Gender and the Conceptualization of Religion and Islam

The critique of power asymmetries reproduced by Eurocentric and essentialist conceptualizations of generic terms and analytical concepts is well-established in religious studies and gender studies, especially when investigating Islam. Yet each discipline is in danger of omitting the most critical di...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Implicit religion
Main Author: Maltese, Giovanni 1981- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Equinox 2023
In: Implicit religion
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Singapore / Periodical article / Geschichte 1940 / Religion / Concept formation / Islam / Christianity / Gender composition / History 1870-1940
RelBib Classification:AG Religious life; material religion
AX Inter-religious relations
BJ Islam
CA Christianity
KBM Asia
NBE Anthropology
NCF Sexual ethics
TJ Modern history
TK Recent history
Further subjects:B Feminism
B Gender Studies
B femininity / masculinity
B Islam and gender
B 1930s / 40s South and Southeast Asia
B Global Religious History
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Description
Summary:The critique of power asymmetries reproduced by Eurocentric and essentialist conceptualizations of generic terms and analytical concepts is well-established in religious studies and gender studies, especially when investigating Islam. Yet each discipline is in danger of omitting the most critical discussions of the other. Discussions about conceptualizations of religion and Islam, even those adapting theoretically sophisticated global history approaches, largely ignore gender. Scholars of gender studies, in turn, have barely queried or nuanced "religion" and "Islam" as categories. Thus, they fail to take into account how conceptualizations of religion and Islam as generic terms have affected the power relations under scrutiny. This article aims to address this momentous mutual exclusion by examining a tract published in 1940 in the context of Anglophone Southeast and South Asian Muslim intellectual circles. Drawing on Judith Butler’s critical engagement with Luce Irigaray and on Butler’s notion of subversion by thoroughgoing appropriation and redeployment and situating this case study within the mentioned mutual exclusion, I argue that studying the relation between concepts of femininity and masculinity and concepts of religion and Islam poses important questions regarding colonial, androcentric, and phallogocentric epistemologies underlying contemporary religious studies and gender studies. I contend that religion-making and gender-making should not be investigated apart from each other.
ISSN:1743-1697
Contains:Enthalten in: Implicit religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1558/imre.23274