A Postcolonial Inquiry of Women's Political Agency in Aceh, Indonesia: Towards a Muslim Feminist Approach? Reed W. Taylor Diss
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A Postcolonial Inquiry of Women’s Political Agency in Aceh, Indonesia: Towards a Muslim Feminist Approach? Reed W. Taylor Dissertation submitted to the faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In Social, Political, Ethical and Cultural Thought Rachel M. Scott Peter L. Schmitthenner Barbara E. Smith Laura J. Gillman August 13, 2012 Blacksburg, VA Keywords: feminism, post-colonial, subjectivity, Islam, Southeast Asia Copyright © 2012 Reed W. Taylor A Postcolonial Inquiry of Women’s Political Agency in Aceh, Indonesia: Towards a Muslim Feminist Approach? Reed W. Taylor ABSTRACT In this dissertation, I develop a postcolonial theoretical approach to localized Muslim feminism(s) in Aceh, Indonesia, based on interviews with women in Aceh in 2009 and 2010. One of the central aims of this study is to challenge the dominant exclusivist discourse of ‘Islamic’ feminism by providing a viable alternative for ‘Muslim’ feminism(s), derived from collaborative, indigenous, and post-secular politics. I address the need for a religious feminist model of subjectivity that incorporates both the political and ethical dimensions of agency in potentially non-patriarchal and non-state- centric formations. I suggest a communal understanding of religious law as an alternative to conceptualizing religious law (syariah) in terms of a personal ethical code or a system of laws emanating from a state. I propose an alternative discourse of feminist agency and religious identity, one that reaches beyond a secular-liberal epistemology and challenges the hegemonic discourse of state-centrism within a privatized religious identity. Dedication I dedicate this dissertation to my life partner, Cut Magfirah, for her endless support. iii Table of Contents Dedication ………………………………………………………………………………………………….…. p. iii Table of Contents ………………………………………………………………………………………….. p. iv List of Figures ………………………………………………………………………………………………… p. vi Chapter 1 The Politics of the Postcolonial in Aceh ……..…...……………………………… p. 1 1.1 Scope ……………………..………………………………………………………………………... p. 5 1.2 Methodology ………………………………………………………………………………….... p. 9 1.3 Chapter Outline ………………………………………………………………………………… p. 22 Chapter 2 Muslim Women’s Agency: Rethinking the Virtues of Resistance …….. p. 32 2.1 Approaches to Agency ……………………………………………..………………………. p. 35 2.2 Women’s Agency in Aceh …………………………………….…………………………… p. 47 2.3 Religious Agency and Agency in Islam ………………………………………………. p. 51 2.4 Feminism, Religion, and the State …………………………………………………….. p. 58 2.5 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………….....………………... p. 68 Chapter 3 A Postcolonial Feminist Approach to Acehnese History ..….……..……… p. 72 3.1 State-Centrality and the History of Aceh …………………………………………... p. 76 3.2 Indonesian Folk Heroines ………………………………………………………………….. p. 91 3.3 Representations of Syariah ……………………………………………………………….. p. 97 3.4 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………………………... p. 105 Chapter 4 Rethinking Politics in Aceh ………………..……………….………………………….. p. 107 4.1 Beyond a Patriarchal State-Centric Model of Politics ………………………… p. 109 4.2 Case One: Informal Politics alongside the State ………………………………… p. 120 4.3 Case Two: Informal Politics from the Periphery ………………………………… p. 125 4.3.1 Tanah Adat and the State ………………………………………………..…………….. p. 125 4.3.2 Meunasah and the Community ………….………………………………………….. p. 129 4.3.3 Women in the Meunasah and Domestic Violence ..……….……………….. p. 132 4.4 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………………………… p. 136 Chapter 5 Mixed Responses by Women to Syariah: Moving Beyond Utopian/Dystopian Discourses ………………………………………………………………………..…………….…… p. 139 5.1 Heterotopia and Dystopia in Postcolonial Space ……………………………….. p. 145 5.2 Women’s Voices: Syariah as Utopia, Dystopia and Heterotopia ………… p. 160 5.2.1 Syariah as a Blueprint Utopia …………………………………………………………. p. 161 5.2.2 Syariah as a Blueprint Dystopia or Iconoclastic Utopia …………………… p. 164 5.2.3 Syariah as Iconoclastic Utopia ……………………………..…………………………. p. 169 5.2.4 The Social Production of Syariah: Syariah as a Heterotopia …............ p. 173 5.3 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………………………... p. 184 iv Chapter 6 Towards a Muslim Feminist Politics …………………………………..……………. p. 187 6.1 Muslim Feminism(s) in Aceh …………………………………………………….……….. p. 188 6.2 Contributions, Limitations, and Avenues for Further Research ……..…… p. 195 6.3 Concluding Remarks ………………………………………………………………………….. p. 200 Appendix: Interview Protocol …………………………………………………………………………. p. 202 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………………….