On Self-reflexivity

         We have been talking about self-reflexivity a lot in the seminar. We say that self-reflexivity is important if not central to good scholarship. There are various ways that it can manifest. One of them is identification with a label (oriental, post-colonial etc.). In the Introduction to Orientalism Said refers to himself as “the oriental subject”.This reaffirms a category that through his work Said tries to complicate. Aijaz Ahmed puts it eloquently, “One is transfixed by the very voice that one debunks”. Why would this be a problem?

         This is problematic on multiple levels. Said’s identification as an oriental subject creates a homogeneous group of oriental subjects (we are not told the different groupings within). For instance the Palestinian intellectual who is trained in and becomes a part of the western intellectual tradition would also be a part of it. And a Bedouin would also possibly be a part of it. Geographical differences aside (India, Middle East etc.) but the orient within the same spatial imagination would include different oriental subjects that the project doesn’t take into account. This homogeneous oriental subject is further re-affirmed by the archive that is accessed. Said’s archive is expansive to the point that it includes people ranging from Voltaire to Henry Kissinger. This expansive archive makes Said’s project strong because it includes everything cultural within the fold of the “discursive system” called orientalism. Moreover, it is also problematic because in shedding light on the various representations of oriental subjects one is bound to ask about the historicity and contexts of these representations. In the words of Gramsci (who Said invokes very early on in his writing) are the traces and inventory of these representations similar for every historical subject? It is integral to understand that self-reflexivity is deeply tied to self-imagination.

         Said admires Auerbach. I remember reading one of Said’s essays on Auerbach published many years before Orientalism. In Reflections on Exile and Orientalism too, Said cites the same story that the essay contained. Auerbach wrote Mimesis in Turkey where he arrived after he fled Germany. He wrote that book without having access to any material that he referenced. He wrote from memory.     Said affiliates with Auerbach. He sees his writings as being born out of exile too. Yet in Orientalism he doesn’t talk about the Orient/ oriental subjects which one would assume he would associate with as an “oriental subject” (like Auerbach wrote of the Western cannon--a tradition that he thought he belonged to even if it was threatened by fascism). What is this self-reflexivity? Is it any good? Does it aid scholarship or make us blind when we imagine ourselves as subjects in particular ways? I don’t know what its value is, but I do know self-reflexivity is almost inescapable. I remember Orhan Pamuk wrote somewhere that he writes because he hopes to understand why he is “so very, very angry at everyone”. That to my mind is also self-reflexivity. Perhaps it’s about making sense of one’s anger at the world (the Occidental world in Said's case).  

Mahmood and Spivak

I begin with the disclaimer again that I find Spivak borderline incomprehensible. Although, this piece was much better than 'Can Spivak write'?

When Mahmood discusses the issue of using frameworks developed within the Western tradition, I'm mostly on board with her argument that these issues need to be analyzed and discussed not from an 'alien' perspective. However, while I agree that the language and categories developed in the 'West' are sometimes incapable of dealing with or understanding issues of a specific context, I wonder how far this can be taken. Can we completely let go of the notion that in certain contexts, people do buy into instruments of their own oppression? A comparison with issues of class might be helpful here. For example, we saw during Chakrabarty's piece that certain members of the working class would give homage to people who were essentially, using them as cheap labors. Given this, what sort of position can we occupy between the two extremes of disregarding it as false consciousness and explaining it in some terms of cultural relativity?

To my mind, while I understood where Mahmood was coming from, I did not see what her solution to the problem was. In fact, it seemed as if she was deliberately side stepping the issue. I understand the fact that conceptions of female agency are culturally constituted and have to be read as such but does that mean that no broad based solidarity on an issue such as feminism is possible? Can there be no dialogue between the members of her Mosque Movement and those working towards equality elsewhere? In fact, on some level, if Saba Mahmood's argument is taken seriously, there can be no conversation between the 'Liberal Muslim' in her own work and a member of the 'Mosque Movement'. In many ways, while she emphasizes that agency should not be seen only in a political action paradigm, I don't see how any project of emancipation can be undertaken if we use her approach. If each person exercises agency in their own cultural formation, there can be no argument that pushes for political action.

