The Affective Feminism of Ghazaleh Hedayat

This article examines the works of the Iranian contemporary artist, Ghazaleh Hedayat. It argues that her turn from figural representation to nonfigural abstraction and consequently to what Laura Marks has called “haptic visuality” demonstrates a careful and systematic aesthetic strategy that attempts to confront and at times even exit representation. It shows that Hedayat's works since the early 2010s offer an affective approach to feminism in contemporary Iranian art that doesn't hinge on representational modes of expression, which are often susceptible to assimilation into identitarian narratives and inadvertently complicit in various forms of marginalization (gender, ethnic, etc.). Hedayat's affective feminism not only complicates clichéd interpretations of her work as a non-Western woman, but it also materializes a new form of knowledge more in tune with feminism. Focusing on the female body as a site of pain, friction, tension, love, maternality, and, more significantly, as a site where self and its other—both in terms of gender and ethnicity—encounter each other, Hedayat undermines visibility by way of pushing it across the borders of sight into the realms of visuality, haptic experience, and proprioception.

Acting the part: Life in Japan as role-play

Wendy Jones Nakanishi tells us the story of her path as a Western woman who came to rural Japan for a career in higher education and the benefits and challenges she faced there. She shares her experiences of living the life as an employed university worker, on the one hand, and as a woman in a male-dominated family, on the other.

Laila Lalami’s The Moor’s Account: A Lost Narrative

From the earlier times the voices of the minorities especially the Muslims have been subjugated by the forces. Many of the texts written in the olden times, whether fictional or non-fictional hardly have any mention of Muslims in them. One such text being the historical account of the Narvaez expedition that took place in 1527, which was chronicled by Cabeza de Vaca, one of the four survivors of the expedition. What is surprising is that one of the survivors was an African slave, Estabanico but he is hardly mentioned in the original, despite being part of the expedition that stretched to eight year. Fast forward to the 21st century which is the age of postcolonialism and where the once oppressed communities are finally speaking about their truth, Moroccan author, Laila Lalami through her novel, The Moor’s Account decided to give voice and a backstory to the African slave, Estabanico. The current paper deals with the complexities of the novel and tries to provide reasons as to why Cabeza de Vaca intentionally omitted the Estabanico’s account of the travels. The paper also discusses the ingenuine use of narrative tools made by the author in the retelling of the story of a forgotten Muslim slave. It also narrates the importance of women characters in the Islamic culture of those days, when the western woman was not as liberated as she is today. Lastly, the paper draws a parallel between Estabanico’s condition during the expedition and that of the Muslim population in the post 9/11 world.

KONSEP DIRI PEREMPUAN DI PERSIMPANGAN BUDAYA DALAM AUTOBIOGRAFI STUPEUR ET TREMBLEMENTS KARYA AMÉLIE NOTHOMB

Identitas atau konsep diri merupakan representasi seseorang. Konsep diri pengarang dapat direkonstruksi pembaca melalui karya-karyanya, salah satunya autobiografi. Penelitian ini bertujuan mendeskripsikan konsep diri perempuan di persimpangan budaya, mencakup gambaran diri, harga diri, dan harapan diri. Sumber data penelitian ini adalah roman autobiografi Stupeur et Tremblements karya Amélie Nothomb. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian kualitatif deskriptif dengan teknik analisis interpretatif. Pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan teknik membaca, mencatat, mengklasifikasikan, dan mengkoding. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan adanya konsep diri sebagai berikut. Pertama, kegagalan usaha peleburan diri tokoh Aku atau Amélie, sosok perempuan Belgia terdidik, menguasai bahasa Jepang dan diterima bekerja di Perusahaan Yumimoto sebagai penerjemah Jepang-Belgia/Prancis, namun terpaksa harus menerima dirinya diperkerjakan sebagai pembersih toilet, agar diterima dan melebur sebagai seorang Jepang. Dia mencoba menghapus dirinya dan mencoba melebur dalam cara pikir dan budaya Jepang, tempat ia dilahirkan dan tumbuh sampai usia lima tahun. Kedua, self-esteem atau harga diri yang selalu direndahkan oleh atasannya, wanita Jepang bernama Mori Fubuki, Saito dan Omichi. Hal itu berbenturan dengan keyakinan dan penilaian dirinya sebagai perempuan yang tumbuh di Barat. Ketiga, ideal self tokoh Amélie di Jepang yang tidak tercapai. Tokoh ini mengalami self-discrepancies, yaitu harapan dirinya berbeda dengan kenyataan. Pada akhirnya ia dapat mengaktualisasikan diri menjadi penulis setelah kembali ke Belgia. Kata Kunci: identitas, feminisme, barat-timur, autobiografi, konsep diri WOMEN'S SELF-CONCEPT IN CULTURAL JUNCTION IN AMÉLIE NOTHOMB’S STUPEUR ET TREMBLEMENTS AUTOBIOGRAPHY AbstractIdentity is closely related to self-concept. Through an autobiography, authors reconstruct their concepts through their works. This study is aimed at describing women’s self-concepts in a cross-cultural setting which includes their self-images, self-esteem, and self-ideals. The main source of this study is “Stupeur et Tremblements”, an autobiography written by Amélie Nothomb. This study is a descriptive qualitative research using interpretive analysis techniques. Data collection is done by reading, collecting, classifying, and coding. The results show that self-concepts consist of (1) dissolution of selves marked by the figure of ‘I’ as Amélie, a Belgian woman, 22 years, educated, mastering Japanese, accepted to work at Yumimoto as a Japanese-French translator but working as toilet janitor in this company. She tried to fuse into the Japanese way of thinking and culture, the country where she was born and grew until she was five years old; (2) her self-esteem is always demeaned by his direct supervisor, a Japanese woman named Mori Fubuki and also Omichi. It clashes with her beliefs and considerations as a woman who grew up as a Western woman; and (3) Amélie’s ideal self in Japan was disapproved because she faced self-discrepancies and pushed her to return to Belgium and became a successful writer. Keywords: identity, feminism, east-west, autobiography, self-concept

