Feminist reform of others’ lifeworlds risks destroying forms it fails to comprehend

Evidence

The ethical questions that imperial projects of this proportion pose for fern.. inist scholars and activists are also relevant to the more sedate context of the women’s mosque movement that has been the focus of this book. To the de.. gree that feminism is a politically prescriptive project, it requires the remaking of sensibilities and commitments of women whose lives contrast with femi.. nism’s emancipatory visions. Many feminists, who would oppose the use of military force , would have little diffi supporting projects of social reform aimed at transforming the attachments, commitments, and sensibilities of the kind that undergird the practices of the women I worked with, so that these women may be allowed to live a more enlightened existence. … But the questions that I have come to ask of myself, and which I would like to pose to the reader as well, are: Do my political visions ever run up against the responsibility that I incur for the destruction of life forms so that “unenlightened” women may be taught to live more freely ? Do I even fully comprehend the forms of life that I want so passionately to remake ? Would an intimate knowledge of lifeworlds distinct from mine ever lead me to question my own certainty about what I prescribe as a superior way of life for others? — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 1304

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Spivak’s ‘can the subaltern speak’ and the vault’s strategic-essentialism doubt; also parallels the moral responsibility question in the sacrifice article. — connects to: Ways of life are threatened because they are devalued, an issue of recognition — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice:…, 309
• DEEPTHINKING: The move linking imperial military feminism to well-intentioned social reform in the same chapter is genuinely paradigm-shifting — it refuses the comfortable liberal distinction.
• QUESTION: Her three self-posed questions effectively define an axiology for cross-cultural critique — worth mapping onto the Islamophobia and postcolonial clusters.