Afghan Women and the Burqa Trope Mapping Agency in Liminality

Abstract

As the Taliban took over Afghanistan,the plights of Afghan women made it into the headlines in Western media.While the world has remained vigilant over the state of women in the country,the Burqa has emerged again as the vivid marker of Afghan women’s curtailed freedom in orientalist Western discourses that speak out against the Afghan ‘savagery’.Exploring how Afghan women’s plight runs parallel to the exclusionary Islamic images as the ‘Other’,this chapter engages in a historical analysis of the portrayal of Afghan women,especially with regard to the production of ‘empowerment’ narratives.It does so by critically analysing Afghan women’s embodied narratives of resistance and courage,as well as compliance and fear.These narratives are derived from in-depth conversational interviews with Afghan women,located both inside and outside Afghanistan.It is argued that beyond the trope,the Burqa,though thoroughly multidimensional,may also be reimagined as a strategising tool used by Afghan women during daily negotiations with insecurity.‘Liminality’ in this context may be understood as the transitional flux of silence and voice during the Afghan takeover by the Taliban.