Women as Boundary Markers between Islam and Secularism in Julia Kristeva's Murder in Byzantium (2004) and Elif Şafak's The Bastard of Istanbul (2006)
The Bulgarian-French writer Julia Kristeva's Murder in Byzantium (2004) and Turkish novelist Elif Şafak's The Bastard of Istanbul (2006) show how both secular and veiled women become the ground upon which Turkey and France build their national identities. In Murder, the two narrators - the...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
University of Notre Dame
2022
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| In: |
Religion & literature
Year: 2022, Volume: 54, Issue: 3, Pages: 77-96 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Islam (Motif)
/ Identity (Motif)
/ Woman (Motif)
/ Secularization (Motif)
/ Nationalism (Motif)
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| IxTheo Classification: | AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism AD Sociology of religion; religious policy AG Religious life; material religion BJ Islam NBE Anthropology TK Recent history |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | The Bulgarian-French writer Julia Kristeva's Murder in Byzantium (2004) and Turkish novelist Elif Şafak's The Bastard of Istanbul (2006) show how both secular and veiled women become the ground upon which Turkey and France build their national identities. In Murder, the two narrators - the French journalist, Stephanie Delacour, and the unnamed narrator - associate secularism with modernization and progress, and Islam with backwardness and gender inequality. A financially independent world traveler, Stephanie constructs her identity as a foil to the allegedly subservient headscarved Turkish women and fears that French women's freedom might be endangered by the arrival of Muslim immigrants. Her elevation of her Slavic mother Christine and the Byzantine princess Anna Comnena as secular and rational Western women stands for her dream of a French national identity without Islamic influences. Şafak's novel, on the other hand, portrays Turkish female identity not as singular but complex, as the two sisters - the headscarved Banu and Zeliha wearing a miniskirt - live under the same roof. Şafak also portrays Turkish women's ambivalent position as the markers of modernity and tradition as the matriarch Gülsüm Kazancı criticizes Banu for defying secularism and Zeliha for her seductive clothes. Whereas Kristeva's narrators set French national identity in opposition to Islam and Turkish women, Şafak's novel challenges the flattened conception of Turkish femininity by depicting the hybridity of women's dress codes and religious practices. Both novels portray how secular Turkish and French nationalisms are imagined vis-à-vis female roles. |
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| ISSN: | 2328-6911 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religion & literature
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