All this is again in direct conversation with Spivak. In fact, having read Spivak's piece, I can situate the anxiety that animates Mahmood far better. But just as before, while I can understand the need to ask the fundamental question of "who is the other woman" and the accompanying need to condemn high handed, often US-Aid driven projects to 'liberate the poor brown women', how far do we push this? Is there any goal that the feminist movement across the globe, regardless of cultural specificity, agree to? Central to this question has to be the question of how much value we are willing to accord to individual's choice. For example, while we might be willing to accept, as we should, if a women of her own will wears the veil, would be willing to accept if a women of her own 'will', chooses to undergo FGM? In other words, how seriously do we take the argument that certain people can be indoctrinated to buy into their own oppression.

Lastly, I find value in the point that Spivak brings up and is something I've personally struggled with a lot. In many ways, all our arguments for education, and female autonomy seem to be about pushing women into the workforce. Is that not perpetuating capital? And as Spivak points out, more often than not, women, when pushed into the workforce work as cheap labors. How then do we solve this problem? What form then should a project of emancipation for women take? I understand the broader arguments about workplace equality etc, but even then, how do we connect the two struggles; of class politics and feminism?

Session 11

It's interesting that Saba Mahmood's book, at different points seems to speak directly to Spivak's. The oppression of "humanism" which Spivak* talks about in "French Feminism..." is precisely the argument that comes out in Saba Mahmood's piece- that of the oppression of these "humanist" ideas which enforce a particular worldview of what it means to be free and to exercise agency. She then argues how there is agency in actions women chose to take- how, in particular, they engaged in the Islamist revivalist movement.

My question, however, is about where you draw the distinction, and how you specify whether a choice was "free" or coerced. I felt this was, in some ways, missed out in Mahmood's formulation, but came out much clearer in Spivak's work.

Yes, to wear the veil may be a well thought out act, and it is dismissive, reductionist, and frankly- infuriating- of Western feminists ( I use the term broadly- this is to indicate the general trend, not everyone) to label this act as one of oppression and control. My problem comes in when this line of reasoning is taken too far- to it's other extreme, of complete "cultural relativity". So some acts are taken as political choices, when they may in fact, not have been. When some do, in fact, actively go against women's interests. And by women's interests I don't necessarily mean what parts of her body a woman may choose to display, but acts like circumcision which are relegated to the realm of culture and then not pursued as criminal. Since I sense an oncoming "No but that's CLEARLY wrong"- if the woman agrees that circumcision is what SHE wants to do, what then? Even in every day choices such as prioritizing marriage and the household over a professional career. The line between what is and isn't a "free" choice becomes blurry at best, and it becomes problematic to then figure out the way forward.

Can we perhaps say that it is the limitation of cutting off of certain choices that is oppressive then? That- to borrow from Kant- it is when a human being is treated as a tool, rather than an end in itself, when we have a problem? As to the women who may choose to "limit" their future choices- is a moralizing, superior attitude really fruitful?

Spivak, here, adds a lot more to our understanding. She rightly states that the question should not be "What can I do for them?" and this applies not only to our stereotypical white feminist, but to the third world feminist as well. It is not about correcting them, as Spivak points out, but about speaking to them. It is in conversation that you can come to a better, more fruitful understanding of the Subaltern women. Otherwise, the question of representation becomes less about who one is trying to represent, and more about who is the one doing the representing- the author/activist/feminist/thinker.

The former question is still self-centered, and once again, sidelines the woman by only viewing her through one lens. "...there has to be a simultaneous other focus: not merely who am I? but who is the other woman? How am I naming her? How does she name me? Is this part of the problematic I discuss?" 