The Chastity Society: Disciplining Muslim Men

At a time when Western humanitarian rescue discourses seek to save Muslim women from irrational and violent Islamic masculinities, the Jordanian Islamist charity ‘the Chastity Society’ seeks to train young men to restrain their excessive masculine passions to ensure that Muslim women are spared the fate of the benighted and oppressed Western woman. This article traces parallel emphases on gender essentialism, rationality, cultural pathology, and abjection to argue that a shared language of contention unites both Islamists and those who advocate for Western humanitarian interventions. I explore how several kinds of social control are legitimized through these symmetrical polemics about gender, order, and civilization.

Tra immagini e memorie

The article Excursion au Samourzakan et en Abkasie published in the journal Le Tour du Monde was written by the famous lady traveller Carla Serena after two expeditions in Samurzakano and Abkhazia in 1876 and 1881. Her essay provides noteworthy insights from a variety of perspectives, such as historical remarks (especially on the Russo-Turkish war), geographical notes, linguistic observations, and detailed accounts of ethnographical interest. Not only was Carla Serena the first Western woman who travelled alone in the Caucasus but she also was the first photographer who took pictures of Abkhazia, as most of the engravings appeared in the essay were made after her own photographs.

Eastern and Western Woman Warriors: Through the Analyses of “The Woman Warrior” by Maxine Hong Kingston and “The Ginger Tree” by Oswald Wynd

This article aims to scrutinize identity problem, through utilizing gender, cultural approaches and analyzing mother-daughter relationship. The distinctive attitudes of eastern and western societies towards woman identity bear undeniable differences, yet the existence of noticeable similarities cannot be rejected. East and West are regarded as two opposite poles; apparently modern discourse searches ultimate perspectives to investigate crossroads between these two opposite sites. Indeed, culture plays a significant part in detecting these perspectives. In this article the author makes an effort to analyze the prior cultural facets by employing literary analyses. Moreover, one of the problems that modern literary study is concerned with is mother-daughter relationship. The selected two literary works presented by this article open up an immense area for exploring the above mentioned points. Enquiring into woman identity, the article attempts to approach the question from ethnic perspectives, thus our heroes are not just ethnic minorities, but also minority women.

Defining a Maverick

This chapter assesses the Palin campaign as an exercise in political storytelling. In this media-saturated age in which party labels may not tell us much about a candidate, personal biography has become a key way that the public comes to “know” a candidate. The chapter argues that the most effective storytelling for the Palin candidacy focused on her background as a westerner. By highlighting Palin's big-game hunting on the Alaskan frontier and her “maverick” record of reform in the state house, Republican operatives tried to embed Palin in a long line of stories of presidential candidates and the American West. Attentive as they were to the political possibilities of Palin's identity as a westerner, the chapter shows that the Republican campaign never fully dealt with her identity as a western woman, despite the rich history of women's political advancement in the West.