Final Paper - Flamenco
Final Paper - Flamenco
Final Paper - Flamenco
Final Paper
1. Introduction ………………………………………………………………………… 3
5. Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………. 10
6. References …………………………………………………………………………...12
1. Introduction
Our bodies are affected by our surroundings. A hundred years ago women were liberating
themselves through dance. Stars like Josephine Baker, Tallulah Bankhead, and Isadora Duncan
were the engines of progress that played a vital role in the story of women’s liberation. With
surroundings, being unstable, bringing well-being to the bodies in various practices gets more
important day by day. I feel the need to look for and try as many relevant solutions as possible,
especially since the topic of empowerment is immediately connected to both aspects to which
dance is connected as well – bodily and psychological ones, which has a reasonable chance to be
successful.
The study of the beneficial effects of dance on an individual’s physical and mental health was
researched by many scientists. Moreover, flamenco’s effect on patients was studied in the
The current article investigates the ways flamenco can liberate and empower women in day-to-
day life as well as the traits of flamenco that can make it possible.
To start with, let’s define what a discourse is. According to Michel Foucault, discourse is
attributed to the “ways of constituting knowledge, together with the social practices, forms of
subjectivity and power relations which inhere in such knowledges and relations between them.
Discourses are more than ways of thinking and producing meaning. They constitute the 'nature'
of the body, unconscious and conscious mind, and emotional life of the subjects they seek to
govern” (Weedon, 1987, p. 108). He also refers to discourse as: “…a form of power that
circulates in the social field and can attach to strategies of domination as well as those of
From this point, driven by the topic and problematic of the research, we can assume that
discourse forms the body, the mind, and the emotional life of an individual.
According to Foucault, the body cannot be identified clearly, it’s an object that is in constant
change, experiences growth, decline and death, so it’s unstable, cannot be predicted, it’s evasive
and cannot be understood completely. Foucault opposes putting body into the duality between
nature and culture and into the discussions, risen by this duality. For Foucault body acts as not as
an equivalent of nature that is in opposition to culture, but as an opposing element for those who
want to find a definite and unique source of liberation through nature. Body is not apolitical,
ahistorical, or clean.
So, following Foucault’s thought of body as a discursive phenomenon we can deduce that an
individual’s body and the emotions are under the constant influence of society, politics, and
history.
communication. When we make this system work to create communication, we use discourse,
where we create meanings in context. (McCarthy & Clancy, 2019). Following J. Butler in her
essay “How Can I Deny” (1997) we’ll see that the body is dependent of the language “as actively
producing or crafting a body every time we use, implicitly or explicitly, the language of
the Medusa” is of great value (1976). In her essay Cixous appeals to all women were driven
away by the course of the male history from writing and from their bodies and encourages them
not to be afraid and go against the capitalist machine and phallocentrism, that has been imposed
by parents or a partner. Cixous (1976) thinks than “men committed the greatest crime against
women” (p. 878): this all lead to the situation where women became their own strongest haters
and got their own strengths mobilized against themselves and resulted in the concept of anti-
narcissism for women, which can be a synonym for anti-love. Men’s conquest of women in the
course of the history made females leave their borders and lose the connection to their bodies. By
censoring the woman’s body, Cixous (1976) says, “her breath and speech also get censored”;
her body “must be heard” (p. 880) and taken, owned by a woman herself. Cixous calls to
decensor the relation of a woman to the sexuality of hers, even though women were taught to be
modest and not to express it, and to get her bodily territories back, the territories where a woman
saved so much space for guilt and shame of her own strength (1976). Through this, Cixous
(1976) believes, a female can become a “new woman” (p. 880) who takes and initiates “her own
right in every symbolic system, in every political process” (p. 880). She admits that a woman’s
personal history is a blend of histories: of all women’s, national and world histories as well as
Modern discourse and a woman have a complicated relationship. Jean Elshtain formulated the
problem as: “the oppressive power of language as a tool of control over those who had been
silenced throughout history, leaving those wanting to resist that control with the task of
Women are one of the groups that have been muted and repressed throughout history, mostly by
noble white men. The environment created by them, the environment that surrounds women
hides many dangers, which usually escape the attention of the men themselves as they don’t have
Since we’ve deduced in the previous chapter, that an individual’s body and emotions are under
the constant influence of society, politics, and history, we can notice that women as an oppressed
Different factors of the modern environment can bring struggles into the life of a modern
Physical impairment,
An abusive partner or a family member who can inflict physical and psychological
traumas,
An unhealthy domestic environment that causes constant stress and psychological tension
which for its part creates muscle clamps that lead to an unhealthy posture, which brings
Modern life is unthinkable without political discourse as well. The research study of Yarar shows
us the scale of the political influence on one woman’s body and it doesn’t bode well (2020). The
study has been performed in the framework of Turkish politics, to be exact – AKP’s politics of
female bodies which in recent years has moved from the position of liberalism and reforms onto
the rails of authoritarianism. In the early years of AKP, the party promoted an image of a
successful, educated woman, who wondrously managed to balance her work life and the house
duties which remained in place, waiting for her. Later, gender and body politics began to change:
with the appearance of new neoconservative feminism, the definition of female sexuality
changed its direction to conservative. The new political program of AKP is, as Kandiyoti states,
“a politics of resentment that encourages the projection of hatred onto groups or communities
seen as either privileged and exclusionary or as potentially treasonous (and sometimes both).