Of course, whatever conversation or interaction takes place, happens within a power dynamic of class, perhaps race, religion and ethnicity as well, but it is still more useful than to once again limit who it is that one is writing about.

On a slightly different, but related note- Spivak also discusses the taking on by certain feminists of "masculine" values- of the argument that one needs to be tough, harsh and unrelenting to make it in fields outside of the household. This vein focuses on trying harder, adapting to the system as an individual instead of seriously rethinking its structural flaws. What is interesting is when we think about who it is that this mode of thinking benefits. The answer somehow leads back to the capitalist mode of production. It helps for women to adapt to the system, it helps to have them join the workfield (cheap labor!), it works to give statistics of how women employment has gone up. The picture falls apart when you ask- in what jobs? At what cost? What barriers did they have to face compared to their male counterparts?

So where this new woman seems free and independent to us- the question comes back to agency. Where do we draw the line between choice and coercion? Freedom and oppression? 

*: It is good to know Spivak can write normally as well. Which leads one to think she was deliberately obscure in "Can the Subaltern Speak?"

Re-thinking Agency

In her book, Politics of Piety, in relation to the Mosque Movement Saba Mahmood questions why such a large number of women across the Muslim world actively support a movement that does not favor their own “interests and agendas”? In explaining women’s attitude to the notion of piety and its practice, she subverts existing modes of thinking about Muslim women’s agency “beyond the simplistic registers of submission and patriarchy”. In the Subject of Freedom, Mahmood expands on this insufficiency that attend to feminist scholarship which through Western media portrays Muslim women as suppressed by religion and patriarchal oppression. She argues that the normative political subject of poststructuralist feminist theory often remains a liberatory one, whose agency is conceptualized on the binary model of subordination and subversion. In doing so, western scholarship elides dimensions of human action that does not map onto the logic of repression and resistance elsewhere.  There is a need to then understand certain behaviors “in their own terms”, something that first, undermines the totalizing image of feminist theory and reinforces the significance of cultural context- What are then the limits of feminist scholarship?  Secondly, it allows for a departure from a conceptualization of social change that focuses on visible and obvious sites of resistance to subordination in order to understand a movement that is focused on moral reform and would not be considered political by most scholars. Mahmood, taking her lead from James Boddy’s ethnographic study argues that women’s agency can be understood as part of a “subordinate discourse- as a medium for the cultivation of women’s consciousness”. To my mind, the strength of her work lies in the attempt at articulating non-explicit/ blatant forms of feminine agency- her insistence on what she calls “moments of disruption and articulation of points of points of opposition to male authority”. In analyzing Boddy she says “even in instances when an explicit feminist agency is difficult to locate, there is a tendency among scholars to look for expressions and moments of resistance that challenge male domination”. It is the subtle modes of agency that suggest not just the complexities and nuances that govern human behavior but also the various other ways in which we may come to think of how women find ways of “voicing” themselves. How else can we expand the question of whether the subaltern can speak? Spivak argued, in relation to the case of sati that that the women’s voice, her agency is irretrievable as it is lost between two opposing patriarchal discourses that attempt to define the parameters of her free will. On the other hand, Politics of Piety is hopeful in the sense that she lays out the different modalities of agency that go beyond resistance. She tries to show how despite dominant forms of Western knowledge, one can locate the voice of the non-Western woman and come to terms with her experience and subject formation.  She starts with the formation of the virtue of shyness: woman cultivates the virtue of shyness by repeated action. For the women in the mosque movement the external shapes the internal, though the secular woman she describes sees the cultivation of shyness as passivity. Mahmood evaluates Judith Butler’s concept of performativity and concludes that it does not describe adequately the mosque movement even though it is based on the concept of repeated performance for self-formation and creation of agency. In contrast, she examines how women navigate marriage in a patriarchal society. The Mosque movement women are agents even in the patriarchal system because they recognize their responsibility to deal with their situation even if they cannot change it. To my mind, this points to agency itself being a layered concept. If patriarchal system exerts agency upon the woman, what is the form of a female counter-agency?  Is this a kind of an alternative form of power? Thus, Mahmood looks at different ways women deal with husbands who are not pious. How does one practice da’wa in a patriarchal system if the husband disapproves? Women navigate the textual tradition to choose how to deal with it. This is another modality of agency that dispels the popular binary of resistance/subordination as the only way of looking at female agency.  Or in other words, can we think of resistance as comprising a range of human actions?

