Universalization of Particulars: The Civic Body and Gendered Citizenship in Iran
In: Citizenship studies, Band 3, Heft 3, S. 319-335
ISSN: 1362-1025
The logic of nation-state building in the context of modernity is inextricably bound to the founding of politics -- both as conceptual & practical possibility -- on the basis of a binary dissociation of the public from the private, of rights from needs, of reason from passion. Thus, politics in its modern sense becomes tied to a secularized theological-political notion of responsibility. Further, such binary concepts are implicated in those temporal & spatial metaphors that naturalize the spheres of family & civil society, & distinguish them from the sphere of politics. These distinct spheres are essential to the construction of modern rational subjectivities & liberal citizenship. Here, with focus on the case of Iran, the notion of the "civic body" is introduced in an attempt to bring clearly into view the connection between sexed corporeality, cultural nationalism, & gendered citizenship. Through a theoretical examination of the "civic body" as both a site of political citizenship & a field of racial & sexual codification & recodification, such historical & discursive constructions as modernity, Westernization, "Westoxication," Orientalism, universalization, particularlism, masculinity, & femininity will be brought into the nexus of analysis. The intent is both to engage with the literature in the field of Iranian & Middle Eastern studies & to intervene critically with respect to citizenship as an analytical category. 51 References. Adapted from the source document.