On Honor and Palimpsest Patriarchal Coloniality in Greece, the Western Balkans, and the Caucasus: Anthropological Comparative Accounts from a Post-Ottoman Decolonial Perspective

Abstract

This study introduces a comparative framework to understand patriarchal genealogies and technologies, with reference to an anthropological commentary concerning the broader forms of coloniality of power between dominant male and dominated female bodies in Greece, the Balkans, and the Caucasus. It argues that the patterns of patrilineality, practices and representations of male honor, and female exclusion from the native family are literally and symbolically feeding on the matrix of patriarchal coloniality in the regions. The analysis is based on representative ethnographic research and historical approaches. Patrilineal kin structures, customs of captivity (i.e., bride kidnapping, sworn virgins, and honor crimes), and generalized practices of young virgin exogamy seem responsible for women’s minor status in the social stratification. Traditional hierarchies and modern social inequalities seem to motivate dispositions and regulate behaviors for female, minor, subordinate, and dispossessed bodies, as well as dominant male protectors and patriarchs. The text adopts a postcolonial and decolonial black feminist critique. It argues that in a longue durée process, a palimpsest pattern of patriarchy emerges, made upon the habitus of gendered ideology. Shaped by patriarchalism, paternalism, and patronage, patriarchy motivates a generalized pattern of coloniality within post-Ottoman geographies, thus regulating multiple material and symbolic inequalities, and even multiplying antagonistic hierarchies among family units, communities, central nation/state, periphery, and borders.