The contentious body: On representation of woman's body in the Iranian public sphere

Mgr. Elaheh Mohammadi, BS

Master's thesis

Abstract:

Práce se zabývá ženskými právy v souvislosti s modernizací oděvu v Íránu. Používá diskurzivní analýzu.

Abstract:

Woman and her rights as "the clothes of modernization" has been the battlefield for discourses of power since the advent of modernization in Iran. They have approached the concept in various ways from the perspective of western culture to perception of the Iranian and Islamic culture. With establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran the fundamentalist Islamic ideology has dominated as the form of Islamic law in Iran. The modes of repression of surveillance power in Iran have widely been addressed by researchers. However, the Islamic revolution in Iran has had a paradoxical influence on the presence of women in the public sphere; on one hand the Islamic Republics regulations, such as gender segregation in public places and the re-veiling of women, restricts the day to day life and social activities of secular women, while on the other hand, they facilitate the presence of traditional women in the public space and public sphere. Such changes have transformed notions of freedom and resistance. This research is an attempt to study the formation of the subject of woman by the discourses of power in Iranian society. To do this, I study the representation of a womans body as the locus of embodied subject of woman by analysing the comments left under a topless portrait of a famous Iranian actress on Facebook. Foucauldian theory of power is the theoretical frame work for this study and I apply critical discourse analysis for analysing the comments.

Keywords

rights of women, modernization of clothes in Iran, Foucauldian theory of power and woman body

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 6. 1. 2014

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 28. 1. 2014
• Supervisor: doc. Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky, Ph.D.
• Reader: Dr. Werner Binder

Masaryk University

Faculty of Social Studies

Master programme / field:
Sociology / Sociology (Eng.)