- Mahdi Tourage
- University of Toronto
- "Textual Bodies in the Poetry of Simin Bihbahani"
Mahdi Tourage was born and raised in Iran. He has been living in Canada since 1986. He finished a BA in Sociology and a Bachelor of Social Work at York University, and his MA and PhD at the University of Toronto. Currently he is an instructor at the University of Toronto, Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations Department, and the Mississauga campus, Historical Studies Department. He is also the book review editor of the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences. His areas of specialty are Islamic mysticism (Sufism) and religious thought, classical and modern Persian literature, and Gender and Sexuality. He has taught courses on Islamic religious traditions, Persian language, and Orientalism-Occidentalism- AbstractThis paper is an examination of the representations of bodies as the vital site of memory and meaning-production in the poetry of Simin Bihbahani. I will argue that in her poetry textual bodies are foregrounded against the purportedly seamless and coherent system of the (masculine) social body. The material categories of the female bodies are represented as persistent and contested domains that in their variability counter a masculinist discourse of hegemony. By focusing on a few of her poems, this paper argues that in many instances gendered female bodies are re-inscribed with significance. These textual representations of marginalized female bodies upset the contours of the masculinist discourse of order and coherence. Particularly important are the female bodies, like those of prostitutes that function as a symbolic location of resistance. This paper will examine the issues of limits and meanings of female agency in these textual
