In “The
Subject of Freedom,” the first chapter
of Politics of Piety by Saba Mahmood, the author addresses pressing
topics including women’s agency, positive
and negative freedom, and subjectivation. She does so within the context of the
women’s mosque movement,
which is part of the larger Islamic Revival, also known as the Islamic
Awakening. It is crucial to develop a greater understanding of the text, to
first define each of these terms. This reflection will examine women’s agency, freedom,
and subjectivation as well as explore examples of their influence or practice
in modern society and culture outside the frames Mahmood constructs.
Women’s agency, according
to Mahmood’s perspective, is “understood as the
capacity to realize one’s own interests
against the weight of custom, tradition, transcendental will, or other
obstacles (whether individual or collective)” (Mahmood,
8). Intrinsic to women’s agency is the
yearning for self-expression, sovereignty, and autonomy. As it regards positive
and negative freedom, negative freedom is “the
absence of external obstacles to self-guided choice and action, whether imposed
by the state, corporations, or private individuals” (11). In contrast,
positive freedom is “the capacity to
realize an autonomous will, one generally fashioned in accord with the dictates
of ‘universal reason’ or ‘self-interest,’ and hence
unencumbered by the weight of custom, transcendental will, and tradition” (11). Lastly,
Judith Butler helps explain the dichotomy posited by subjectivation, explaining
that, “the very processes
and conditions that secure a subject’s
subordination are also the means by which she becomes a self-conscious identity
and agent” (17). These terms
are necessary to understand further because they correlate to the poststructuralist
feminist movement, which is under critique in this piece. They can be applied
to women’s movements within
the context of patriarchal hierarchies, which seek to subjugate and marginalize
women’s sects, and yet within
which women are able to access and acquire agency.
Saba
Mahmood touches upon crucial elements of poststructural feminism and women’s modern social
movements in Politics of Piety. Specifically within the first chapter, “The Subject of
Freedom,” Mahmood illustrates
the power of woman’s agency, the
difference between positive and negative freedom, and the paradox of
subjectivation. There are myriad expressions and examples of woman’s agency,
subversion, and reclamation throughout the world. The world over, women are
discovering that the tools which were meant to objectivity and oppress them are
the means by which they will escape marginalization, assert their worth and
value, and achieve positive freedom in this lifetime.
Works Cited
Mahmood, Saba. Politics
of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
UP, 2005. Print.
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