Saba Mehmood

Saba Mehmood’s book is interesting because of the emphasis that it places on historical and cultural difference. Using the example of her field work in Eygpt, Mehmood argues that one should not understand female agency in terms of the language and experience of the West. Rather than searching for acts of “resistance” by females trapped in “sub-ordination”, one must understand that these terms owe their existence to the historical and cultural context of the West. The idea of female subordination because of male dominance originated out of a particular set of circumstances that are restricted to the West and hence cannot be used to analyze the Non-west. When one understands that the societies of the Non-west are inherently different from the societies of the West, one realizes that it is not possible to describe the actions and lives of individuals in the Non-west using terms that are specific to the West.

Scholarship has been repeatedly confused by the actions of women in the Non-west, especially actions that are the result of the “Islamic revival” that has taken place in much of the Muslim world. The increased usage of the veil, for example, has been explained using economic or sociological arguments. Some academics say that the increased prevalence of the veil makes sense because it reduces the cost of clothing for working class women, others contend that the act of wearing a veil is an act of resistance to western objectification of women. Some might even argue that women wearing the veil is evidence for them “buying into” their oppression at the hands of dominant male hegemony.

Saba Mehmood on the other hand would argue that scholarship is reading the language of the Western experience into the actions of women in the Muslim world. Rather than understanding the individuals in these societies using ideas that pertain to western society, scholarship must see their actions as part of an alternative mode of knowing. The increasing number of women who choose to wear the veil is neither an act of resistance nor one that is motivated by economic necessity. Rather it is a manifestation of female agency that is constituted by an alternative mode of knowing that lies outside of the conventional Western mode.