Abstracts - Thursday June 21st, 2007
"Not showing". A videoprogram, curated by Nanna Heidenreich
The gaze of the occident aims at revealing; its visual register is that of transparency. Visibility thus means that that which is to be seen is definite, unambiguous, true and congruent. The Christian notion of the truth of the image is countered by the concept of aniconism, of non-representationability and of reference. Today's update of the antagonism of Christianity and Islam (or of occident and orient) again is primarily a war of images, as for instance in the veiling debates – the headscarf and everything that is projected onto it and underneath it: the oppressed woman, forced marriage, honorary killings etc. To look at the conflicting image politics and their readings, that is ways of seeing and perceiving, is a difficult enterprise, as the space of negotiation appears to be filled with illustrations, with images of decidedness, images that function like statements. With this video program I attempt therefore to tell stories that remain invisible, to play the game of seeing and (not) being seen, to show haptic images whose tension reside in the interstices between veiling and unveiling, and to evoke and reflect the cinematographic space, a space whose history is also that of central perspectivalism and the visual definition of 'the Other', but which is also one of the spaces of aesthetic experience in which another potential resides, where something else can appear, something yet to be known.
- DAHLIA (Karø Goldt, D/A 2002, 3', no dialogue)
- WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR (Shelly Silver, USA 2004, 15', English OV)
- NACH DEM WIDERSTAND / AFTER THE MAQUIS / APRÈS LE MAQUIS (Maya Schweizer, Algerien 2005, 3'40'', German Version)
- COFFEE (Ayse Erkmen, Türkei 2007, 25', English OV)
- GONE (Karø Goldt, A/D 2007, 3', no dialogue)
(50 min)
... in addition a presentation on monitor of the video S. - JE SUIS - JE LIS A HAUTE VOIX [passing for] (Brigitta Kuster, Germany 2005, 17', German OV) on thursday 21. June from 4 - 10 pm.
to the topYasemin Yildiz
Agency, Address, Occidentalism: The Discourse of "Muslim" Women in Europe
In the current Islamophobic discourse in Europe, the anti-Islamic contributions of minority women with a Muslim background play a crucial role. Their subject positions as "insiders" and "native informants" provide them great authority in their critiques of Islam and most importantly function to legitimize anti-Islamic discourse by non-Muslims. Politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, sociologist Necla Kelek and lawyer Seyran Ates have been hailed as outspoken critics of Islam's oppression of women, and have led campaigns against forced and arranged marriages, honor killings, and the headscarf. Moreover, they have sharply attacked leftist, multiculturalist non-Muslim Europeans for their excessive tolerance vis-à-vis "Islamic" practices. With this double-pronged attack, articulated in bestselling books and numerous media appearances, they have entered mainstream discourse and have been embraced by diverse segments of the European public, from feminists to liberals and conservatives.
In this talk I critically engage with the arguments that these intellectuals put forth and with their discursive functions. Focusing particularly on Ali and Kelek, I analyze their rhetorical frameworks in order to demonstrate how a seemingly feminist critique slides into and reinforces racism as well as patriarchal state authority. I argue that through their rhetoric, and particularly their modes of address, they play a crucial role in the imagination and production of a neo-Occidental public sphere. In the process, I suggest a renewed analytical focus on the ideological functions of address and a rethinking of Muslim women's agency in contemporary Europe.
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: yy47ATuiuc.edu
Yasemin Yildiz, Ph.D Cornell University, is Assistant Professor of German at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include 20th- and 21st-century German literature, minority discourse, transnational studies, and feminist theory. She has published essays on German minority discourse, contemporary literature, and on Holocaust testimonies in collections such as AufBrüche: Migrantinnen, Schwarze und jüdische Frauen im deutschsprachigen kulturellen Diskurs and Globalization and the Future of German. She is currently completing a book on configurations of literary multilingualism.