Postcolonizing Europe? An International Workshop // May 10-12, 2010

Maha El Hissy (Munich) - Veiled Bodies, Vile Speech: Capturing Muslim Women's Identity in Feridun Zaimo?lu’s and Günter Senkel’s Play Schwarze Jungfrauen (Black Virgins) Since the 19th century, the odalisques and the depiction of the nude oriental woman have become a popular theme in fine art. The paintings were mainly based on secondary, unreliable references from European travellers to the Orient. However, they largely influenced European fantasies about life in the Harem and shaped their idea of the inaccessible world of Muslim women.
Feridun Zaimoglu fosters the above mentioned voyeurism in his play Black Virgins (2006). The Turkish-German author dares to take a glimpse into the hidden lives of Muslim women behind the veil. The play consists of ten semi-documentary monologues based on interviews that the author claims to have conducted with Muslim women in Germany. He transforms “their words” into a stylized literary language for stage performance. What makes his approach distinctive is the subversive transformation of the image of Muslim women. The passive objects of desire are converted into autonomous subjects of representation, mainly through their radical speech and fanatic political and religious views.
My paper argues that a new version of “Islamo-Feminism” is formed in Zaimoglu’s Black Virgrins. The play shows the controversial aspects of the rising of a new Muslim self-awareness. Through the analysis of selected elements of performance, costume and stage design, I attempt to point out the contrast between the veiled bodies and the vile speech of the interviewed women. On the one hand, the speakers plead for a chaste lifestyle and glorify the headscarf which is interpreted in this paper as preferred isolation from both the male and cultural ‘Other’. On the other hand, they go as far as to use ribald language to describe their sexual desires, praise Bin Laden, the Jihad as well as defame holy icons. Consequently, they isolate themselves in a parallel world on the margin of German society. Maha El Hissy (Munich)