The Kurdish Language: Perpetual Persecution, Perpetual Disconnection

 The Kurdish Language: Perpetual Persecution, Perpetual Disconnection

Open the link to read the full article:

http://blog.utpjournals.com/2020/10/19/the-kurdish-language-perpetual-persecution-perpetual-disconnection/

October 19, 2020

Written by guest blogger Kaziwa Salih.

Language is the power of the soul, the vision of the mind, and the passport of the ideas and culture that form the identity of the speaker. Although their language is one of the 40th languages in the world, Kurdish populations have been living in severe crises and traveling without passports as consequences of linguicide. 

The Kurdish language is divided into four major dialect...

Kurdish Linguicide in the “Saddamist” State

 Abstract

Scholarly literature highlights the systematic actions taken in the modern Middle East to destroy the Kurdish language. With a primary focus on Turkey, scholars have described this process as a policy of linguicide, or language genocide, which is “the extermination of languages, an analogous concept to (physical) genocide.”² In contrast, similar processes at work in southern Kurdistan (Kurdistan of northern Iraq) have often been described as “linguistic suppression.”³ This paper argues that linguistic suppression does not adequately describe the Iraqi Kurds’ experiences. Rather, linguicide better captures the practices of cultural genocide that have targeted this group. This paper focuses on how the Kurds in modern-day Iraq were subjected to linguicide under the Language Education Policy (LEP) from 1932 to 1991. This policy was established during the monarchy (1921–1958), and advanced through the time of Saddam Hussein’s regime (1979–1991).⁴ While much scholarly work has associated the process of linguicide with the birth of a nation-state,⁵ this article further argues that linguicide in the Iraqi Kurdish case predates the formation of the Iraqi nation-state.

Keywords: Ba’ath Party, genocide, Iraq, Kurds, linguicide, Saddam Hussein, Sati’ Al-Husr
Read the full paper:
https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/gsi.13.1.03

Genocide Culture: From Everyday Cultural Doxa and Ethnic Engineering to Genocide of Kurds in Iraq

 

Genocide Culture: From Everyday Cultural Doxa and Ethnic Engineering to Genocide of Kurds in Iraq

https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/handle/1974/27623

This interdisciplinary study reconceptualizes the dominant vision of how genocides begin, and the role civilians play in both cultural and physical forms of genocide. I coined the term “genocide culture” and reconceptualize the terms “civilian actors” and “civilian actors and ethnic engineering” to present an alternative hypothesis of how civilians become involved in genocide through their participation in a range of cultural habitus and doxa. I argue that the socio-cultural aspects of a genocidal process develop prior to the murderous events of a state-led genocide. The concept of genocide culture draws attention to the cultural practices and core beliefs that make genocide possible. The concept highlights how a society normalizes violence against a targeted group, rationalizes the ideology of the dominant group, and legitimizes its authority. The term civilian actors describes the dispositions of ordinary people and non-state actors in the reproduction of cultural practices and behaviours that foster the state’s genocidal actions. Finally, reconceptualization of the term ethnic engineering is to include the “reconstruction” and “destruction” of a subjected group’s identity by a dominant group. The dissertation applies the sociological theories of Pierre Bourdieu to the study of genocide in order to develop socio-cultural discourses concerning genocide culture. The history of genocide against the Kurds in Iraq is examined as a case study. While Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath Party are often invoked when responsibility for late twentieth-century genocides in Iraq is assigned, this dissertation argues against personalizing or individualizing the history of genocide in Iraq by assigning responsibility to a single agent or a single political organization. Thus, it avoids detaching the present from the past and argues that macro-events in the present are accumulations of the micro-processes of past events, which also cannot be disassociated from civilians. The first part of the dissertation outlines the theoretical apparatus that is used to conceptualize the cultural practices of the general population in Iraq prior to Saddam Hussein’s rule. The second part consists of empirical case studies and analysis of semi-structured interviews that were conducted to contextualize the experiences of individuals.

