Veiled Subjects: Shirin Neshat and Non-liberatory Agency

Abstract

The controversy over Shirin Neshat's representations of Muslim women has been dominated by interpretations that use an unexamined liberatory model of agency to understand the artist and her subjects. Consequently, criticism of Neshat has become polarized by readings of Islam and women's agency as fundamentally incompatible, and the possibility of female subjects whose agency is grounded in and who aspire to Islamic values has been ignored. Using Saba Mahmood's theory of non-liberatory agency as a way to approach women's embodiment in Islamic culture, this article provides re-readings of the films Turbulent, Rapture and Fervor that suggest how Neshat's art can be read as depicting pious Islamic modes of embodiment.

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