Displaying the murdered Muslim woman’s body generates white solidarity and regenerates European identity

Evidence

Throughout this somewhat macabre visual journey, I wondered why Fadime Sahindal’s dead body had to be so prominently displayed for the benefit of the three hundred or so, mostly white, Western academics attending a conference of the Jean Piaget Society. My discomfort reached an apex in the question period that followed, when members of the audience, some of the women on the verge of tears and with voices quivering with anger, expressed their outrage at the barbarous Muslim men to whom Wikan often referred. A palpable warmth and white group solidarity suffused the audience as they collectively contemplated what might be done to save the Muslim woman and to keep the ‘dangerous’ Muslim man in line. I was reminded of the regenerative properties of unveiling the Muslim woman, that is to say, of its power to give birth to the European. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 337

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the author’s earlier framework (chapter 4) on the imperilled Muslim woman as a trope that installs the civilized European; also resonates with Spivak’s ‘white men saving brown women from brown men.’
• SEED: Angle: how funeral imagery of Muslim victims functions as spectacle that consolidates Western identity among academic audiences, not just media consumers.
• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the ‘sacrifice’ essay’s theme of how displays of the dead body consolidate communal identity — this time a secular academic community affirmed through another’s sacrificed daughter.