MUSLIM TEXTUALITIES In the first decade of the twenty- first century, Muslim women writers located in Europe and American entered the cultural mainstream. Literary and visual productions negotiated static visual emblems of Islam, most prominently “the veil.” They did so not by rejecting veiling practices, but by adapting Muslim resources, concepts, and visual tradition to empowerment narratives in popular media. Mainstream reception of their works has often overlooked or misread these negotiations. Muslim Textualities argues for more flexible and capacious interpretation, with particular attention to visibility as a metaphor for political agency and to knowledge of cultural contexts. This provocative volume aims to articulate Muslim female agency through clear and accessible analysis of the the- ory and concepts driving the interpretation of these works. Scholars interested in the working representations of Muslim women, feminist subjectivities, and the complexities of gender roles, patriarchy, and feminism will find this volume of particular interest. Jean M. Kane received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia, an M.A. in English from Stanford University, and a B.A. in Comparative Literature and Art History from Indiana University. She is currently Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Vassar College. MUSLIM TEXTUALITIES A Literary Approach to Feminism Jean M. Kane Cover credit: © Getty Images First published 2022 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Jean M. Kane The right of Jean M. Kane to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-1-032-03832-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-03831-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-18929-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003189299 Typeset in Bembo by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive) CONTENTS Acknowledgments vi Introduction 1 1 Sex and Other Cities: Abjected Age, Abandoned Flesh 14 2 Female Masochism and Textual Masquerade in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane and Untold Story 43 3 Muslimah Seeing America: Local Colors in Mohja Kahf’s The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf 70 4 Surface Violation: Parastou Forouhar’s Domestic Sublime 93 5 The Mother Mark and Other Tongues in Nylon Road 124 Conclusion 154 Bibliography 162 Index 182 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book was germinated in a rich, disordered residue of interests, observations, questions, and experiences, particularly in the women’s studies classroom. The cluster of themes and ideas required dialogues and shaping over years of drafts. They resulted in a clear and, I hope, compelling argument only in the last stages. I am indebted to the mentoring of Karen Robertson, my co- teacher, friend, and scholarly guide. Our dialogues have nurtured and strengthened this project throughout. She is a model of intellectual generosity and feminist collaboration. I skidded into my editor, Michelle Salyga, at the bottom of an escalator at an MLA convention in Chicago. With prudence and calm, as well as fortitude, she has guided the manuscript through revisions and improvements, delays and hesitations, and a pandemic. My heartfelt thanks for her confidence in the proj- ect. Kudos go to editorial assistants, Bryony Reece and Saritha Srivasan, and my copyeditor, Claire Bell. I am grateful to Karla Mantilla of Feminist Studies and James E. Clung and Esra Mirza Santesso for the scholarly responses to the chapter that began the book. Esra, as it turned out, was also an anonymous reviewer of the manuscript. She gave it her informed attention in two evaluations. Her guidance has been invaluable. The expertise of Kirsten Wesselhoeft, Julia Watson, Feroze Jussawalla, Jan Susina, Helene Meyers, and Iman Sohrabi has helped me in various ways. Thanks as well to the invisible hands of anonymous reviewers, editorial assis- tants, and production staff, whose labor brings the actual and virtual book into being. The artists I have met because of this research have been the most affable and generous people I could have imagined. Thank you to Parastou Forouhar and Parsua Bashi for their help with the illustrations and to Muriel Pėrėz of Kein and Aber for tolerating my initial foray into acquiring images and permissions. Acknowledgments vii Many thanks go to my research assistant of some years ago, Dylan Manning, who not only did the arduous work of organizing and annotating the artwork of Parastou Forouhar, but also worked as my editorial assistant in proofreading and compiling the bibliography. Another research assistant I had at Vassar, Ezra Babski, contributed to the editorial grunt work. Judith Dollemayer gave her experience, skill, and editorial knowledge to the shaping of the project as a book, and Scott Smiley has compiled the index. Vassar College has generously supplied funding for research, travel, and editorial support. Tracey Sciortino has helped me to fig- ure out the byzantine ways of collecting and distributing it. This book is dedicated to the Christopher G. Kanes. An earlier version of Chapter 1 appeared in Islam and Postcolonial Discourse: Purity and Hybridity (edited by Esra Mirze Santesso and James E. McClung, 2017), and appears courtesy of Taylor & Francis Books. An earlier version of Chapter 4 appeared in Feminist Studies (44.2 [2018]: 303–32), as an art essay, “Parastou Forouhar’s Domestic Sublime” and appears courtesy of the journal. Illustrations in Chapter 4 appear courtesy of Parastou Forouhar, artist, and Professor of Art, Johannes Gutenberg- Universität Mainz, Germany. Illustrations in Chapter 5 on Nylon Road appear courtesy of Parsua Bashi and KEIN & ABER AG, Zürich- Berlin 2006 (translated into German by Miriam Wiesel). INTRODUCTION A tweet from the 2018 Women’s March in Washington, DC shows the con- straints of visibility as a metaphor for empowerment. Featured in the online magazine Muslim Girl, the tweet suggests that an image needs a linguistic supple- ment. “It’s time for America not only to see women but [to] hear women. I march so my voice will be united with the millions of women in this country determined to work toward our equity,” writes Nasrat Qadir Chaudry. The text appears below a logo of a stylized young woman’s face in a red, white, and blue headscarf. Logo and language accordingly join the “voice” associated with mid-twentieth-century feminisms and the “visibility” currently preferred as the figure for social agency. Yet as Peggy Phelan anticipated decades ago, “the binary opposition between the power of visibility and the impotency of invisibility” may be “falsifying.” She elaborates: “There is real power in remaining unmarked; and there are serious limitations to visual representation as a political goal.”1 Some critics argue that visibility assumes the structure of a trade-off. In emerg- ing Pakistani global fashion, for instance, Inna Arzumanova observes, “the veil not only gains visibility but is reinscripted as an object of art” rather than an emblem of oppression. Such unintended “hegemonic leaks” both betray the static tropes of Orientalist imagery and suggest a “cultural futurity” for Islamic identity.2 In Europe and America, Muslim women writers and artists of the early twenty-first century have grappled with this trade-off through tactics that have not been fully registered by mainstream critics steeped in the conventional neoliberalism of postfeminism and its successors. In this book, what Claire Chambers calls “sensory studies”3 meet the politics of scopic and affect theory. Chambers and others call attention to the use of DOI: 10.4324/9781003189299-1