class and to make up for the lack of men in the workforce during wartime. Through entering the workforce, women in a sense gained political legitimacy; by fulfilling patriotic duties, they thus felt entitled to greater political participation. At the same time, women were made to represent Islam in the state, which was in a period of steady decline. Different ideologies represented women according to their various views about saving the Empire.
For Islamists, the abandonment of Islamic principles was responsible for the decline of the Empire. Islam should remain “uncontaminated” by Western culture and discourse in order for the state to flourish. Since women were symbolic of Islam, women’s issues concerning certain personal practices became politicized. As representatives of Islam, women had to remain untainted by Western ideologies; veiling took on much more than a personal meaning in creating modesty, but also represented the preservation of an Islamic national ideology. Westernists on the other hand looked to the West as an example for Turkish nationalism; this nationalism was based on a secular rationality that contrasted Islam. Islam was considered a hindrance to modernity, symbolized by “the debased condition of women...one of the major symptoms of Ottoman backwardness” (33). Turkists on the other hand evoked a sense of pre-Islamic Turkish pride. In creating a Turkish nationality separate from Islam, Turkists looked back to pre-Islamic Turkish culture as a way to promote this Turkish identity. Since gender equality was a significant characteristic to the pre-Islamic Turkish people, the status of women was significant to the construction of a Turkish identity. Turkists emphasized the importance of gender equality as central to their identity as a distinct nation. The role of women was further contested under Mustafa Kemal, who promoted the image of the “new woman,” who represented a break with the past, especially a break with Islam. Kemal was against Islam as a component of the state (Islam was incompatible with his notions of progress), and thus used the emancipation of women as a symbol of his separation with Turkey’s Islamic past. Interestingly in all of these stages of women’s political status, women remained relatively passive.
Therefore “feminism” was a state-sponsored and controlled ideology, in that the state created it and defined its role and parameters, but additionally it was created by a male-dominated state. Women were also “harnessed” by the masculine state to sanction and reproduce different notions of Turkish statehood. Feminism expanded the rights and elevated the status of women in Turkey, however did so only to promote various state ideologies.
The Kandiyoti reading discussed the political role of women in Turkey (and the Ottoman Empire). In many ways, women were the vehicles for larger political missions. Male reformers during the Tanzimat Era often cited the plight of women as archaic and anachronistic Islamic Ottoman principles, which prevented the progress of the nation. During the rise of the Young Turks and World War 1, women achieved more liberties in that they were expected and encouraged to enter the workforce to both create a new Muslim Turkish middle class and to make up for the lack of men in the workforce during wartime. Through entering the workforce, women in a sense gained political legitimacy; by fulfilling patriotic duties, they thus felt entitled to greater political participation. At the same time, women were made to represent Islam in the state, which was in a period of steady decline. Different ideologies represented women according to their various views about saving the Empire.
For Islamists, the abandonment of Islamic principles was responsible for the decline of the Empire. Islam should remain “uncontaminated” by Western culture and discourse in order for the state to flourish. Since women were symbolic of Islam, women’s issues concerning certain personal practices became politicized. As representatives of Islam, women had to remain untainted by Western ideologies; veiling took on much more than a personal meaning in creating modesty, but also represented the preservation of an Islamic national ideology. Westernists on the other hand looked to the West as an example for Turkish nationalism; this nationalism was based on a secular rationality that contrasted Islam. Islam was considered a hindrance to modernity, symbolized by “the debased condition of women...one of the major symptoms of Ottoman backwardness” (33). Turkists on the other hand evoked a sense of pre-Islamic Turkish pride. In creating a Turkish nationality separate from Islam, Turkists looked back to pre-Islamic Turkish culture as a way to promote this Turkish identity. Since gender equality was a significant characteristic to the pre-Islamic Turkish people, the status of women was significant to the construction of a Turkish identity. Turkists emphasized the importance of gender equality as central to their identity as a distinct nation. The role of women was further contested under Mustafa Kemal, who promoted the image of the “new woman,” who represented a break with the past, especially a break with Islam. Kemal was against Islam as a component of the state (Islam was incompatible with his notions of progress), and thus used the emancipation of women as a symbol of his separation with Turkey’s Islamic past. Interestingly in all of these stages of women’s political status, women remained relatively passive.
Therefore “feminism” was a state-sponsored and controlled ideology, in that the state created it and defined its role and parameters, but additionally it was created by a male-dominated state. Women were also “harnessed” by the masculine state to sanction and reproduce different notions of Turkish statehood. Feminism expanded the rights and elevated the status of women in Turkey, however did so only to promote various state ideologies.
Joseph’s reading (while it may not have been his intention) follows a counterintuitive arc. He sets out to prove that 1960’s-70’s Iraq created more opertunities for its female citizens than did Lebanon during the same historical period. Placing the strategies of political elites in Iraq and Lebanon against one another, he attempts to explicate their strategies for state-building vis-a-vis family religion and women. Iraq, whose ruling class he describes as a “homogenous”, would, in the minds of most people, breed politically/socially prohibitive environment for women. Most of us who are educated in the western tradition view the one party state with contempt; concentrated power lends itself to abuse by the wielder and scorn on the part of those subject to it. Joseph reveals, however, that the political and industrial consolidation that characterized mid-20th century Iraq created great opportunities for women. Determined to create active and responsible citizens, women were encouraged to pursue a the education that the state freely offered and to join the workforce that so desperately needed to be strengthened by an increase in laborers. The General Federation of Iraqi Women (GFIW), illustrates the kind of visibility and ostensible equality that women enjoyed under the Ba’th. Women were “extended the same rights [as men] in the workplace...including areas of pay, position, training, advancement, retirement, compensation and medical care” (185) - all under the Ba’th. Lebanese women on the other hand who belonged to a minimalist state which granted considerable autonomy to the private sector experienced (perhaps counterintuitively for many) greater restrictions. Due to the fact that power was disaggregated among many political elites, these sectarian leaders deployed and maintained their influence by regulating, most prohibitively, institutions of marraige, inheritance, divorce, child custody etc (191). Women were better of submitting to the regulations were designed to retain connection given the weakness/absence of strong state institutions; “it was prudent for individuals and families to be allied in a face-to-face personal relationship with a za’im [political leader] (192).” Politically liberal Lebanon, more than Iraq, illustrated a state in which women were subject to the entrapment that one would intuatively associate with a one-party state like Iraq.
