North American Muslim Women Artists Talk Back

Assertions of Unintelligibility

Kenza Oumlil

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781000600384
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book focuses on the ways in which North American Muslim women artists "talk back" to dominant discourses about Muslim identity and work to counter mainstream stereotypes and representations. It examines the possibilities of constructing discourses of resistance to domination.

Against a backdrop of dominant media representations of oppressed and passive Muslim women, the media interventions of the exceptional women artists whose voices are showcased in this book, demonstrate that Muslim women are diverse and autonomous agents who have, historically, and continue contemporarily, to fight against all forms of injustice including those that seek to circumscribe their realities and experiences. To explore expressions and articulations of alternative discourses, this book analyzes the media texts of exceptional women artists: the stand-up comedy of Palestinian-American Maysoon Zayid, the cinematic interventions of Iranian-American Shirin Neshat, and the television comedy of Pakistani-Canadian Zarqa Nawaz. Using a methodology consisting of a textual analysis grounded in the theoretical framework of postcolonial theory and informed by gender studies and alternative media research, the analysis is supplemented with semi-structured interviews with the artists.

This book is suitable for scholars and students in Gender Studies, Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Sociology, and Politics.

1Talking Back to Power

DOI: 10.4324/9780429292927-2

The focus of this book is to investigate the possibilities of constructing discourses of resistance to domination. My book focuses on the notion of “talking back” to power, and takes as a starting point bell hooks’ influential work on race, gender, and representations. hooks examines the politics of representation from a counter-hegemonic perspective. While recognizing that one may occupy multiple subject-positions, the position from which one speaks (or conversely, from which speaking is disabled) is important. Reflecting on “talk” that is unheard and simply not listened to, she says,

Moving from silence into speech is for the oppressed, the colonized, the exploited and those who stand and struggle side by side a gesture of defiance that heals, that makes new life and growth possible. It is that act of speech, of ‘talking back’, that is no mere gesture of empty words, that is the expression of our movement from object to subject – the liberated voice.

(hooks 1989, p. 9)

Thus, she defines these forms of responding to structures of domination that move the speaker from an object to a subject position as acts of “talking back.” For example, hooks (1998, 2003) discusses Black women filmmakers who work toward challenging dominant constructions by creating their own media texts. However, she criticizes some of this work that fails to present “counter” discourses because the filmmakers did not go through a process of decolonizing their minds: “concurrently, since so many black females have not decolonized their minds in ways that enable them to break free with internalized racism and/or sexism, the representations they create may embody stereotypes” (hooks 1998, p. 73). Thus, “talking back” refers to an oppositional stance. Rather than an innate discourse emanating naturally from a position of marginality, it is a conscious and informed effort to contest, challenge, and respond to structures of domination. Other authors have used the notion of “talking back” differently. For example, Kapchan’s (1996) use of the concept of talking back somewhat differs from hooks’, whom she does not cite in her book about women’s speech in the market in Beni Mellal, Morocco, and their use of sorcery and magic as a “counter-hegemonic discourse.” Kapchan focuses on a coercive and covert type of discursive strategy, which the women in the market could also formulate in patriarchal terms – although Kapchan explains how their presence in the male-dominated public sphere of the market is itself an act of transgression – for the purpose of claiming some power in a patriarchal system. For hooks, talking back is a conscious act of taking voice and claiming full subjectivity.

While they are powerful, acts of “talking back” can be punished, contained, and co-opted. hooks indicates that decolonized acts of “talking back” seldom occur. The scarcity of acts of talking back has also applied historically to Arabs, Muslims, and South Asians, who have experienced a long history of silencing and censorship. However, more recently, North American Arab and Muslim artists emerged in the media sphere and reworked the genre of representations in the post-9/11 era, which not only led to a general climate of repression affecting these communities but also generated increased interest in Muslim indigenous cultural productions.

For my book’s analysis, the idea of “talking back” implies that those engaged in such talking have been exposed to constructions and representations that do not correspond to their realities or that portray them in derogatory ways. “Talking back” then becomes a way to counter these representations. Moreover, these “talking back” discourses embody an articulated form of suppressed knowledge. Here I draw on the work of Razack (1993) vis-à-vis her analysis of storytelling, and Foucault’s (1972) description of suppressed knowledge, which refers to knowledge that has been evacuated and locked up (in the clinic or in the prison) by dominant disciplinary institutions that are endorsed and legitimized by the established history of ideas or regimes of truth (the history of thought, knowledge, or science, characterized by ruptures). Razack (1993) explains that “in the context of social change, storytelling refers to an opposition to established knowledge, to Foucault’s suppressed knowledge, to the experience of the world that is not admitted into dominant knowledge paradigms” (p. 100). While the oral tradition of storytelling, as in a courtroom testimony, is one form of articulating this suppressed knowledge, my book examines storytelling as it is mediated through different genres and forms of media.

The Context – Structures of Domination and Alternative Discourses

Dominant representations do not exist in a vacuum, and must be situated within a particular context of structures of domination and counter-hegemonic forces both of which struggle over the circulation of meaning. Dominant representations function as “packages of consciousness” and disseminate particular kinds of knowledge that have often been strategically used to justify war, interventions, and occupations and to assert power. Hallin (1986) defines “packages of consciousness” as “frameworks for interpreting and cues for reacting to social and political reality” (p. 13).

