View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy Marketing Authenticity: Production and Promotion of Muslim Women‘s Memoirs in Germany and Austria A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Lindsay Jorgensen Lawton IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Arlene Teraoka March 2014 © Lindsay J. Lawton 2014 Acknowledgements First and foremost, I owe a debt of gratitude to my advisor, Arlene Teraoka, for her patience, encouragement, and fortitude – as well as her critical eye – in reading so many drafts with such care and attention. I am also very grateful to Ruth-Ellen Joeres, chair of my committee, for her tireless support and expert guidance. Many thanks also to the other members of my committee, Rick McCormick, Matthias Rothe, and Barbara Wolbert, all of whom have been unfailingly generous with their time and their advice. This project benefitted from the financial support of several institutions and individuals at the University of Minnesota, including the Department of German, Scandinavian, and Dutch; the Center for Austrian Studies; the Center for German and European Studies; the College of Liberal Arts; Hella Lindemeyer Mears; and Gerhard and Janet Weiss. For the funding, including the Zantop Travel Award, as well as for the welcoming, intellectually rigorous, and often hilarious community, I am especially grateful to the Coalition of Women in German. I have been touched and humbled by the support, advice, and motivation provided by my peers and colleagues, past and present. Ashley Olstad deserves exceptional thanks for her advice and insight, both personal and professional, and for always cheering me on. Thanks also to Anne Wallen, Anja Shepela, Adrienne Damiani, Marnie Christensen, Rebecca Raham, Arsena Ianeva-Lockney, Ginny Steinhagen, and Sally Lieberman for helping me navigate the challenges of the past several years with something I can only hope approaches their grace under pressure. Finally, I am grateful to my family for their understanding, their flexibility, and their trust. Special thanks to Rob, Grady, and Miriam for taking such good care of me and helping me keep this grand adventure in perspective. i Table of Contents List of Figures .................................................................................................................................... iii Glossary .............................................................................................................................................. 2 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 3 Emergence of a Genre ......................................................................................................... 8 The Socioeconomics of Muslim Women‘s Writing ............................................................ 19 Methodology ..................................................................................................................... 26 Overview of Chapters ........................................................................................................ 30 Chapter 1: Ayşe, or the Making of a Muslim Women‘s Memoir .........................................................34 Testimonio, Autoethnography, and Muslim Women‘s Life Writing ................................... 43 Paratexts & Genre Markers ............................................................................................... 48 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 67 Chapter 2: Sabatina, or a Shocking True Story of Faith, Sex, and Scandal...........................................74 The Book .......................................................................................................................... 77 Production & Promotion .................................................................................................... 86 Sex, Gender, and Moral Panic ........................................................................................... 92 Epilogue ............................................................................................................................ 98 Chapter 3: Hatun, or Agency & Afterlife .......................................................................................... 102 Agency, Exploitation, and the Muslim Woman Victim .................................................... 109 Social Fantasy, National Integrity, and Islam as Contagion .............................................. 121 Sürücü's Image ................................................................................................................ 128 Speaking for, Speaking about .......................................................................................... 133 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 141 Chapter 4: You can‘t tell a book by its cover. ................................................................................... 144 Book Covers, Marketing & Material Contexts ................................................................. 146 Consumption, Promotion, (Re)production in Social Media .............................................. 156 Enacting Authentic Identity ............................................................................................. 169 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 174 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 178 Appendix of Muslim Women‘s Memoirs ................................................................................ 195 ii List of Figures Figure 1: Ehrenmord: Ein deutsches Schicksal, 2011 © Hoffmann und Campe ........................ 129 Figure 2: Sürücü at work; © rbb/WDR/Privat .......................................................................... 129 Figure 3: Gefangen in Deutschland, 2011 © Münchner Verlagsgruppe GmbH ........................ 149 Figure 4: Befreiung vom Schleier, 2013 © Münchner Verlagsgruppe GmbH ........................... 149 Figure 5: Sterben sollst du für dein Glück, 2004 © Knaur Taschenbuch ................................... 152 Figure 6: Nur die Wahrheit macht uns frei, 2011 © Pattloch Verlag ........................................ 152 iii ―When you save someone, you imply that you are saving her from something. You are also saving her to something. What violences are entailed in this transformation, and what presumptions are being made about the superiority of that to which you are saving her?‖ (Abu-Lughod, ―Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?‖ 788-9) 1 Glossary Muslim woman victim A figure in which the categories of Muslim, woman, and victim are inextricably linked: the figure is categorized as Muslim by virtue of the gendered abuse she has suffered (not necessarily by her own faith or that of her abusers); her gender is marked by Muslim violence; and her status as a victim is due to her gender and her religion. Muslim Traditionally, a term used to describe individuals who consider themselves adherents of any branch of Islam. Especially since the turn of the twenty-first century, this term now often signifies a social category that connects ideology, class status, and phenotype. Islam ―Islam‖ refers to religious traditions based on the Prophet Mohammed, including the most prominent branches, Sunni and Shiite. In some Western media, Islam has also come to stand for a set of rules governing a cohesive, transnational community of Muslims dedicated to the destruction of the West. Author-narrator I use this term to foreground the importance of the embodied narrator as public figure, as well as the fact that many of the women filling this role did not do the writing themselves. Parallelwelt Parallel world; communities in Europe that are independent from and inaccessible to non- Muslims, where Western laws, social and cultural norms, and ideals of individual freedoms do not apply (or are actively opposed). Social media Refers here to the vast array of applications that enable the creation and exchange of user-generated content, including but not limited to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Wikipedia, as well as forums and comment fields on blogs, online news articles, and online retail sites. 2 Introduction As he hiked through the dense underbrush of the German forest, the man heard the sound of a woman‘s tender voice penetrating the silence. He stopped. She sang, in broken German, about her heartbreak and worry, her homesickness for a faraway land and about the terrible violence that tore her from it after killing her father and brothers and destroying their castle, all because of their religious beliefs. She sang her tragic song to the accompaniment of a beautiful lute and the sobbing of a child. As the lovely music ended, the hiker scrambled over mossy rocks and deeper into the brush toward the voice. In a small valley, he found a pale, drawn girl sitting under an old oak tree, her own tears falling as she tried to comfort the crying child in her lap. The singer jumped a little with surprise when she saw him, but she was friendly, and the child observed him with curiosity even as