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Motherhood in Iraq: Between the Matrix of Domination and the Matrix of Agency

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Constructing Motherhood Identity Against Political Violence

Part of the book series: Contributions to International Relations ((CIR))

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Abstract

Through employing ‘intersectionality’ and embracing Patricia Collins’s ‘Matrix’ thinking, this chapter seeks to better situate and understand Iraqi mothers’ experience and agency. Motherhood is understood as one identity that interlocks with various other identities and systems of oppression, such as ethnicity and nationality, thus shaping women’s particular experience, how they interpret their reality and how they act upon it. By looking at stories and narratives of Iraqi mothers and how their gender identity interlocks with their identity as Sunni or Shi‘i, this chapter provides an insight on how mothers interact with political violence and their agency in the face of oppression as well as the conditions and possibilities of their agency. Contrasting the agency of Iraqi mothers in two points of time – under the reign of Saddam Hussein and in the present – this chapter finds that, because identities are constructed through everyday practices, the current turbulence, political violence, and oppression within the Iraqi context place emphasis on these women’s identities as ‘Iraqi’ ‘mothers’ more than being Sunni or Shi‘i. In other words, their nationality and gender identity – as mothers – have overtime transformed to surpass their ethnic identities in the struggle against political violence and oppression.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In Politics of Non-Motherhood in Shi’a Islam, Ladan Rahbari (2020) explores this side of identity by investigating representations and agency of non-motherhood in Shi‘a, with reference to the case of the renowned Shi‘i figure, Fatemeh-Masoumeh of Qom.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The British University in Egypt, Cairo, Egypt

    Yasmin Khodary

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  1. Yasmin Khodary
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Correspondence to Yasmin Khodary .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Humanities and Social Science, Üsküdar University, Üsküdar, Istanbul, Türkiye

    Deniz Ülke Arıboğan

  2. School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK

    Hamoon Khelghat-Doost

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Khodary, Y. (2023). Motherhood in Iraq: Between the Matrix of Domination and the Matrix of Agency. In: Arıboğan, D.Ü., Khelghat-Doost, H. (eds) Constructing Motherhood Identity Against Political Violence. Contributions to International Relations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36538-6_7

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