Commitment or commitment-kitsch?

rethinking the "woman question", agency, and feminist politics

Sonja van Wichelen

pp. 45-63

in: Begüm Özden Fırat, Sarah De Mul, Sonja van Wichelen (eds), Commitment and complicity in cultural theory and practice, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009

Abstract

In 2003 the Dutch director Adelheid Roosen launched her new play entitled The Veiled Monologues. Several years before, Roosen had performed as an actress in the Dutch version of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues.¹ Inspired by this play, and intrigued by the rise of Muslim women in the Netherlands and how this was changing the cultural landscape of her country, she developed a piece that would explore the topic of intimacy and sexuality of women with an Islamic background. After initial research for the play, in which she interviewed around 70 Dutch-Muslim women,² she filtered the stories and assembled them in 12 separate monologues which were subsequently performed by different migrant actresses.³ On the one hand, the monologues concerned matters pertaining to love, desire, and intimacy, articulating "Muslim ways' of lovemaking and sexual pleasure — often approached with candid humor. On the other hand, they tackled issues of violence and coercion, involving stories of forced marriage, female circumcision, and rape or incest.