In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Representations of Muslim Women in German Popular Culture, 1990–2015 by Lauren Selfe
  • Mirjam Aeschbach
Representations of Muslim Women in German Popular Culture, 1990–2015. By Lauren Selfe. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2019. Pp. 259. Paper $67.95. ISBN 978-1787079991.

Lauren Selfe's insightful study investigates the regimes of representation surrounding the figure of the Muslim woman across three genres of post-1990 German popular culture, German life writing, young adult literature, and film. In her approach, Selfe conceptualizes representations of Muslim women and notions of Germanness as mutually constitutive, with the figure of the Muslim woman central in producing ideas of "national belonging." This understanding, paired with the cultural studies argument "that the meanings ascribed to and portrayed through representations have both symbolic and material effects" (3), forms the foundation of the book's aim to intervene "into contemporary racist discourses in Germany" (3).

Based on a carefully considered approach to categorizations central to the research field, such as Islam, Muslims, and Germany, the study looks at "how representations of 'Muslim' women (and girls) are constructed as such and aims to make visible the underlying discourses that constitute their representation" (2). As a result, Selfe [End Page 441] concludes that the figure of the Muslim woman in the last twenty-five years of the three genres not only invokes religious identity but rather carries an "overburdened signification" with regard to ethnicized, racialized, gendered, and classed discourses (223). Of particular interest to the study is the elaboration of the instrumental role representations of Muslim women play in the production of non-Muslim subject positions that include intersectionally constituted and highly gendered notions of Germanness.

The volume starts out by elaborating on key theoretical concepts relevant to the research objective as well as contextualizing the research object within significant academic and sociopolitical discourses (chapter 1). Thereby, the poststructuralist approach to subjectivity and subject position is emphasized and the regimes of representation surrounding the figure of the Muslim woman are identified as discourses that construct particular Muslim as well as non-Muslim subject positions. Such representations of Muslim women in the German context are, as Selfe outlines, "inextricably linked to wider developments in certain narratives of western feminism and notions of female emancipation" (19) as evident in the continuously produced trope of the "oppressed Muslim woman."

Chapters 2–4 investigate the genres life writing, young adult fiction, and film with regard to representations of Muslim women therein and the effects such representations have on available subject positions. In the genre of life writing (chapter 2), the book concentrates on accounts both by and about Muslim women's lives. Selfe identifies a dominance of texts marketed toward a non-Muslim readership that draws on the trope of the oppressed Muslim woman and invokes an emancipatory potential of "secular Germany." In particular, accounts by so-called "Islamkritikerinnen" and texts of the "misery memoir" type occupy a hegemonic position in the genre of life writing, while counternarratives, for instance, articulations by "Islambefürworterinnen" or narratives by converts to Islam, remain marginal.

In the analysis of female Muslim characters in young adult literature since 1990 (chapter 3), "a discursive shift in the categorization of Germany's 'migrant' communities as 'foreigners' and 'Turks' to 'Muslim'" (156) is identified, in which post-2000 literature foregrounds Muslimness while pre-2000 texts subordinate it to an ethnicized identity. Both versions, however, construct German and Turkish Muslim or Muslim culture as separated entities characters may be "trapped between," a trope also identifiable in the genre of life writing and film.

The discursive shift from "ethnic" to "religious" difference between pre- and post-2000 texts is reiterated in German film (chapter 4). The analysis of German and, as a nationally specific subgenre, Turkish German film with regard to the representation of female Muslim characters therein further indicates the transgenre presence of the oppressed Muslim woman who may be emancipated or emancipate herself by leaving Islam behind, frequently cinematically realized by the visual shorthand of removing the [End Page 442] hijab (219). Lastly, the chapter closely analyzes the racialization and ethnicization of Muslim woman film characters represented as both "foreign" as well as "nonwhite."

The book distinguishes itself via its well...

pdf

Share