Harem education and heterotopic imagination

Abstract

Education can cease to be a showcase for political projects and start serving women’s lives only when the agency of women in their own education is acknowledged. In this paper I have addressed issues concerning harem education to emphasise that possible solutions to issues of girls’ education require an awareness concerning the history of girls’ education in different geographies. In this article, this agency is pursued in the homosocial production of knowledge in the harem, which is an exoticised space. Questioning the limitations and benefits of the concept of the harem is especially important in understanding processes such as the accommodation of public practices of education in women’s homes. Using Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, the harem is contextualised to shed light upon its liberating and dominating aspects, as a sphere where public and private practices of education converge.

Keywords:

• harem
• heterotopia
• history
• Girls’ Industrial Schools
• Ottoman Empire

Acknowledgements

This article originates from an idea expressed in my PhD dissertation (Akşit 2004) on Girls’ Institutes in Turkey, and the book in Turkish derived from this dissertation (Akşit 2005). Yet this article is based more on new original research and systematic thinking built on the original idea. The theoretical evaluations of the transformations in harem education are novel, like the explanation of the different phases of this transformation. Thanks to Pınar Tankut, Alev Özkazanç, Didem Gediz, Ayça Kurtoğlu, Göksun Yazıcı and the anonymous reviewers of Gender and Education for reading and commenting on different versions of this text.

Notes

1. For example, although concentrating on the family in Middle Eastern history Family History in the Middle East discusses girls’ education with mere references to their public education (Doumani 2003). For one of the few exceptions see Akyüz (2004).

2. More in the spirit of Tamboukous’s earlier work on women’s colleges as heterotopias (2000, 249–50).

3. For instance, Bury (2001) takes the public–private distinction to the discussions on virtual and the real.

4. By 1883, these schools were educating an average of 418 girls each year (Alkan 2000, 37; Ergin 1941, 578).

5. Salname‐i Nezaret‐i Maarif‐i Umumiye [Annals of the Ministry of Education] (Dar el Hilafet‐i Aliye: Matbaa‐yı Amirane): 1317, 758–60; 1319, 753–4.

6. The Rüşdiyes too educated far more girls than girls’ schools other than the industrial schools, including non‐Muslim schools and missionary colleges.

7. Salname‐i Nezaret‐i Maarif‐i Umumiye: 1318, 296.

8. Salname‐i Nezaret‐i Maarif‐i Umumiye: 1318, 286–96.

9. Salname‐i Nezaret‐i Maarif‐i Umumiye: 1318, 286–96.

10. Salname‐i Nezaret‐i Maarif‐i Umumiye: 1318, 286–96.

11. There are also recent debates concerning the harem best exemplified with the title ‘Selling the harem’ (Lewis 2004, 12).

12. However, she looked down upon the material that was read and stated that what the Ottomans of both sexes read were limited to the Quran, and she despised the other reading materials (Strauss 2003, 39).

13. As abolitionism became a part of the Ottoman culture in this period, an increasing number of slaves were freed. In line with Muslim teachings that advised freeing one’s slaves, the form of abolitionism that came with Westernisation influenced Ottoman lands and as a result, even the imperial harem was vacated.

14. Knowing many different dimensions of her life story, it is possible to say that her novels were autobiographical, and were products of observation more than imagination.