The feminist discourses of muslim women in the harems of Fatima Mernissi

Abstract

This article aimsis to analyzethe feminist discourses that are constructed from statements about Muslim women from Fatima Mernissi’s family. These discourses are revealed through a constituent discourse, in other words, a discourse of origin, which in this case is an autobiographical literary work, written by the protagonist Fatima, who narrates her childhood memories and dialogues with women with whom she lived in two harems (one in Fez and the other on a farm). The analyzed discourses show women who aim to transgress borders within their own social circumstances, through different agencies (subject agents). Agencies are understood as the “capacity to realize one’s owninterestsagainst the weight of custom” (MAHMOOD, 2019). Therefore, the article allows us to reflect on the condition of Moroccan Muslim women and their different liberating objectives and also contributes to understanding how gender inequality can appear in a society in which patriarchal values are perpetuated instead of the equality proposed in the pillars of Islam.