Affective-Relational Becomings: Contestations Over Muslim Women‘S Identities
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AFFECTIVE-RELATIONAL BECOMINGS: CONTESTATIONS OVER MUSLIM WOMEN‘S IDENTITIES A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By Hesna Serra Aksel August 2018 Examining Committee Members: Khalid Blankinship, Advisory Chair, Religion Laura Levitt, Religion Pablo Vila, Sociology Terry Rey, Religion Sean Yom, External Member, Political Science ABSTRACT In this project, I suggest a Deleuzian ontological perspective to address the interconnected and relational constitution of Muslim women‘s experiences and practices to illuminate the multiple-layers of their lives. Namely, I call into question the category ―Islamist,‖ used for contemporary headscarf-wearing women in Turkey, and examine how this categorization erases contingency, specificity, and relationality of women‘s experiences. For this purpose, I articulate the conception of body as a relational and affective multiplicity based on a Deleuzian ontology. According to this ontology, bodies are composed of an infinite number of smaller bodies through the confluence of relations and the creative capacity of affects, which are produced by this relational flux. Since the body is a relational and affective aggregate and a multiplicity within an assemblage, it is not a stable ontological essence or determined by overarching structures, but it is instead dynamic, continually changing, and always in a process of becoming. Since this Deleuzian approach problematizes the stability and singularity of identities, it offers a radical change for the framing of the question of Muslim women. This approach provides useful means to illuminate the experiences, desires, and practices of women in their contexts and through the particular characters of their relations and affects. Therefore, this project stresses the idea that we need analytical tools which allow us to attend to dynamic configurations of Muslim women without reducing them to existing categories or marginalities. i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I am very thankful to the members of my dissertation committee at Temple University, Drs. Khalid Blankinship, Laura Levitt, Pablo Vila, Terry Rey, and Sean Yom, for providing the guidance for my academic success. I would like to express my deepest appreciation for their encouragements and inspirations for this dissertation, beginning with my graduate level courses at Temple University. I would like to thank the members of the Capital City Women‘s Platform and Hazar for welcoming me as a researcher and for their willingness to share their experiences. Lastly, I owe my deepest gratitude to my family who has supported my academic pursuits from the beginning. Without their continued support, I would not be at this place today. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................ I ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................................II GLOSSARY............................................................................................................................................... V CHAPTER 1 .............................................................................................................................................. 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................... 1 Understanding of Deleuzian Ontology ....................................................................... 12 Case and Method......................................................................................................... 22 CHAPTER 2 ........................................................................................................................................... 30 THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE IMAGE OF MUSLIM WOMAN ................................... 30 Orientalism as a Constructive Power .......................................................................... 33 Whose Feminism? ....................................................................................................... 37 The Turkish Case ........................................................................................................ 43 Modernization of a Nation .......................................................................................... 48 The Ban on the Headscarf ........................................................................................... 53 CHAPTER 3 ........................................................................................................................................... 61 AFFECTIVE-RELATIONAL BECOMINGS OF HEADSCARF-WEARING BODIES 61 Affective Registers in Bodies of Headscarf-Wearing Women ................................... 68 Relationality of Headscarf Practices ........................................................................... 79 iii CHAPTER 4 ........................................................................................................................................... 93 CONSTITUTION OF IDENTITIES: TERRITORIALIZATION OF MULTIPLICITIES INTO CATEGORIES .......................................................................................................................... 93 Language: Making the Possible Actual ...................................................................... 98 Affective Interventions .............................................................................................. 104 Afflicted Bodies......................................................................................................... 108 Mediation by Relationships or Lack of Relationships .............................................. 113 CHAPTER 5 ......................................................................................................................................... 125 ISSUES OF FREEDOM AND AGENCY ................................................................................... 125 Relational Ways of Becoming Feminist ................................................................... 138 Does the Headscarf Liberate or Oppress? ................................................................. 146 CHAPTER 6 ......................................................................................................................................... 154 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................... 154 REFERENCES CITED ...................................................................................................................... 169 APPENDIX A ...................................................................................................................................... 182 APPENDIX B ....................................................................................................................................... 186 iv GLOSSARY Affect: Productions of relations between bodies and also source of further relations by augmenting or diminishing the capacities of relations. Assemblage: A network of connections between bodies, always reassembling in different ways. Body: Any component of life no matter how big or small, including biological and non- biological, material and immaterial or human and non-human bodies . Body-without-Organs (BwO): A form of body which is composed of an infinite number of other bodies/extensive parts in the course of its life. Deterritorialization: Undoing the affect that has territorialized a body. Islamism: A political ideology that strives to derive legitimacy from Islam. Kemalism: The state ideology of Turkey built on ideals of founding fathers. Molar: Forms of social formations, abstractions, categories and thought regimes that codify and regulate certain patterns of the world. Molecular: Lines of relations that bypass the molar lines of thought and structures and produce change, re-organization, and transformation. Post-Humanism: The ontology of Deleuze that decenters the human subject and stresses the co-construction of bodies. Territorialization: Capture of a body by affect. v CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION While addressing the Muslim women question, one of the problematical issues is the centrality of ―Islam‖ as a primary subject of inquiry. This perspective sees Islam as a single and frozen tradition that constitutes every detail of a Muslim woman‘s life in an ahistorical context. The religion they embody is presumably a monolithic tradition without internal complexity and impervious to change. Muslim women, then, are deemed as the embodiment of this single tradition without the influence of historical factors, as women with no history. It is assumed that these women do not have other meaningful social relations than those they establish through religion, as if religion marks everything they do. Although the idea of Muslims, particularly Muslim women, as a group that embodies a self-contained belief system, goes back to Orientalist assumptions (Lazreg 1988, 84), tendencies to see Muslim women as a singular category has increased in recent years. This monolithic idea of Islam and Muslim women has been promoted through the narratives of some post-Muslims, such as Irshad Manji and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who supposedly provide an authentic vision of Islam as ―insiders.‖1 These figures are brought to public attention by some Western institutions