عنوان

Hermeneutics of desire: ontologies of gender and desire in early Hanafī law

Number

TL49183

.Language of Text, Soundtrack etc

انگلیسی

Title Proper

Hermeneutics of desire: ontologies of gender and desire in early Hanafī law

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Saadia Yacoob

Subsequent Statement of Responsibility

Moosa, Ebrahim; Prasad, Leela

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

Duke University

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2016

Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item

258

Text of Note

Committee members: Ali, Kecia; Hammer, Juliane; Morgan, David

Text of Note

Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-369-42909-1

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Discipline of degree

Religion

Body granting the degree

Duke University

Text preceding or following the note

2016

Text of Note

This dissertation examines the construction of gendered legal subjects in the influential legal works of the eleventh century Hanafi jurist, Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Sarakhsi (d. 483 A.H./1090 C.E.). In particular, I explore how gendered subjects are imagined in legal matters pertaining to sexual desire. Through a close reading of several legal cases, I argue that gendered subjects in his legal work al-Mabsut are constructed through an ontological framework that conceptualizes men as active and desiring and women as passive and desirable. This binary construal of gendered nature serves as a hermeneutical given in al-Sarakhsi's legal argumentation and is produced through a phallocentric epistemology. Al-Sarakhsi's discussions of desire and sexuality are mediated through the experience of the male body. While the dissertation endeavors to show the centrality of the active/passive binary in al-Sarakhsi's legal reasoning, it also highlights the dissonances and fissures in the text's construction of gendered subjects of desire. By tracing the intricacies of al-Sarakhsi's legal reasoning, I note moments in which the text makes contradictory claims about gender and desire, as well as moments in which al-Sarakhsi must contend with realities that seemingly run up against his ontological framework. These moments in the text draw our attention to al-Sarakhsi's active attempt at maintaining the coherence of the gendered ontology. I thus argue that the gendered ontology in al-Sarakhsi's text is a legal fiction that both reflects his assumptions about gendered nature but is also constructed to rationalize legal precedence.

Religion; Law; Islamic Studies

Subject Term

Philosophy, religion and theology;Social sciences;Gender and sexuality;Hanafi law;History of sexuality;Islam and gender;Islamic law

Xia, Yakang

Moosa, Ebrahim; Prasad, Leela

Subdivision

Religion

Duke University

Call Number

1864643289; 10239855

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y