Colonial Gender Tricksterism in Central Asia and Caucasus

Abstract

Women of the similar cultural and religious background who did not go through a forced Soviet modernization, while maintaining a memory of a never implemented ideal of a different modernity, often turned out freer in their thinking and subjectivity than the forcefully emancipated Soviet colonial subjects. This was connected with alternative pluritopic ways of reconciling modernization with local ethnic-cultural, epistemic, and religious models, such as Jadidism (Tokhtakhodzhaeva at al. 1995, 38–46). Thus, the above mentioned M. Gaffarova is clearly a border dweller, open to other ways of being in the world. From her testimony we find out about a different image of Muslim culture, than the one presented by Western feminists and some of their local pupils. Although she never discusses gender specifically, her oral history indirectly testifies an obvious respect for women and children, a lack of gender inequality in the questions of education and career and a certain parity between men and women which was maintained in Xinjiang Uzbek Diaspora in contrast with the Soviet Uzbekistan where the ugly excesses of patriarchal practices prevailed. Gaffarova is the only informant who is sensitive to the imperial-colonial side of this problem, while people shaped within the Soviet system, even if they are critical of the regime, are thinking entirely in progressivist paradigm, demonizing any traditional and religious culture, and remaining ignorant of any alternative models.KeywordsTennis RacketMuslim CultureWestern FeministSoviet PowerLocal Police StationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.