Bibliogr. s. 49-51

Drawing from Jeffrey Alexander’s theory of cultural trauma this paper focuses on the selected stories of Yezidi women written in cooperation with different journalists. These stories have been published in recent years in French, German and English. Although Western media interest in the Yezidi women tragedy was sometimes criticised by scholars and Yezidis themselves, these narratives should be distinguished from the mainstream media production and offered special attention. The stories play a very important role as instruments of the ‘trauma process’. They give shape to the representation of the tragic events, and thus call for recognition and redress. What is more, the women break taboo and speak about many sensitive issues such as sexuality and the traditional type of female honour called namûs, which is based on female chastity. Until very recently the chastity of women has constituted the uncontested moral norm recorded in many oral narratives in the Middle East. It was precisely due to the strong social meaning of this norm that sex slavery might have been invented by the ISIS leaders as a deliberate ‘war plan’ designed to destroy the entire community. Following Kwame Anthony Appiah and Donna Hicks’s reflection on honour and dignity I suggest that the narratives reconsider traditional honour and give meaning to modern dignity that elevates the value of human life rather than chastity. Thanks to their deeply emotional character and the tragic context that attracts attention of the global audience, the stories have great potential to create effective trauma discourse and bring some changes to the cultural and political landscape of the Middle East.