No Dignity without the Corrupt

Year 2020, Volume: 1 Issue: 1, 49 - 62, 15.02.2020

Nail Tanrıöven

Abstract

In this article, I interpret the perceptions about the Other of the women interlocutors that I interviewed with during a fieldwork in Turkey in 2013 and 2014. In the form of a mystory that combines my personal and professional—including unintended academic tendencies or occasional tensions during conversations—I essentially discuss how some Turkish women tend to gain, measure, compare, and preserve their self-respect and superiority through an analysis of honor killings and othering. This self-preservation proceeds via patriarchal images and vis-à-vis an Other. I translate this as the presence of, at least, two others: an Other within the self, and an Other mitigating the differences within the Self. In most cases, the stories resemble a zero-sum game in which one’s dignity necessitates the indecency of an Other. The stories remind us how women should not be regarded solely as victims of patriarchal structure but also as active agents in/of the patriarchal and women-suppressing constructs. Finally, the research techniques and non-mainstream approach of writing such as providing a literature in a non-sterilized structure in this article shows the non-linear and complicated steps of conducting research in social sciences.

Keywords

Otherization, Women, Turkey, Ethnography, Honor killings

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