The country’s metropolitan, secular middle classes have long been routine targets of this
discourse” (2016, p. 105). It’s noteworthy to say that the AKP politicians together with pro-AKP
2018) developed a neoconservative feminist position and let it build up a new power block while
making other feminist and queer discourses illegal and enforcing conservative family values. The
neo-conservative power regulates the female body not only from the perspective of clothing and
behavior - but also from the point of reproductive decisions, “abortion, sexual orientation, and
pre-marital sexuality” (Yarar, 2020, p. 129). The ideology of AKP’s regime has also normalized
violence in everyday politics and practice (Kandiyoti, 2016). One of the main issues is that the
leading staff of the party advocates their perception of women’s problems in a destructive way
and uses it as a cannon to any group that stands outside of the national community defined by
The next issue we’re coming to is “big man politics”, as defined by White (2015) and the
conservative understanding of a family (Kandiyoti, 2016). In Turkish reality, the course of the
ruling party is directed by a “big man” who is seen as a leader, father figure, and hero (White,
2015), and a conservative family in his understanding stands on the shoulders of a perfect
citizen, a husband who is the ultimate source of power and authority in a family, whilst a wife or
a mother in this family is seen as a dependent element instead of being seen as in individual.
Coming to the question of women's rights, Yarar (2020) provides us with an illustrative example:
AKP leaders explained that the ban on headscarves affects the rights not only religious, but basic
human ones, whilst the right of a female to have an abortion was not looked from her
perspective, but from the rigidly Islamic perspective of a “right” of the fetus. Another example is
when AKP in 2005 undertook such an initiative as the Commission for “Equality of Women and
Men required to access EU. Even though the female organizations insisted on the original name
for the initiative, the state preferred another title: Commission on Equal Opportunities for
Women and Men, which implies that women’s and men’s natures are different, and they should
be provided with equal opportunities. Mister Erdogan later specified on this issue, saying that he
“already thinks that women and men are not equal, but complete each other” (Yarar, 2020, p.
132) and suggested that women “need ‘equality among women’ and ‘equality among men”
(Yarar, 2020, p. 132). Looking at women from an Islamic perspective he stated that the role and
position of a woman is Motherhood and also blamed feminists for rejecting the idea of it (Yarar,
2020).
AKP, making the concept of familialism one of the key ones in their program, intended to restore
the family to fix the decline of the state. The last expressive example of not only neglecting
women’s bodily rights but erasing a woman from the contemporary political discourse is
renaming the Ministry of State for Women and Family to the Ministry of Family and Social
Policies in 2011. All these steps lead to the deterioration of the relation between women’s
problems and power relations established in the concepts of gender, ethnicity, and class
Since we’ve settled that the body and especially a female’s body is affected by history, politics,
and society, we feel the need to find ways to liberate a female’s physical body that is directly
The research by Leventhal & Chang (1991) shows us how can dance therapy be a healing tool
for battered women. The victims of domestic tend to experience “patterns of helplessness,
ambivalence, and inactivity” (Leventhal & Chang, 1991, p. 1). In contrast, flamenco motivates
them to act, helps them to embody a positive self-vision, and improves their control over bodies
and emotions.
Flamenco, an expressive dance that originated in Spain, includes in itself the following notions
of “clarity, beauty, strength, pride, and self-confidence” (Koch et al, 2019, p.1). Traumatized
patients often have issues with the control of emotions, and problems with body image and its
ownership (Tsakiris, Schuetz-Bosbach, & Gallagher, 2007); they develop avoiding both positive
and negative feelings as a tool to survive which often results in undermined personal
relationships and low confidence. (Koch et al, 2019). Strength is frequently associated with
violence for trauma survivors. As Flamenco provides feelings of “strength, pride, and well-
being” (Koch et al, 2019, p. 1), hospitals decided to implement Flamenco in the framework of
body psychotherapy. They conducted an experimental pilot research with 32 patients, where 16
of them were placed in an experimental group and had a single Flamenco Therapy interference,
and another 16 were provided with a regular treatment. The tests were created to measure an
alteration in the following aspects: well-being, body self-efficacy, interpersonal resonance, plus
experienced health, fitness, and pain levels. Analysis of the results led the researchers to
encouraging results: the indicators for well-being, experienced health level, and experienced
physical pain showed a considerable improvement in the experimental group together with the
marginal improvement of the indicator of interpersonal resonance (given that all the Flamenco
therapy intervention participants’ baseline was different, the researchers concluded that the
negative effects reduced). (Koch et al, 2019). Apart from the improvement of the indicators
listed above, Flamenco can give a feeling of being grounded and provide a resource for
addressing troubling issues distinctly and boldly. Usage of such accessories as dresses, shoes,
fans, scarves, and hair garments reinforce the themes of body image and gender identity in
therapy. Given all the results we can assume that Flamenco has a significant potential in
addressing the issues of creating a positive body image, confidence, sexual identity, and the
feeling of control of the patients’ bodies and lives. (Koch et al, 2019).
5. Conclusion
The topic of the article concerns the ways of empowering women through dance, more
increase well-being and improve the perception of body image and interpersonal resonance
which is supposed to lead to gaining autonomy and self-determination for women. Since the
body is a discursive phenomenon and language, when used in communication creates discourse,
we can assume that the body is influenced by language. H. Cixous appeals to all women who
were driven away by the course of male history from writing and their bodies and encourages
them not to be afraid and to go against the capitalist machine, oppressive patriarchy, and
phallocentrism, that has been imposed by parents or a partner, and take their bodies back, own
them and become a “new woman” who takes and initiates her right, since a woman is an
The recent change in the course of a Turkish leading party (AKP) raises serious concerns as all
the steps taken regards body politics and female sexuality lead to the deterioration of relation
between women’s problems and power relations established in the concepts of gender, ethnicity,
and class inequalities (Yarar, 2020). Under the current circumstances, when a female’s body is
being “taken away” from a woman and there is a repressive policy against sexuality, I suggest
that Flamenco has significant potential in addressing the issues of creating a positive body
image, confidence, sexual identity and the feeling of control women’s bodies and lives.
References:
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108.
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