essay

Topic: Resistant Discourses

In Veiled Sentiments Lila Abu Lughod shows how Bedouin women make use of a set of wellknown poetic verses to express feelings in conversation that would otherwise be difficult to

express—for example, feelings of desire and anger that contradict normative models for a

woman’s comportment.

In Essay #2 I’d like you to think of an American parallel—a symbolic form that:

1) Expresses things that contradict normative, dominant aspects of American discourse,

and that

2) People use to express oppositional, resistant ideas.

In choosing the specific topic for your paper, feel free to draw from a wide range of popular

symbolic practices—clothing, adornment, speech, poetic language, music, etc.

Your essay should (briefly and concisely!):

• Describe the symbolic form (as Abu-Lughod does for Ghinnawa in her Chapter 5);

• Discuss, as specifically as you can, which American ideology (=ideas, discourses, etc.)

your genre resists/opposes, and how the genre does so.

• Compare and contrast the two symbolic discourse genres (ghinnawa and the symbolic

form you chose to analyze), discussing both parallels and any divergences. Does the

argument Abu-Lughod ends up making about how ghinnawa functions in Awlad ‘Ali

society apply, ultimately, to how your symbolic form functions in American society? Or

not?