Resistance acts often reinscribe capitalist and bourgeois power rather than escape it

Evidence

As a corrective, Abu..Lughod recommends that resistance be used as a “di.. agnostic of power” ( 1990b, 42), to locate the shifts in social relations of power that influence the resisters as well as those who dominate. To illustrate her point, Abu..Lughod gives the example of young Bedouin women who wear sexy lingerie to challenge parental authority and dominant social mores. She suggests that instead of simply reading such acts as moments of opposition to, and escape from, dominant relations of power, they should also be understood as reinscribing altern forms of power that are rooted in practices of capi.. talist consumerism and urban bourgeois values and aesthetics ( 1990b, 50). — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 78

Categorization

• XREF: Complicates the notion of female agency-through-consumption that resurfaces in debates on the veil and fashion; connects to Islamophobia coverage that paints Western dress choices as inherently liberating. — connects to: Capitalism channels political resistance into distorted forms like right-wing anti-corporate nostalgia — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1538; Small consistent acts of resistance can reshape institutions over decades — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 119
• SEED: The sexy-lingerie example is a springboard for an essay on how ‘choosing’ Western dress (or modesty) is not equivalent to freedom — neither act escapes embedded power structures.