Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Middle East Studies Association- MESA 2025, Washington, Amerika Birleşik Devletleri, 22 - 25 Kasım 2025, (Yayınlanmadı)
Docile Bodies: Women in Disguise in The Pearl That Broke Its Shell
For an extended period, Muslim women have been subjected to substantial difficulties, encountering diverse forms of domestic violence and oppression. Afghan American novelist Nadia Hashimi illustrates this violence while highlighting the ongoing challenges faced by women in her homeland. She demonstrates that the status of women is intricately connected to and influenced by various historical, political, social, economic, and religious factors. Due to the oppressive societal norms that support patriarchy, women in some parts of Afghanistan are compelled to conceal the true gender of their daughters in the absence of male family members, thereby presenting their young girls as boys until they reach puberty. The book titled The Pearl That Broke Its Shell (2014), written by Nadia Hashimi, tells the touching story of Rahima, a young girl who adopts the cultural tradition of ‘bacha posh’, which permits girls to temporarily adopt a male identity offering more freedoms and benefits outside their homes. Disguised as boys, they acquire independence, indicating that masculinity correlates with power and mobility, whereas femininity is related with constraint. Consistent with this, Michel Foucault introduced his concept of docile bodies to shed light on the systems of control and discipline that are instituted over the bodies of human beings, and in his Discipline and Punish, Foucault elaborates on the topic of how societies shape bodies to become obedient and harmonious. Thus, this study employs Michel Foucault’s idea of docile bodies to analyze the influence of social and cultural factors that force Muslim women to be exploited by the patriarchal forces and cultural or religious norms. In this regard, it is deemed appropriate to apply Foucault’s critical framework, particularly the notion of docile bodies, to the selected book, as female characters are compelled to alter their gender roles and revert to being girls upon experiencing their first menstruation.
Keywords: Nadia Hashimi, The Pearl That Broke Its Shell, Docile Bodies, Michel Foucault, Afghan Girls