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Commitment and Complicity in Cultural Theory and Practice pp 45–63Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Commitment or Commitment-Kitsch? Rethinking the ‘Woman Question’, Agency, and Feminist Politics

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Abstract

In 2003 the Dutch director Adelheid Roosen launched her new play entitled The Veiled Monologues. Several years before, Roosen had performed as an actress in the Dutch version of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues.1 Inspired by this play, and intrigued by the rise of Muslim women in the Netherlands and how this was changing the cultural landscape of her country, she developed a piece that would explore the topic of intimacy and sexuality of women with an Islamic background. After initial research for the play, in which she interviewed around 70 Dutch-Muslim women,2 she filtered the stories and assembled them in 12 separate monologues which were subsequently performed by different migrant actresses.3 On the one hand, the monologues concerned matters pertaining to love, desire, and intimacy, articulating ‘Muslim ways’ of lovemaking and sexual pleasure — often approached with candid humor. On the other hand, they tackled issues of violence and coercion, involving stories of forced marriage, female circumcision, and rape or incest.

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Authors
  1. Sonja van Wichelen
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Begüm Özden Fırat (Assistant Professor) (Assistant Professor)

  2. University of Leuven, Belgium

    Sarah De Mul (Postdoctoral Fellow) (Postdoctoral Fellow)

  3. Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University, USA

    Sonja van Wichelen (Postdoctoral Fellow) (Postdoctoral Fellow)

Copyright information

© 2009 Sonja van Wichelen

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van Wichelen, S. (2009). Commitment or Commitment-Kitsch? Rethinking the ‘Woman Question’, Agency, and Feminist Politics. In: Fırat, B.Ö., De Mul, S., van Wichelen, S. (eds) Commitment and Complicity in Cultural Theory and Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230236967_3

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