Dwelling in an all-male world: A critical analysis of the Taliban discourse on Afghan women

This article critically assesses the Taliban discourse and its significant political and social ramifications for the women of Afghanistan. The militant group's rise to power in August 2021 and its subsequent rule over Afghanistan has been extremely severe for women, relegated to the newly constructed spaces of confinement. By employing a Foucauldian-inspired critical discourse analysis, the article shows that the Taliban discourse regulates and constrains women, their agency, and their political participation. This discourse, rooted in the shaky foundations of political Islam, is aimed at constructing an alternate form of political organization. The Taliban rule possesses necropolitical characteristics that are erasing women from public life and compelling them to look at the world from behind the veil, which, I argue, separates the real, material world from the imaginary and then combines them so that the living (objectified) subject evaporates into the realm of nothingness.