Pious subjects are constituted by virtuous performance rather than preceding it.

Evidence

The mosque participants’ understanding of virtues may be ren.. dered in Butlerian terms in that they regard virtuous performances not so much as manifestations of their will but more as actions that produce the will in its particularity. In this conception, one might say that the pious subject does not precede the performance of normative virtues but is enacted through the performance . Virtuous actions may well be understood as performatives ; they enact that which they name: a virtuous self. — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 1107

Categorization

• XREF: Directly challenges the liberal-feminist premise of an autonomous pre-existing subject; connects to the vault’s Spivak/postcolonial-theory cluster on the constructed subject.
• DEFINE: Mahmood’s key move: reading mosque practice through performativity inverts the will-first model of action.