Kurdish Women's Subjectivity: a Target of Patriarchal Power: A Foucaultian Perspective

In Foucault's theories no ethical system can be established outside its social framework, and that is why subjectivity and some of its important manifestations like body and its behavior are figured, or, more accurately according to Foucault's terminology, are colonized, by a variety of forces. What this paper suggests is introducing patriarchy both as a disciplinary, though traditional, institution and one of the regulating forces leading in colonizing of Kurdish women's subjectivity and bodies as well. In fact, the paper shows that it is patriarchy, as a dominant system of bipower in Kurdish society, which prepares the condition in which women's subjectivity becomes the target of exercising of repressive power. For this purpose, first of all, the paper discusses why patriarchy should be considered as a system of biopower in which power serves first and foremost a system of domination which can hold its main interests if it deprives women of their subjectivity. Secondly, it examines for what reason Kurdish patriarchy represents a repressive power in which Kurdish women's subjectivity and body are turned into the territories of colonization. And last but not least, from the perspective of Foucault's theories concerning power the paper explores how Kurdish nationalism as a patriarchal discourse aims at colonizing of women's subjectivity.