Resisting necropower A study of select Yazidi womens narratives

Abstract

This thesis, “Resisting Necropower: A Study of Select Yazidi Women’sNarratives,” examines the writings of the Yazidi women as forms of resistance to thenecropower exercised by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Drawing onAchille Mbembe’s theory of necropolitics, the study analyses how ISISinstitutionalised the power to determine life, death, and disposability throughsystematic, gendered violence, situating the Yazidi genocide within its broadersocial, political, and historical contexts. It foregrounds women’s bodies as key sitesfor the enactment of sovereignty through rape, enslavement, forced conversion, andpublic spectacles of death.The primary texts, The Last Girl, The Girl Who Escaped ISIS, A Cave in theClouds, Nadja: The Pearl of Sinjar, and The Beekeeper of Sinjar, are read ascounter-narratives that disrupt representations of the Yazidi women as passivevictims. Transforming trauma into testimony, these narratives reframe survival aspolitical resistance, functioning as counter-archives that reclaim agency, visibility,and justice. The thesis situates the Yazidi women’s writing within longer histories ofgendered violence and persecution, demonstrating how vulnerability is transformedinto radical political agency.