Haunted and Not So Haunted

Based on a field research of a specific strictly patriarchal Sufi group based in contemporary Turkey, this article examines how Sufi women’s embodied acts (everyday actions and interactions and ritual performances) relate to the idea of Derridian haunted narratives as political devices that are used to limit women’s potential for spiritual growth. In order to analyse the current role women of a strictly patriarchal Sufi order play in contemporary Turkey, I focus on the theory of “hauntology,” “dramaturgical analysis of everyday life” and “performativity” and examine how past events, memories, traumas and cultural narratives haunt and shape current day performances including women’s worship rituals and their presentation of self in everyday life (Derrida, 1994; Goffman, 1956; Butler). This article focuses on how despite the haunted experiences that may somehow limit women’s potential for self discovery and spiritual elevation, more and more younger women, witnessing each other’s embodied acts, seek to separate themselves physically and mentally from their patriarchal ghosts and realize their potentials as Sufi teachers, educators and artists. While hauntology often relates to oppressive experiences, it also opens up spaces for resistance and subversion. Women use Sufi rituals and arts to fight the oppression of what they perceive as false Islam. This article argues how performing Sufi zikir, poetry readings and whirling turn into acts of resistance as well as worship with the embodied acts of Sufi women, who seek a release from their haunted minds