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       1.2.1 Lack of virility

       1.2.2 The sonless man

       1.2.3 Infidelity

       1.2.4 Illegitimate sons

       1.2.5 Material failure

       1.2.6 Alcoholism

       1.2.7 Homosexuality

       2. Face cultures

       Introduction to face cultures: Lian and miàn-zi

       2.1 Loss of female honor

       2.1.1 Disobedience

       2.1.2 Infidelity and rape

       2.1.3 Infertility

       2.1.4 Jealousy

       2.1.5 Divorce

       2.2 Loss of male honor

       2.2.1 Hierarchical obligations

       2.2.2 Disloyalty

       2.2.3 Further forms of honor loss

       Conclusion

       Appendix

       Parents and (dis)obedient daughters

       (Dis)obedient wives

       Lost virginity before marriage

       Immoral behavior in public

       The “manless” woman

       Infidelity

       Illegitimate children

       Infertility or absence of a son

       Rape

       Drinking women

       Homosexuality (mainly female)

       Lack of virility

       Public dimension of violence

       Jealousy

       Honor/wealth/performative identity

       Bibliography

       Index of Names

Acknowledgments

      Mine Krause

      I would like to thank my parents who brought me up in an interculturally rich, Turkish-German environment, awoke my thirst for knowledge and have never ceased to feed it; my friends all around the world for their emotional support, precious feedback and their constructive criticism; all those writers who have opened their minds and hearts to help me discover different cultural worlds, among them Sema Kaygusuz, who has kindly agreed to write a preface to this book and patiently answered all my questions; her literary agent Yeşim Vesper, who has always had an open ear and shared relevant materials with me; Négar Djavadi, who sent me the English translation of her novel Désorientale and provided me with insights into Iranian culture; Ayfer Tunç, who has discussed her novel Yeşil Peri Gecesi in detail with me. I regret that I cannot cite everybody, but am deeply grateful to all of you.

      Yan Sun

      I have had the chance of working as a research scholar in the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at City University of New York, which has reshaped my perception of the combined law and literature research field. This book was inspired by academic communications at many workshops, seminars, and conferences at John Jay. I am very thankful to Dr. Veronica Hendrick for her enlightening suggestions and for her efforts to make the visit possible.

      The Intercultural Institute at Shanghai International Studies University has also been very resourceful. Director Steve J. Kulich has invited prestigious researchers to give lectures that have greatly benefited the book.

      Michael Steppat

      I have been able to enjoy several visiting Fellowships at the John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, which have greatly facilitated the research for this book. I am most grateful to directors Dr. Edward Widmer and then Dr. John Haskell for making this possible. The book has benefited from many discussions with the scholars from all over the world at the Kluge Center, as well as at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC.

      ←ix | x→

      The Intercultural Institute at Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) has provided the anchor and the intellectual support which the book project has needed, enabling many fruitful sessions and discussions at SISU and also at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. These have helped in gaining a better understanding of our book’s topic.

      Last but by no means least, I am especially grateful to my very dear Val for her untiring patience and encouragement during the whole period of this book’s composition, which has absorbed so much of my sustained attention.

      ←x | xi→

Preface

      Mary’s suffering as “Nómos”

      In the last religious myths that we have heard about, the first woman whose “namus” (purity/chastity) was questioned is Mary. We know her as a virgin who conceived Jesus through the Holy Spirit. However, among the first Christians, her status was a completely different one. At this time, God was not yet the king of the heavens, the ruling master, the legislator of a hierarchical church organization. Rather, the notion of God also included the eternal feminine spirit: the feminine wisdom within this cosmic creator protected its place in the ancient civilization as an element of multiplicity within the “one.” Although in today’s Istanbul the gigantic basilica Hagia Sophia (Ἁγία Σοφία/Hagía Sofía) was built on a pagan temple (which nobody ever mentions) and bears the meaning of “sacred feminine wisdom” in its name, this sacred representation of the woman has long been forgotten.

From Gnostic texts that were found in 1954 in the cave of Nag Hammadi (Egypt), we know how Mary and her feminine wisdom have been completely wiped out from the earth’s dominant culture. Coming from Ancient Greek, the expression gnōstikos means knowledge and enlightenment. There was no need for an Ulama class or a temple in the Gnostics’ world of faith which would later be accused of heresy by revisionist Christian ideologues. They defended the idea of God as being a pre-eminently inner experience, thus opposing a standardization which might happen during the process of teaching religion. God was one’s own skin, awareness, dream, intuition, desire. In order to possess gnosis (just as it was the case with the Qalandariyyah as a counter-movement against Orthodox Islam throughout history), neither intermediaries, monarchs, imams, bishops, nor priests were required. God was an eternal father and mother figure within reach, who at the same time was characterized by a human simplicity. Over the centuries, this place was taken over by a punishing, ruling, commanding, male-shaped God. It is important to recall here that the expression “anthropomorphic” has evolved from the Greek anthropos, which characteristically denotes a man, just like the prefix in “anthropology,” “anthroposemiotic,” or “anthropocentric,” giving these words a clearly “masculine” connotation. While Orthodox Christians cursed the early Gnostics and deleted them from their teachings, the tradition to which they adhered was Judaism, which considered God the Absolutely Other ←xi | xii→(cf. Buber and also Levinas).¹ The discrimination against women “committed” by a God who listens to Orthodox Jewish men praying “Blessed are you, LORD our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has not made me a woman”² is certainly closed to debate in many cultures.

However, as a consolation it should be said that some things appear to change in various

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