It is important to emphasize that dominant representations have clear material implications, as revealed in Edward Said’s seminal work on Orientalism, which is the Western discourse that concerns itself with the Orient. Said (1981) shows how “scientific” and “objective” knowledge was created prior to colonial times mainly to dominate, occupy, colonize, and subjugate the Orient. Orientalists claimed that objective truth was in fact attainable. Said describes how in defining the inferior “Other,” the West has been creating boundaries that help it define itself. Orientalism reveals more about the West and its own fantasies than it does about the actual peoples, cultures, and history of the East. The East becomes a container for the repressed qualities that Orientalist discourse denies for Westerners.

The mass media play a major role in disseminating information and significantly shapes perceptions of other cultures. In his extensive research dealing with the analysis of over 900 Hollywood films, Shaheen (2001), found that negative representations of Arabs have worked their way so thoroughly into literature, media, language, and history that the resulting stereotypes dominate Americans’ views of Arabs.

However, while dominant representations have real material consequences, they are constantly challenged by those who stand in opposition to preferred readings (Hall, 1997). One way to challenge dominant ideas includes exerting pressure on dominant cultural producers to alter their representations. On several occasions, Shaheen intervened to change representations in Hollywood productions. For example, he met Ed Zwick, the director of the film The Siege, to contest the film’s stereotypes and negative portrayals. Shaheen’s work is directed toward how contemporary dominant cultural producers can change the kinds of messages that they choose to encode in cultural products. His particular interventions, therefore, reflect an effort to influence Hollywood productions, given that these cultural producers have the will and power to change their images and use of language. The Media Action Network for Asian Americans undertakes similar interventions as it monitors mainstream media, stages protests, and negotiates with dominant cultural producers to influence their representations (Jiwani, 2005). Another way to challenge dominant ideas is to create alternative media, which is the focus of this book.

The struggle over representations is complicated by the disjunctive nature of most stereotypes – colonialist and Orientalist discourses construct the Other as both an object of desire and disavowal. The political harnessing of this split is evident in the distinction between “good” and “bad” Muslims. Mamdani (2005) references this construction as it occurred in the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001, and explains how easily the “good Muslim” can become “bad” and lose their acceptable status. Mamdani further explains that Muslims were under obligation of “proving their credentials,” an idea that can be tied to the notion of contingent or conditional acceptance. In other words, only those who will prove their allegiance and patriotic loyalty will be accepted. Jiwani (2006) shows how this kind of conditional acceptance, as a fiction, is used to obtain consent. In an article about Zinedine Zidane’s infamous head-butt, Jiwani (2008) describes his “fall from grace” following the 2006 World Cup final match between Italy and France (p. 13). A French athlete of Algerian origin who had figuratively served as a public icon symbolizing the ideal citizen of color, Zidane fell out of public favor after his infamous head-butt of Marco Materazi, an Italian soccer player who presumably grabbed Zidane’s shirt and insulted him during the final match. Jiwani describes the Orientalist and racialized references that were deployed to explain the incident. However, she reveals how Zidane was subsequently redeemed and exonerated in the news coverage; this in turn signified a benevolent and tolerant France plurielle.

As evident from this and other examples, Muslims walk a fine line of acceptability – between conditional acceptance (Jiwani, 2006) and eviction (Razack, 2008) from the West. Shortly before my arrival to Quebec to pursue graduate studies, I remember witnessing a televised provincial debate about what would constitute acceptability for Muslim immigrants. In 2006, the Bouchard-Taylor Commission was established to formulate recommendations to the government regarding accommodation practices related to “cultural differences,” via consultations with the public. Muslim immigrants in particular were asked to “assimilate” or “integrate” into Quebec society if they were to be accepted. I would argue that the Commission literally illustrates how Western states (and provinces) can at any moment pose the question of whether particular populations deserve to be accepted within the borders of the nation. Mahrouse’s (2010) analysis of the citizens’ forums that were part of the debate and of the Commission’s final report demonstrates that they ended up reinforcing racialized hierarchies and exclusions, in a climate of crisis. Most relevantly, for the inquiry here, is how Muslims were stereotyped in the press and in testimonies presented at the hearings by other citizens.

Dominant Representations

We can trace dominant representations of Muslims in the media to the enlightenment discourse of modernity. They of course precede the turning point events of September 11, 2001. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, there have been considerable studies mapping dominant representations of Arabs, South Asians, and Muslims in the Western media (e.g., Ayotte & Husain, 2005; Cloud, 2004; Gavrilos, 2002; Jiwani, 2006; Macdonald, 2006; Mahrouse, 2010; Parameswaran, 2006; Todd, 1998; Vivian, 1999; Wilkins & Downing, 2002). Yet, a review of this literature indicates that such representations existed even prior to 9/11 (Karim, 2000; Said, 1978; Shaheen, 1984, 2001; Yeğenoğlu, 1998). Previous studies that examined the construction of Arab and Muslim identities in the media reveal that their representations have been negative and limited. They also document the history of these constructions, which date prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The studies demonstrate...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsement
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Talking Back to Power
• 2 Assertions of Unintelligibility: Shirin Neshat’s Visual Innovations
• 3 Using Humor to Talk Back: The Stand-Up Comedy of Maysoon Zayid
• 4 Transitioning to the Mainstream in Television: Zarqa Nawaz’s Film and Television Productions
• Conclusions
• Appendix: Resource Guide
• Index