Fragile goddesses: moral subjectivity and militarized agencies in female guerrilla diaries and memoirs

ABSTRACT

Kurdish female guerrillas in the armed political organization Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) established death as the ultimate form of agentive transcendence in the early periods of their participation. This article focuses on the uneasy relation between death and empowerment in female militancy. It explores how female militancy both unsettles and reinforces gendered binaries of militarism. In parallel, it looks at empowerment as a fragile and complex process connected to lived experiences and subject-making mechanisms within insurgent organizations. It analyzes Kurdish female guerrillas’ diaries, memoirs and author’s interview with an ex-guerrilla on the conflict between the PKK and the Turkish state in the 1990s. The autobiographical narratives reveal the formation of a transcendental ethos on female empowerment culminated in the goddess image. Yet, the narratives also reveal the dilemmas, contradictions and pain inherent in becoming ideal militant-subjects, particularly for female guerrillas. Through this exploration, I argue that such model of a posthumous empowerment dominates the ways in which women’s militancies are recognized and understood.

KEYWORDS:

• Militant femininity
• moral subjectivity
• female guerrillas
• Kurdistan Workers Party
• Turkey

Acknowledgements

This article and the humbling Enloe award is a result of years of feminist collaboration and friendship. As the founder of that collaboration, I am grateful to Ayşe Gül Altınay for introducing me to Cynthia Enloe and her work, who/which has been an inspiration since my undergraduate years, and for giving very critical feedback on this article. I also thank my advisor Esra Özyürek for reading earlier, amorphic versions of this work and sharing my excitement as this project unfolded. Also many thanks to Suzanne Brenner, Özlem Aslan, Joseph Hankins, Gary Fields and the anonymous reviewers at IFJP for their very helpful comments and suggestions. My sincere gratitude to the Cynthia Enloe Award Committee. Finally, I am forever indebted to Roza for sharing her journey with me.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Esin Düzel is a lecturer at the Department of Anthropology and Critical Gender Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Her research focuses on radical movements, gender and militarism, anthropology of morality, transnational feminism and critical multiculturalism.

Notes

1. She cut ties with the PKK after the mid-2000s; that is why she cannot ask for her diary back.

2. She does not know who actually made the postcard, but guesses that the European magazine Jina Serbilind (original name in Kurdish, Proud Woman in English) might have produced it.

3. All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated. Miranda Alison (2011) finds a similar emphasis on respect among the women in the LTTE (149).

4. Cansız was assassinated in Paris in 2013. Her assassinators are yet to be found. She is revered as the ideal moral subject; in 2016, the documentary on her life was produced.

5. Many politically engaged people I talked with confirmed this point.

6. I am aware that extra doubt is attached to the accounts of the “dissenters,” especially when a strict organization is concerned. Roza never tried to hide her discontents, but maintained that her guerrilla years were the best time in her life.

7. I did not include Roza’s diaries in this analysis in order to not to prioritize her voice over others’. In my current research, I expand upon this work by including more interviewees and diaries.

8. Interview notes.

9. Similar female admirers of a male leader are not an infrequent trope. Turkey (Özyürek 2006), Peru, Cuba, Colombia and El Salvador (Dietrich Ortega 2012) are some of the places where women assigned alternative masculinities to revolutionary leaders and established reverent relationships.

10. In June 2016, the Turkish police removed the name plate from the park; other changes may have occurred due to the resumption of conflict since the writing of this article.