URI for this record

http://hdl.handle.net/1974/27623

Collections

• Cultural Studies Interdisciplinary Graduate Program: Theses
• Queen's Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Request an alternative format

If you require this document in an alternate, accessible format, please contact the Queen's Adaptive Technology Centre

              

Open the below link to read the chapter 

https://www.igi-global.com/chapter/eazidi-womens-practices-of-empowerment-and-capital-formation-following-enslavement-by-isis/255631

   

Eazidi Women's Practices of Empowerment and Capital Formation Following Enslavement by ISIS

Kaziwa Salih (Queens' University, Canada)

Source Title: Handbook of Research on New Dimensions of Gender Mainstreaming and Women Empowerment

Copyright: © 2020 |Pages: 22

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-2819-8.ch027

OnDemand PDF Download:

 Available

$37.50

Current Special Offers

Abstract

This chapter begins by surveying the historical context of rape in Iraq through the narrative of Eazidi women who escaped enslavement by ISIS. It then discusses the theology of rape in Islam, which has motivated ISIS to commit rape and legitimized the rape of Eazidi women. The chapter then theorizes the social capital of Middle Eastern women. The chapter argues that, for the first time, the Eazidi community in Iraq is altering the social consequences of rape by developing empowerment methods that amount to a social revolution within the Eazidi community. This empowerment not only protects Eazidi women survivors from experiencing common post-rape consequences but also increases their capital, in all its Bourdieusian forms.

Chapter Preview

Top

Introduction

The struggle of women with rape in times of conflict and war dates back to antiquity. However, rape became a formal war crime in 1863 when the Lieber Instructions “classified rape as a crime of ‘troop discipline’” (Elis, 2007, p. 227). Scholarly attention to the sexual victimization of women in war and genocide began over a century later when the “first publications dealing with wartime rape as a deliberate strategy began circulation in early 1992” (Marochkin & Nelaeva, 2014, p.474). In 2015, Eazidi women who escaped sexual enslavement by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) became the first women in the Middle East to publicly question rape.

The scholarly study of sexual violence in war and genocide suffers from a lack of attention, resulting in a lack of understanding rape’s political impact and the further silencing of victims (Seelinger, 2017).Studying this form of violence is made difficult due to the unwillingness of legal and political authorities to prosecute offenders and the reluctance of the military to admit their involvement in the rape crime. Yet, the rape of women during genocide and war was common throughout the 20thcentury. Atrocities were committed against women, for instance, in Europe, during World War I, Armenian genocide beginning in 1915, and the countless rapes that occurred during World War II.The heinous rape committed by Japan during World War II of “comfort women” who came primarily from Korea, China, and the Philippines was a noxious instance of sexual slavery (Argibay, 2003).

Politically, the scholarly neglect of this topic can be seen as due to the widespread failure to recognize women’s rights. Especially prior to World War I, the role of western women was mainly “restricted to the domestic sphere, as housewives, servants, and occasionally in manufacturing, clothing and textiles” (Biagini, 2015, p. 168). The circumstances of women during World War I were contradictory and multifaceted. For example, the war transformed depiction of women and created various employment opportunities for them (Campbel, 1993; Carreiras, 2006). The war also changed the governmental and political functions of women when, in 1915 at the International Women’s Congress at The Hague, the notion of peacemaking women was born (Sharp, 2013). This congress wrapped up with the idea of sending delegates from the Congress as envoys to belligerent and neutral governments and to the President of the United States to demand peace (Addams et al., 2003). While the International Congress of Women opposed the assumption that women can be protected in warfare and can eliminate the causes of war, “it protest[ed] vehemently against the odious wrongs of which women are the victims in time of war, and especially against the horrible violation of women which attends all war” (Donovan, 2012, p. 58). Although violence against women during times of war intensified following the conference, women were unable to mount a follow-up conference. Moreover, subsequent media representations of women did not aid the women’s cause.