Re-theorising namûs beyond ‘honour’: self-making, feminist agency and global epistemic justice

Namûs describes a ‘way of life’ integral to Kurdish sociality and to the sense of self for many Kurds who live it in a plurality of ways. Constituting a form of power over the subject which can potentially take the form of domination, namûs is also a social relation of care and power between subject...

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Published in:Feminist theory Vol. 26; no. 1; pp. 44 - 62
Main Author: Cetinkaya, Hasret
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.04.2025
Sage Publications Ltd
Subjects:
Crime
Criminal justice
Dominance
Enlightenment
Epistemology
Ethics
Ethnography
Feminism
Honour
Kurdish people
Middle Eastern cultural groups
Miscommunication
Oppression
Patriarchy
Personhood
Power
Self concept
Women
honour
self-making
agency
honour-based violence
international human rights
namûs
ethics
epistemic justice
ISSN:1464-7001, 1741-2773
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Namûs describes a ‘way of life’ integral to Kurdish sociality and to the sense of self for many Kurds who live it in a plurality of ways. Constituting a form of power over the subject which can potentially take the form of domination, namûs is also a social relation of care and power between subjects and is integral to its subject's ethical relationship of self-to-self and processes of self-making. Post-Enlightenment and liberal frameworks of ‘modern’ selfhood, however, have tended to render namûs equivalent to ‘honour’ and ‘honour-based violence’ (‘HBV’). Through this act of mistranslation, a life with namûs is constructed as violent, unworthy, racially inferior and harmful to women. Building upon multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork conducted in North Kurdistan, Turkey and Denmark, this article originally theorises namûs as a practice of ethical self-making that is epistemic, dignified and agentic in all its complexities. Women living with and through namûs actively work to cultivate this way of being, thereby interrupting the epistemic authority of liberal feminism. Namûs, this article argues, cannot be understood through blanket explanations of ‘crime’, ‘oppression’ and ‘patriarchy’, as the discourse on ‘honour’ would suggest. Breaking away from these injurious portrayals is, therefore, vital to realise global epistemological justice.
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ISSN:1464-7001
1741-2773
DOI:10.1177/14647001241226938