…… p. 206 v List of Figures Figure 1 Map of regencies in Aceh. Participants were interviewed from the lighter colored regencies below. ……………………………………………………………………………………. p. 15 Figure 2 The top half of a poster prominently displayed on the wall at the Wilayatul Hisbah headquarters in a city in Aceh. ……….…..…………………………………………………… p. 183 vi Chapter 1: The Politics of the Postcolonial in Aceh This dissertation offers a postcolonial feminist approach to women’s agency in Aceh,1 Indonesia, one that facilitates an examination of the assemblage of ethical, political, and religious expressions found in the narratives of Acehnese women regarding syariah,2 informal/communal politics, and life in a post-conflict Aceh. The analysis of interviews with women in Aceh provides evidence in support of a broader shift away from the terminology used by scholars and activists of a dichotomy between religious (Islamic) feminisms and secular (non-religious) feminisms. The terminology of Muslim Feminism(s) presents a potential alternative to an Islamic/secular divide. The first focal point of this inquiry is developing a localized understanding of women’s political agency in Aceh that is inclusive of communal (non-individualistic) ways of being; non- state-centric3 ways of knowing and being; and of a broader understanding of religion (Islam) as a spectrum of embodied relational practices and values. The second focal point of this inquiry is a critical engagement with the colonial legacies in the writing of Acehnese history that aids in understanding how Acehnese women position themselves in relation to Indonesian- nationalism, colonial feminisms, and Islam. The third and final focal point of this inquiry is how women inhabit, construct, and deconstruct religious law (syariah) in Aceh. The international 1In the Acehnese and Indonesian languages all instances of the letter ‘c’ are pronounced as (IPA) tʃ or ‘ch.’ Aceh is pronounced (IPA) ʔaˈtʃɛh or as a’-ch-eh. Aceh is sometimes referred to as Atjeh, Achin or Achen. 2 The primary languages referenced throughout this dissertation are Indonesian and Acehnese. Syariah is the Acehnese cognate of Syariat in Indonesian and is sometimes referred to as Sharia, Shari’ah or Shari’a, which are .ةعيرشلا more commonly used to reference the Arabic term 3 To be clear, the use of the terms ‘state-centric’ and ‘non-state-centric’ is not a quantitative reference to the presence or the absence of a centralized state in a particular location at a particular time. Rather, state-centrism refers to a way of engaging in politics and inhabiting socio-political space that presumes it is natural and therefore normative to conceptualize politics as the behavior of individuals or groups of individuals in relation to a modern- state. I am arguing against the notion that a modern-state is necessarily required, or even desirable, for meaningful political engagement. 1 community of scholars and activists concerned with Human Rights in Aceh provide the context to which syariah is often criticized. The interviews with Muslim women in Aceh offer an alternative explanation of syariah in Aceh as being both obscured by the state’s attempt to regulate syariah and obscured by Human Rights discourses grounded on liberal-secular values that oppose the ethical and political embodiment of non-Christian (Islamic) religious values.4 The usage of a ‘postcolonial feminist approach’ (postcolonial as a modifier to a feminist inquiry) rather than a ‘feminist postcolonial approach’ (feminist as a modifier to a postcolonial inquiry) is a conscious decision on my part to be as clear as possible in how I am engaging the fields of Feminist/Women’s Studies and Postcolonial Studies.5 On the one hand, postcolonial feminism takes gender inequality as a basic starting point and incorporates racial and socio- economic inequalities within (neo)colonial discourses. Uma Narayan describes this kind of analysis in terms of a political intervention into feminist analysis (Narayan 1997). She describes postcolonial feminism as, an attempt to, publicly and in concert with others, challenge and reverse an account that is neither the account of an individual nor an account ‘of the culture as a whole,’ but an account of some who have power within the culture. It is a political challenge to other political accounts that distort, misrepresent, and often intentionally fail to account for the problems and contributions of many inhabitants of the context. It is a political attempt to tell a counter-story that contests dominant narratives that would claim the entire edifice of ‘our Culture’ and ‘our Nation’ for themselves, converting them into a peculiar form of property, and excluding the voices, concerns, and contributions of many who are members (Narayan 1997, p. 9-10 emphasis original). 4 It has been widely argued among scholars in Religious Studies that the core ethical and political principles found in secularism are grounded in Western Christian thought (see