BRINKLEY MESSICK’s research while affiliated with University of Massachusetts Amherst and other places

The discourse of women's domestic weaving in North Africa embeds a distinctively female worldview. Ethnography concerning one Moroccan text of this discourse is cross-referenced with versions documented across the region. The reconstruction of the historically specific discourse of North African women is followed by an account of the political economy of its dissolution. In hierarchical societies, cultural accounts tap shared, public representations of gender relations, articulations of the dominant ideology. A subordinate discourse, characterized by its coexistence with such a dominant ideology and by its nonpublic, silent quality, can be interpreted using an initial structuralist step. [ideology, gender, cultural theory, North Africa]