Deleuzian conceptualizaion of "agency": Muslim women questions

Abstract

There are many studies about whether Muslim women are oppressed or emanci-pated by Islamic traditions. Some claim that Islamic traditions, such as the headscarf, oppress women while others want to prove that these women have agency when they perform Islamic traditions. This project aims to use a Deleuzian conceptualization of agency1 and freedom that will enable us to examine multi-faced, relational, and spatial formations of Muslim women's lives. In other words, I apply the relational ontology of the France philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, to contestations over Muslim women. Through this relational ontology, I problematize the depictions of Muslim women solely based on religious frameworks in a pejorative way and want to explore alternative patterns in Muslim women's experiences and practices. There-fore, I use the Deleuzian conceptualization of agency and freedom to demassify the depictions of Muslim women as submissive beings based on their religious engagements. I suggest schol-arly projects that will be attentive to the situatedness of Muslim women. Summary: Based on the clash of civilizations framework, some western institutions depict a monolithic community of Muslims and use this monolithic depiction to prove the need to fight against Islam and Muslims. Muslim women become a focal point within this narrative since they are portrayed as an oppressed group by the Islamic traditions and Muslim men. For ex-ample, the headscarf as the marker of Muslim women's identities sparks discussions about whether it is oppressive or not. There are many studies on whether Muslim women are op-pressed or emancipated. Some claim that Islamic traditions such as the headscarf oppresses women while others want to prove that these women perform their agency when they wear a headscarf. For instance, Saba Mahmood challenged this narrative by questioning the liberal conceptions of agency, freedom, desire, and resistance. Although these studies point out the necessity of historical and spatial analysis of Muslim women and their agencies, this issue requires further investigation and articulation. In this project, I aim to use a Deleuzian conceptualization of agency and freedom that will enable us to examine multi-faced, relational, and spatial formations of Muslim women's expe-riences, desires, and practices. In other words, I apply the relational ontology of the France philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, to contestations on Muslim women. According to this Deleuzian ontology, the world is constituted of bodies. Every entity, biological organism, social struc-ture, and abstraction is a body. Each of these bodies, whether it is a human or non-human body, material or immaterial, social or psychological construction, is produced by confluences of relations. Every aspect of the human body including its biological, mental, social, and psy-chological components is also constituted through multiple relations. Therefore, when we talk about a human subject, we refer to the assemblages of complex and multiple relations. This conceptualization of the body brings a new conceptualization of agency as well. This Deleuzian understanding of agency focuses on relations that produce the body. Since bodies are generated through the flux of relations, their capacities to feel, to act, and to desire in certain ways will change according to the relations they have. Through this relational ontology, I suggest seeing bodies of Muslim women as complex as-semblages of multiple elements constituted through flows of relations. This conceptualization problematizes the portrayal of Muslim women's embodiments exclusively based on a reli-gious tradition. Experiences, practices, and desires of Muslim women, as well as their agen-cies, constraints, and capabilities, are produced through relational engagements with multi-ple elements such as socio-political discourses, familial relations, material availabilities, and economic conditions. In other words, their power to act is generated by relations with sur-rounding elements (bodies in Deleuzian ontology), whether these bodies are religious or sec-ular, human or non-human, material or immaterial. Consequently, their bodies and forms of their agency are always remade through various elements which continuously connect and disconnect. I use this Deleuzian conceptualization of body and agency to problematize the depictions of Muslim women as a submissive group of women by their religious engagements. I aim to illu-minate the multiplicities of constituent elements in their lives and suggest a fragmented and relational depiction of their agencies. Through the lenses of relationality, I explore what be-comes invisible and left out in terms of depicting heterogeneous and dynamic experiences of Muslim women. For this purpose, I apply this Deleuzian perspective to an interview con-ducted in Capital City Women's Platform (Baskent Kadin Platformu) in 2018 for my Ph.D. project as well as some ethnographic observations in Turkey. Given the theoretical basis I propose, I aim an in-depth analysis of the data collected from this interview instead of a col-lection of a higher volume of data. In addition to the analysis of the interview, I use other resources such as ethnographic observations, material culture, and analyses of historical and political contexts. By applying the Deleuzian ontology on Muslim women, I aim to pay attention to multiple and relational generative forces in Muslim women's lives. Specifically, I problematize the depic-tions of Muslim women solely based on religious frameworks in a pejorative way and want to explore alternative patterns in Muslim women's experiences and practices. To put it differ-ently, I argue that Muslim women's experiences are relational, multi-faced, fractured, and par-ticular. We should explore this multiplicity and relationality instead of assuming an imaginary singular category. Therefore, I suggest grounded scholarly projects that will be attentive to the situatedness of Muslim women. In this type of analysis, the task of the scholar should be to explore the multi-faced and situated subjectivity and agency of Muslim women that enable us to understand intertwined forms of oppression and liberation. We should stress the con-stant co-construction and re-construction of experiences and actions over marginalizing and categorizing identities.