The Minoritized Yazidi Body as a Signifier

Abstract

This paper reads the testimonies of Yazidi women who survived their slavery at the hands of ISIS (DAESH) to understand how this ‘minoritized’ body, a term coined by Arjun Appadurai, has become a worldwide signifier. Due to the circulation of images and technologies, the testimonies of those women who survived have become the only means that allows visibility; yet, the visibility of the violated minoritized body is a fact that still signifies power and instills worldwide horror. The paper attempts to understand how the minoritized individual body has become a body politic, onto which power relations are played out and where several discourses intersect.