BEHIND THE VEIL: FERIDUN ZAIMOGLU‘S "SCHWARZE JUNGFRAUEN"

Abstract

In their play Schwarze Jungfrauen [Black Virgins], Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel question essentialist representations of culture, identity, and gender. The protagonists – ten Muslim women living in Germany – are not presented as victims, but as self-confident, feminist women. At the same time, they are deeply religious, some of them even convinced fundamentalists. They thus challenge secular imaginations of modernity in which Islam is viewed as the cultural and religious Other. Neither their faith nor their approach to their body and sexuality are determined by their cultural origin. Quite the contrary, the text suggests that their presentations of self – the veils covering their bodies, their Anti-western hate speeches – respond to the negative, stereotyped gaze from the outside.