Voices That Matter: Kurdish Women at the Limits of Representation in Contemporary Turkey

This event, as part of the LSE Middle East Centre's Kurdish Studies Series, was the launch of 'Voices That Matter: Kurdish Women at the Limits of Representation in Contemporary Turkey' by Marlene Schäfers, published by the University of Chicago Press. In Turkey, recent decades have seen Kurdish voices gain increasing moral and political value as metaphors of representation and resistance. Women’s voices, in particular, are understood as a means to withstand patriarchal restrictions and political oppression. By tracing the transformations in how Kurdish women relate to and employ their voices as a result of these shifts, Schäfers illustrates how contemporary politics foster not only new hopes and desires but also create novel vulnerabilities as they valorize, elicit, and discipline voice in the name of empowerment and liberation. Marlene Schäfers is Assistant Professor in Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University. Schäfers' research focuses on the impact of state violence on intimate and gendered lives, the politics of death and the afterlife, and the intersections of affect and politics. She specializes in the anthropology of the Kurdish regions and modern Turkey. Robert Lowe is Deputy Director of the LSE Middle East Centre. He is Co-Convenor of the Centre's Kurdish Studies Series, as well as Co-Editor of the Kurdish Studies Series, published by I.B. Tauris. His main research interest is Kurdish politics, with particular focus on the Kurdish movements in Syria.