Molyneux’s chapter emphasized the expansion of state control in personal legal matters as part of revolution, to transform society and politics under centralized rule. In colonized Yemen, women experienced little political freedom, though in the PDRY, women were seen as producers and educators of future generations who were responsible for constructing and defending the new society. The state therefore had an incentive to promote women’s rights and equality, since they brought up new generations. In this context, previously personal matters, such as family rights and status became highly politicized. The Family Law in Yemen was introduced in 1971 in order to establish a new family relationship. It redefined the husband’s role by reducing his authority as well as his “breadwinning” obligations, both of which were to be shared equally with women. In Yemen, legal reform that was meant to extend the authority of the state in order to introduce societal change became a vehicle for the transformation of women’s position in society and politics. Other forms of authority, such as Islam, tribal or family, or gender authority, were considered second to the authority of the state in order to “construct less private, traditional identities” (265). The expansion of women’s rights in Yemen followed less a societal push for increased rights and liberalization, but the socialist state’s need to reorganize social relations to promote national unity.
“Turning the Gendered Politics of the Security State Inside Out?” discusses how securitization creates hypervisible parahuman subjects that become targeted by politics, which then naturalizes and justifies enforcement regimes that attempt to eliminate the threat of these subjects. Additionally, security doctrines transnationally impose these parahuman subjects where they did not necessarily exist before. During 1990’s protests, the Egyptian government sent out baltagiya, plain-clothes thugs, who blended in with the protesters but wreaked havoc in order to delegitimize the protests, which had an unintended effect of backing the Orientalist stereotypes of savage Arabs. When women entered the protests, however, this image fell apart. Instead, “the state responded by shifting its aims from using demonized masculinity in order to delegitimize political opposition to using state-imposed sexual aggression in order to undermine class respectability” (465). Sexual harassment of women was meant to taint the image of the respectable, pious woman, damaging the integrity of their participation in the uprisings. Paul Amar argues that NGOs create victims in need of their rescue, “reviving colonial practices of social control in the guise of emancipatory civil society action” (467). These NGOs however incorrectly interpret the meaning and and reasons for the sexual harassment that women face during protests; instead of pointing the finger at the security state as the perpetrators of this harassment as a means to debase women as legitimate protesters, NGOs often blame certain social constructs. “Concern shifted from the police and security state as the agent of sexual harassment and sexualized torture to a national problematization of the libidinal perversion of working class boys,” creating a social problem in Egyptian society that needed to be fixed (470). This discourse naturalized the image of a hypersexual, parahuman Arab male, and actually pushed for greater state involvement in order to protect women from these men. Amar emphasizes the role of El-Nadeem, an Egyptian women’s organization meant to rehabilitate women affected by state sponsored sexual harassment. Rather than attempting to “rehabilitate the respectability and piety of the harassed protesters,” El-Nadeem focused on challenging the state security apparatus as the cause of the harassment. They also treated prostitutes in the same manner as middle-class women, giving them equal rights and access to legal aid, thereby toppling the respectability politics of the security state. Quotations:
1) “In Sufi tradition the only earthly love for a woman that is not seen as conflicting with love of God is the Sufi’s love for his mother. Being devoted to and caring for one’s mother is viewed as a service to God. Nationalist transcription of vatan as mother fully benefited from this connection to Sufi love as well. Here the male patriot did not face a test of choice. Perhaps this also accounts for the eventual dominance of vatan-as-mother over vatan-as-beloved in patriotic discourse” (Najmabadi, 112-13)
2) “Conversations in critical race theory concerned with the logic of hypervisibility focus on processes whereby racialized, sexualized subjects, or the marked bodies of subordinate classes, become intensely visible as objects of state, police, and media gazes and as targets of fear and desire” (Amar 461).
Discussion Questions:
1) What effect does the Egyptian security state’s sexual harassment of women have on notions of the homeland depicted as a feminine body (the motherland) that needs to be protected, as explored in the Najmabadi reading? Is the discourse of the feminine nation damaged or delegitimized in the face of state-sponsored attacks against the female subjects of the state?
2) What are the potential risks/gains of correlating nationhood with maternity or, more broadly, womanhood? Are the risks/gains mitigated when the nation is likened to a man? Does the characterization of a group and the appropriation of their image in the service of nation-building ultimately do damage to the characterized group?
3) Can the gains in female equality and rights under state reform, as in Turkey, Iraq, and Yemen, be seen as feminist advancements since they were granted by a male-dominated state system in order to achieve political goals? Or is this rather seen as further male domination (women cannot have equality or more liberal rights unless men approve and implement them)?
No comments:
Post a Comment