Deleuzian Conceptualizaion of “Agency”: Muslim Women Questions
Authors: AKSEL Hesna Serra 
Published: December 2019

There are many studies about
whether Muslim women are oppressed or emancipated by Islamic traditions. Some
claim that Islamic traditions, such as the headscarf, oppress women while
others want to prove that these women have agency when they perform Islamic
traditions. This project aims to use a Deleuzian conceptualization of agency
and freedom that will enable us to examine multi-faced, relational, and
spatial formations of Muslim women’s lives. In other words, I apply the
relational ontology of the France philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, to contestations
over Muslim women. Through this relational ontology, I problematize the
depictions of Muslim women solely based on religious frameworks in a pejorative
way and want to explore alternative patterns in Muslim women’s experiences and
practices. Therefore, I use the Deleuzian conceptualization of agency and
freedom to demassify the depictions of Muslim women as submissive beings based
on their religious engagements. I suggest scholarly projects that will be
attentive to the situatedness of Muslim women. Summary:
Based on the clash of civilizations
framework, some western institutions depict a monolithic community of Muslims
and use this monolithic depiction to prove the need to fight against Islam and
Muslims. Muslim women become a focal point within this narrative since they are
portrayed as an oppressed group by the Islamic traditions and Muslim men. For
example, the headscarf as the marker of Muslim women’s identities sparks
discussions about whether it is oppressive or not. There are many studies on
whether Muslim women are oppressed or emancipated. Some claim that Islamic
traditions such as the headscarf oppresses women while others want to prove
that these women perform their agency when they wear a headscarf. For instance,
Saba Mahmood challenged this narrative by questioning the liberal conceptions
of agency, freedom, desire, and resistance. Although these studies point out
the necessity of historical and spatial analysis of Muslim women and their
agencies, this issue requires further investigation and articulation.In this
project, I aim to use a Deleuzian conceptualization of agency and freedom that
will enable us to examine multi-faced, relational, and spatial formations of
Muslim women’s experiences, desires, and practices. In other words, I apply the
relational ontology of the France philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, to contestations
on Muslim women. According to this Deleuzian ontology, the world is constituted
of bodies. Every entity, biological organism, social structure, and abstraction
is a body. Each of these bodies, whether it is a human or non-human body,
material or immaterial, social or psychological construction, is produced by
confluences of relations. Every aspect of the human body including its
biological, mental, social, and psychological components is also constituted
through multiple relations. Therefore, when we talk about a human subject, we
refer to the assemblages of complex and multiple relations. This
conceptualization of the body brings a new conceptualization of agency as well.
This Deleuzian understanding of agency focuses on relations that produce the
body. Since bodies are generated through the flux of relations, their
capacities to feel, to act, and to desire in certain ways will change according
to the relations they have. Through
this relational ontology, I suggest seeing bodies of Muslim women as complex
assemblages of multiple elements constituted through flows of relations. This
conceptualization problematizes the portrayal of Muslim women’s embodiments
exclusively based on a religious tradition. Experiences, practices, and desires
of Muslim women, as well as their agencies, constraints, and capabilities, are
produced through relational engagements with multiple elements such as
socio-political discourses, familial relations, material availabilities, and economic
conditions. In other words, their power to act is generated by relations with
surrounding elements (bodies in Deleuzian ontology), whether these bodies are
religious or secular, human or non-human, material or immaterial. Consequently,
their bodies and forms of their agency are always remade through various
elements which continuously connect and disconnect.   I use
this Deleuzian conceptualization of body and agency to problematize the
depictions of Muslim women as a submissive group of women by their religious
engagements. I aim to illuminate the multiplicities of constituent elements in
their lives and suggest a fragmented and relational depiction of their
agencies. Through the lenses of relationality, I explore what becomes invisible
and left out in terms of depicting heterogeneous and dynamic experiences of
Muslim women. For this purpose, I apply this Deleuzian perspective to an
interview conducted in Capital City Women’s Platform (Baskent Kadin Platformu)
in 2018 for my Ph.D. project as well as some ethnographic observations in
Turkey. Given the theoretical basis I propose, I aim an in-depth analysis of
the data collected from this interview instead of a collection of a higher
volume of data. In addition to the analysis of the interview, I use other
resources such as ethnographic observations, material culture, and analyses of
historical and political contexts.

By applying the Deleuzian ontology on Muslim
women, I aim to pay attention to multiple and relational generative forces in
Muslim women’s lives. Specifically, I problematize the depictions of Muslim
women solely based on religious frameworks in a pejorative way and want to
explore alternative patterns in Muslim women’s experiences and practices. To
put it differently, I argue that Muslim women’s experiences are relational,
multi-faced, fractured, and particular. We should explore this multiplicity and
relationality instead of assuming an imaginary singular category. Therefore, I
suggest grounded scholarly projects that will be attentive to the situatedness
of Muslim women. In this type of analysis, the task of the scholar should be to
explore the multi-faced and situated subjectivity and agency of Muslim women
that enable us to understand intertwined forms of oppression and liberation. We
should stress the constant co-construction and re-construction of experiences
and actions over marginalizing and categorizing identities.