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Women's Representation and Gender Discourse under an Islamist State: The Case of Iran and State-sanctioned Video-sharing Site, Aparat
Abstract
This paper will draw from and contribute to scholarly discourses on the representation and study of women living under Muslim laws; particularly, it seeks to contribute to the idea of how Islamist patriarchal norms are challenged in globally accessible, virtual civil society via sites for civil discourses in cyberspace. I will explore civil discourse around and by women in the case of Iran through the media and discursive analysis of videos shared through a state sanctioned video-sharing site, Aparat, to examine what forms of civil discourse around gender norms and male guardianship over women can remain in the virtual public sphere without the risk of participants or vlogging entities being targeted by the authoritarian, Islamist state. What I find is that discourses on the need for women’s independence from male guardianship [qiwama in Islamic jurisprudence] rest primarily on the grounds of women’s equality to men in exercising public reasoning on matters explicitly unaddressed by any sacred Islamic texts; these challenges to patriarchal norms complement the arguments against unitary or hegemonic exegesis of Islamic principles, posed by censored figures involved in Iran’s religious intellectual movement, including Abdolkarim Soroush and Mohsen Kadivar. The findings of this paper corroborate Asef Bayat’s theory of post-Islamist civil society emerging in contexts where Islamists have managed to institutionalize and seize control of the state, a theory wherein he also theorizes that the women’s rights movement acts as one of the primary drivers of post-Islamist thought. The results of this paper will allow me to form the grounds for a case comparison to another Muslim majority societies with a somewhat less institutionalized Islamist movement and active civil discourse on a state-sanctioned video-sharing or vlogging platform.
Discipline
Religious Studies/Theology
Geographic Area
Iran
Sub Area
Gender/Women's Studies