Tubuh sebagai Abjek: Paradoks Patriarki dalam Lā Sakākīn fī Maţābikhi Hādhihi al-Madīnah (Kajian Feminisme Kristeva)

Abstract

Prolonged socio-political conflict in Syria has produced a system that links power to control of women’s bodies that between the demand for “purity” and “desire.” Khaled Khalifa’s لا سكاكين في مطابخ هذه المدينة (2013) represents this paradoxical patriarchal system through the character of Sawsan, whose body is constructed as abject because her noncompliance is a threat to systemic stability. This study employs explanatory qualitative method and applies Kristeva’s theory of abjection to examine the patriarchal paradox as the “normal” locus of abjection and to analyze abjection as both a strategy of systemic stability and a personal response. The findings show that (1) the patriarchal system in the novel is inherently paradoxical: it demands norms of “purity” (virginity, bodily concealment, and repression of sexual desire) while simultaneously objectifying women’s bodies through sexual violence. This paradox constitutes the “normal” locus of abjection. (2) Abjection emerges externally through social and political forces that degrade Sawsan’s body and becomes internalized through practices of self-abjection: hymenoplasty, bodily ambivalence, and repression of desire. Rather than producing a unified subject, this process constructs Sawsan as a subject in process. This abjection reveals the internalization of patriarchal power in shaping women’s bodies and consciousness under al-Assad regime.