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Sobhiyat w Zyarat: Queer Intimacies in Druze Women’s Spaces
Abstract
For the Druze community, sobhiyat and zyarat (morning and afternoon gatherings, respectively) are spaces that are deliberately forged among women to sustain themselves. While sobhiyat and zyarat themselves are not necessarily unique to the Druze community, I argue that the ways in which Druze women foster the spaces, the specific contexts and contents that inform their experiences with the spaces, and the impacts of them are distinct. One reason, among many, that Druze women’s enactment of these spaces has been transformative for the community is precisely due to the context within which they live their lives as a significantly globally marginalized community. That is, in forging these spaces, there is a rejection of that marginalization through the generations of these community spaces. Further, sobhiyat and zyarat have become cornerstones of the Druze community - as well as what current iterations and understandings of Druzeness entails for generations of Druze adults and youth. Therefore, in my research, I look at how the closeness and intimacies cultivated by and for women are actually shaping Druze culture and future. By looking to queer Arab scholarship by Mejdulene Shomali and Arab feminist scholarship by Nadine Naber, I think through the queer and radical readings of sobhiyat and zyarat made possible by attending to the ordinary, everyday interests of Druze women - while simultaneously utilizing the practices of the spaces to theorize a new feminist research method. Ultimately, I gesture towards the radical possibilities that emerge through those very everyday experiences and relationships that so often get overlooked or written off as unimportant by attending to the significance of sobhiyat w zyarat in Druze culture and community.
Discipline
Anthropology
Other
Sociology
Geographic Area
Lebanon
Syria
The Levant
Sub Area
None