Political certitude must be suspended to understand others’ lives

Evidence

I have come to question our conviction, however well.- ntioned, that other forms of human fl and life worlds are necessarily inferior to the solutions we have devised under the ban.. ner of “secular.-left” politics-as if there is a singularity of vision that unites us under this banner, or as if the politics we so proudly claim has not itself pro.. duced some spectacular human disasters. This self..questioning does not mean that I have stopped struggling or fi against the inj ustices-whether they pertain to issues of gender, ethnicity, class, or sexuality-that currently com.. pound my social existence. What it does mean is that I have come to believe that a certain amount of selfand skepticism is essential regarding the certainty of my own political commitments, when trying to understand the lives of others who do not necessarily share these commitments. — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 26

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels Spivak’s insistence on interrogating the privileged position of the critic; also echoes the vault’s critique of Western epistemic frames.
• APHORISMS: The stance that self-doubt, not generosity, is required before trying to understand those who don’t share one’s politics reads as genuine methodological advice.