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Bargaining for Citizenship: Masculine Citizen in Turkey
Abstract
The critical dichotomy between public and private has been central to almost all feminist writings and its encounter with citizenship debate is critical. The boundaries for citizenship and its exclusions and/or inclusions determine women’s and men’s positioning in a given society. In Turkey, political, social and historical heritages have determined a virile political culture. Men have traditionally been associated with public political domain and it has been nurtured by implications from private spheres of life. Although the term public is gender neutral, public has been associated with a range of highly emotive moral values that were gendered in the masculine. In addition, practices and discourses of personal lives were transformed into public political domain and equipped with a legitimized power entitled to masculine citizen. Especially, the language has reproduced such domination. The interplay between public and private domains forms a strategic discourse that values manhood. In this perspective, this paper questions the role of language in the reproduction of masculine citizen. Gendered idioms that were used with reference to private spheres of lives is critical to discuss to understand (1) how is it legitimized and (2) how does intimate citizenship draw and/or bargain about the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion in a virile political cultural atmosphere.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
Turkey
Sub Area
None