Spaces of Change

Arab Women’s Reconfigurations of Selfhood through Heterotopias in Manal al-Sharif’s Daring to Drive

Dados Bibliográficos

ID22017067
AutoresMoussa Pourya Asl (0000-0002-8426-426X, Universiti Sains Malaysia, autor correspondente)
Ano2020
Volume27
Fascículo2
Páginas123-143
Data de publicação2020-10-20
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoKemanusiaan (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2180-4257 • E-ISSN: 1394-9330
EditoraUniversiti Sains Malaysia (PUBLISHER • MY)
DOI10.21315/kajh2020.27.2.7
OpenAlexW3094408812
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas2
Referências citadas25

Stereotypically depicted as unresisting and passive victims of oppressive power, Saudi women are generally considered as unable to effect changes to the patriarchal sociopolitical status quo. This article studies the Saudi woman life writer Manal al-Sharif's Daring to Drive (2017) to demonstrate the various ways in which the subjugated women instigate social transformations by resisting against the prevailing male dominated system. To this end, Michel Foucault's theories on "other spaces" are employed to examine the function of spatial modalities in the workings of the dynamics of power. It is argued that the portrayed female subjects re-construct, re-experience and re-utilise different spaces to re-invent new identities and galvanise alternative ways of life. The analysis reveals that within the emancipatory space of the Internet, Saudi women produce heterotopias of transgressions, resistance and utopianism to unsettle the prescribed boundaries of malefemale relations, protest against the impositions of gender performance in public spheres and creatively re-imagine an alternative, desirable order of things. Hence, the study arrives at two conclusions: first, Saudi women's individual urgency for self-transformation have generated major social changes and ideological reconfigurations, resulting in many of the recent democratic developments in the country; second, space is not merely a normalised and rationalised construct, but can function as a normalising and transformative force at the same time

Aesthetics · Art · Democracy · Ideology · Political science · Politics · Public space · Social change · Social transformation · Sociology · Status quo · Transformative learning · Gender Studies · Law · Middle East Politics and Society