Work · Structuralism & Poststructuralism
Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject
Fieldwork with the women’s mosque movement in Cairo: these women cultivate virtues through bodily practice, and to understand them feminist theory has to separate agency from the wish for freedom and resistance.
Introduction
Politics of Piety appeared in 2005 and is based on fieldwork that Saba Mahmood carried out in Cairo from 1995 to 1997 with the women’s mosque movement, in which women met to study the Qur’an and cultivate pious virtues. Mahmood argues that liberal and feminist theory tends to equate agency with resistance and autonomy and therefore cannot understand women who seek to inhabit religious norms. Drawing on Foucault, Aristotle’s concept of habitus as mediated by Talal Asad, and a critical reading of Judith Butler, she understands agency as a capacity formed through practice. The book became one of the most discussed works of feminist and postcolonial theory.
Connections
Builds on
- Bodies That Matter1993 · Judith Butler
Taken up in
- Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report2016 · Saba Mahmood
More works by Saba Mahmood
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