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.

Politics of Piety

Saba Mehmood's work for me, exposes the biasness of western liberal values and feminism in the way it deals with what doesn't conform with their set of beliefs: piety of muslim women. Saba comments on issues such as the veil and dealings with the oppposite sex by examples and uses them to elucidate the paradoxes between different approaches. The discussion on the veil where a particular woman calls the veil a way to achieve piety is particularly interesting. Her view is that when you wear the veil for the first time you are embarassed and later, as you get used to it, when you take of the veil you feel immodest thus the difference between the internal and external feelings of modesty is bridged by the veil. Although I find this reasoning for wearing the veil flawed, it presents the perspective of the woman wearing the veil. Like Saba mentions Kant (or was it Foucalt...) saying that the moral act is the one that is done conciously. not out of habit, I would still agree that a veiled woman, if she went through an internal dialougue and did not just conform to the norm is a moral act and not just an act.
In this work the post structuralist problem of not having (worthy) local traditions and idioms to explain a position opposite to Western Liberal ideals is also shown as Saba constantly quotes western writers to point the subalternity of the woman's position. The Western Liberal has to be made to understand in his own way o/w the project is lost onto them, while the muslim pious woman have to use the idiom of logic to convince the Western Liberal to remit their position (as in case of Nadia and Iman where Saba does not understand the reason for Nadia's advice.)
This reading speaks very deeply to the issues of false conciousness and I believe in quoting Kant (or Foucalt..) Saba gives us a very useful way of looking at conciousness. I would define it as a conciousa act, that does not rise from a norm but internal dialogue.
Furthermore, in case of the example of Jamal and Abir we see how myths, rituals, traditions and fantasies can take a central, powerful position in our lives. Men created/perpetutated patriarchy and systems of religion to govern womens' sexuality. These crackens sometimes become bigger than them and despite the powers vested in them by way of patriarchy they are yet unable to control women. Instead women use these systems to perpetuate their positioning in partriarchal societies weielding the ultimate rebellion. 

Saba Mehmood and Politics of Piety

One of the most pertinent question that is brought up is: how might be recognise instances of women's resistance without "misattributing to them forms of consciousness or politics that are not part of their experience- something like a feminist consciousness or feminist politics?" It is in this regard that Saba Mehmood highlights the importance of challenging the notion of "resistence" itself. Citing the example of young Bedouin women, she suggests how simple acts such as the type of clothing one wears should not only be viewed as opposition to dominant relations of power. Rather, they should be understood as reinscribing alternative forms of power that are rooted in practices of capitalist consumerism and urban bourgeois values and aesthetics. Abu-Lughod beautifully summaries this idea of locating resistence necessarily as a failure of system(s) of oppression when when she writes: "it seems to me that we respect everyday resistance not just by arguing for the dignity or heroism of the resisters but by letting their practices teach us about complex interworkings of historically changing structures of power".

Mehmood argues that if the ability to effect change in the world and in oneself is historically and culturally specific (both in terms of what constitutes "change" and the means by which it is effected), then the meaning and sense of agency cannot be fixed in advance, but must emerge through an analysis of the particular concepts that enable specific modes of being, responsibility and effectivity. Thus, what is viewed passivity from a progressive point of view might actually be a form of agency. Her insistence on holding open the possibility that we may come to ask of politics a whole series of questions that seemed settled when we first embarked upon the inquiry, is a point I'm particularly interested in.