Karin Willemse

One Foot in Heaven: Narratives on Gender and Islam in Darfur, West-Sudan

This book is based on extensive anthropological field-research in Kebkabiya, a town in Darfur, West-Sudan(1990-1995), when the Islamist government of Sudan had just come to power. The title of the book is a conflation of two main government perspectives on the role of women. These proved to be decisive for the ways in which two classes of working women - low-class market women and highly esteemed female teachers- negotiated their identities within the Islamist moral discourse on gender. The book focuses on the biographic narratives of one woman from each class, which are analysed as part of the multi-layered context in which the woman spoke and acted - and of which the author also formed part. Finally, the author reflects on the war in Darfur as part of a process of identities-in-construction.

Chapter 15 Gendered Narrations of National Belonging and Motherhood in Sudan and Mexico

Abstract Purpose – This chapter shows how professional women from diverse geographic locations claim belonging in the public sphere by using motherhood as an important strategy for negotiating gendered and classed spaces of belonging while constructing moral agency and proper citizenship as women. Methodology/Approach – During anthropological research in Sudan and Mexico, the biographic narratives of two women, both key informants in larger, long-term ethnographic projects, were obtained by each researcher by engaging in a process of intersubjective knowledge production. These were analysed using the method of context analysis for dialogically constructed ‘narrations of the nation’. Findings – The trope of moral motherhood works in widely differing national contexts as a means for women to claim a position in a public space and at the same time to negotiate the boundaries between private and public domains. Invoking this trope enables professional women to forge public belonging and to participate in politics, while still safeguarding their femininity and their decency. Originality – This chapter demonstrates that national discourses about motherhood can be instrumental in creating a sense of civic belonging for professional women in two nation-states with widely diverse (post)colonial histories. Comparing narratives of belonging from such different national contexts can provide insight into belonging as an intrinsic part of identity constructions in paternalistic states. Both narratives show similarities in the way that motherhood constitutes a trope for active female citizenship whereby women actively claim public spaces and contest dominant discourses, which in the process de-essentializes motherhood.