Die Unreinheit ist fruchtbar! : der Körper als Ausdruck von Ordnung und Unordnung in einem türkischen Dorf am Schwarzen Meer / einger. von Sabine Strasser

• VerfasserIn: Strasser, Sabine
• Place / Publishing House: 1994
• Year of Publication: 1994
• Language: German
• Physical Description: VI, 302 Bl.; Ill., Kt.

eng: The author tries to explain bodily crises, which have no physical reasons, phenomena like fainting fits, symptoms of paralysis, speech disorder or general weakness, by analysing the concepts of the female body and purity in a Muslim village on the Black Sea coastline near the city of Trabzon. Life crises are a key to understanding social and cosmological order but also female critique of this order. Exclusive female impurities (menstruation and blood flow after birth) are seen as basic to gender hierarchy. Though the social construction of genders is shared by men and women it causes conflicts for individuals, contradictions between individual desires and social expectations. It is impurity considered as spirit possession which expresses this tensions. In this way possession is seen as 'fertile impurity' demonstrating counterhegemonic potentials against collective suffering. Women challenge central values of society and healing (expulsion of demons) in this way means alleviation as well as confirmation of the social order. Focusing on spirit possession and pollution the author connects indvidual crises and the social order rejecting simplifying stereotypes of everyday discourses constructing 'Muslim woman as a victim of her culture'.