“If I become your wife, what will you beat me with, when we argue?”: A Philosophical (Foucauldian) Reading of the Feminine Body in an Iranian Tale, Khaleh Sooskeh

In this chapter, taking up Foucault’s concept of the “docile body” in symbiosis with an air of feminism, we provide a philosophical reading of the feminine body in an Iranian tale, Khaleh Sooskeh. Our analysis evinces that in this tale, patriarchal ideology dictates disciplines on female body to turn it docile. It prescribes actions inserted into practices which push the female character to act according to power relation through the mechanism of naturalization of inscribed body, self-surveillance, and self-disciplining, and thereby she amounts to complicity in getting her body subjugated. The lens through which we investigate this tale can open avenues for an in-depth understanding and interrogating discursive power relation and the forces that turn the female body docile in a narrative text. It can also serve as a nexus of theory and praxis in a philosophical community of inquiry. Furthermore, it drives to explore philosophical concepts, themes, and questions embedded in fairy tales. In a community of philosophical inquiry, thinking with philosophical theories can develop in the co-inquires a sonorous critical voice toward issues related to social life, including the ideological feminine body through challenging ideological representations of feminine body.