Literature can be a weapon to fight patriarchy, prominent Kurdish academic, poet and feminist Choman Hardi has said in her keynote address at the latest annual Kurdish Studies Conference.
The event, hosted by the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) Middle East Centre and taking place at the University of Sheffield, aims to disseminate and discuss new research on Kurdish politics and society. This year’s conference, which united scores of scholars for two days of discussions, was supported by the IB Tauris imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing and Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity.
In her speech, addressing Feminist Kurdish Studies, Hardi analysed trends in journalism, research and academic study in and on Kurdistan and the broader Middle East. “Both insiders and outsiders can have their prejudices we are looking for evidence to prove,” Hardi noted, urging a fair, open, honest approach based on “integrity, genuineness, and gaining participants’ confidence.”
To this end, the Kurdish academic shared stories and experiences including journalists pretending to be medical staff as a way to gain access to Yazidi genocide survivors, representing these as “extractive” approaches which were ultimately harmful to women in the Middle East. “The one thing we can promise is to stay true to the story,” Hardi said, emphasising that academic researchers in the Middle East have a duty of care toward their interviewees and subjects. She urged academics and journalists to “act in a spirit of solidarity”, since while “we may have disagreements and criticisms, we must support those fighting patriarchy… trying to discredit individuals and organisations working for women’s rights saps the energy of frontline activists.”
Hardi sought asylum in the UK in 1993, and subsequently earned degrees from Oxford, UCL and Kent, before returning to Iraqi Kurdistan to teach English literature and gender studies, starting the first gender studies programme in Iraq. She has also published award-winning poetry and fiction.
Addressing the question of reform as opposed to revolution in local women’s movements, Hardi argued: “most of us are doing both at the same time, reforming and hopefully working toward a revolution. They are not mutually exclusive.” As an example, she shared her experiences working with liberal-minded Muslim religious leaders in Iraqi Kurdistan to combat misogynistic attitudes with reference to the Qur’an.
The opening day of the Kurdish Studies conference also saw diverse discussions on subjects including migration and refugees in Kurdistan; education as a tool of integration; Kurdish film and culture; and discourses around conflict and reconciliation. Another set of discussions addressed governance in Kurdish regions of Syria, statehood in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and the transformation of Kurdish identity in Turkey.
The prior event featured a total of 27 panels with over 100 speakers contributing to various topics, ranging from the question of ‘Kurdistan’ in historiography and Soviet Kurdish studies, to Kurdish women’s roles in political life and the Kurdish identity and diaspora. The interdisciplinary keynote lecturer was prominent anthropologist Martin van Bruinessen, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Studies of Modern Muslim Societies at Utrecht University.
