Page 131 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

words, bodies, and minds. To be deemed ¤t to enter the modern public sphere,
premodern women, in hindsight seen as ignorant, uncivilized, and restricted to
an all-female world, had to be turned into women who were well-behaved, po-
lite, and quiet, who were good mothers, suitable partners for their husbands,
and committed supporters of the nation. Only after being thus transformed
could they claim a space in the public sphere without threatening the social
order. 10
Those who see the modern public sphere as secular have pointed to the im-
portance of education and the growing market for print media for the develop-
ment of such a public sphere. In the case of women, such arguments have often
been brought to the fore with particular urgency. Reconsidering such notions,
Najmabadi (1993), however, highlights how modern education and the print
media not only enabled women to participate in the public sphere but were also
pivotal in disciplining women’s styles of speaking and writing in particular
ways. While among the higher circles in Tehran there is a long history of women
engaging in oral performances for all-female audiences (with some handwritten
texts circulating among a limited female audience), the shift to the printed jour-
nal and the book meant that women’s words could be read by anyone, including
men. Women engaging in creating texts for print had to take into account that
they were now addressing a hetero-social rather than an all-female homo-social
public. This uncontrolled circulation of texts engendered a particular form
of self-censorship, necessitating the development of a language with sexual
markers modi¤ed or removed. In a similar vein, modern schools not only pro-
vided children with scienti¤c education but also installed certain forms of dis-
cipline. Through the format and content of the educational project these schools
were instrumental for the development of new moral behaviors. They produced
women who had learned the new, modern ways of managing the household,
their children, and their husband, and who would be able to participate in a
male public sphere without being too much of a disturbing factor. Both insti-
tutions, schools and the print media, did not simply allow greater access to the
public sphere but simultaneously functioned as mechanisms for disciplining
participants and installing a new sense of self, one directed toward self-control
even if employing the language of freedom.
The Habermasian notion of the modern public sphere is also limiting in its
exclusive focus on rational debate as the only legitimate form of participating
in the modern public sphere. Because individuals are seen as abstracted from
all social characteristics when participating in the modern public sphere, the
only suitable mode of communication is rational argumentation; other forms
and styles of communication are seen a priori as ineffective and undesirable. If,
however, the public sphere is recognized as an arena where group identities and
interests are always at stake, then there is a need for a more all-encompassing
“politics of presence” that allows for the inclusion of other forms of critical ex-
pression and nonverbal modes of communication. Such forms and styles of
presentation may include, for instance, bodily comportment, appearance, styles

120 Annelies Moors