Docility literally means teachable malleability, implying struggle and exertion rather than passivity.

Evidence

To clarify this paradox, we might consider the example of a virtuoso pianist who submits herself to the often painful regime of disciplinary practice, as well as to the hi.. erarchical structures of apprenticeship, in order to acquire the ability-the requisite agency-to play the instrument with mastery. Importantly, her agency is predicated upon her ability to be taught, a condition classically re - ferred to as “docility.” Although we have come to associate docility with the abandonment of agency, the term literally implies the malleability required of someone in order for her to be instructed in a particular skill or knowledge a meaning that carries less a sense of passivity than one of struggle, effort, exertion, and achievement. — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 222

Categorization

• DEFINE: Etymological rescue of ‘docility’ from its association with passivity.
• ADDENDUM: Complicates liberal-feminist assumptions that docility/submission to religious discipline equals loss of agency, relevant to the immodesty moral-panic cluster.