Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (10 page)

37
For example, in discussing the question of agency, Buder writes, "an account of iterability of the subject . . . shows how agency may well consist in opposing and transforming the social terms by which it is spawned" (Butler 1997c, 29). Note the equivalence drawn here between agency and the ability of performatives to oppose normative structures. Such oft�repeated statements stand in tension with her own cautionary phrases, in this case within the same text, when she ad� monishes the reader that agency should not be conceptualized as "always and only opposed to power" (Butler 1997c, 17 ).

'8
Amy Hollywood, in her reading of Buder, suggests that Buder inherits her valorization of re� signifi n-the propensity of utterances and speech acts to break from their prior signifi tions-fron1 Derrida. But whereas Derrida, Hollywood argues, remains ethically and politically neutral toward this characteristic of language and signs, Buder often reads resignifi as polit� ically positive (Hollywood 2002, 107 n. 57).

politics/9 and in doing so has emphasized counter..hegemonic modalities of agency.40 An important consequence of these aspects of Butler's work ( and its reception) is that her analysis of the power of norms remains grounded in an agonistic framework, one in which norms suppress and/or are subverted, are reiterated and/or resignified-so that one gets little sense of the work norms perform beyond this register of suppression and subversion within the consti.. tution of the subject.

Norms are not only consolidated and/or subverted, I would suggest, but per.. formed, inhabited, and experienced in a variety of ways. This is a point on which I think Butler would not disagree; indeed, in her writings she often re.. verts to the trope of the "psyche" and the language of psychoanalysis to cap.. ture the density of ties through which the individual is attached to the subjec.. tivating power of norms (see, for example, Butler 1997c). Butler's exploration of this density often remains, however, subservient on the one hand to her overall interest in tracking the possibilities of resistance to the regulating power of normativity,41 and on the other hand to her model of performativity, which is primarily conceptualized in terms of a dualistic structure of consoli.. dation/resignifi ion, doing/undoing, of norms.

the subject ofnorms

I would like to push the question of norms further in a direction that I think allows us to deepen the analysis of subject formation and also address the

w
For Butler's most recent engagement with this project, see Butler, Laclau, and
Z
izek 2000. It is clear fr this text that while Butler is uncomfortable, more so than her interlocutors, with a universalist theory of radical change, she remains interested in theorizing about conditions con, ducive to creating the possibility of radical democratic politics.

40
Consider, for example, the following statement by Butler in which she immediately qualifi her objection to a subject,centered theory of agency with the reassurance that her objections do not foreclose the possibility of resistance to subjection: "If . . . subjectivation is bound up with subjection . . . then it will not do to invoke a notion of the subject as the ground of agency, since the subject is itself produced through operations of power that delimit in advance what the aims and expanse of agency will be. It does not follow from this insight, however, that we are all always already trapped, and that there is no point ofresistance to regulation or to the form of subjection

that regulation takes" ( Butler, Laclau, and
Z
izek 2000, 151 ).

41
Butler argues, for example, that Foucault's notion of subjectivation can be productively sup, plemented with certain reformulations of psychoanalytic theory. For Butler, the force of this sup.. plementation seems to reside, notably, in its ability to address the "problem of locating or ac, counting for resistance: Where does resistance to or in disciplinary subject formation take place? Does [Foucault's] reduction of the psychoanalytically rich notion of the psyche to that of the im, prisoning soul [in
Disdpline and Punish]
eliminate the possibility of resistance to normalization and to subject formation, a resistance that emerges precisely from the incommensurability be, tween psyche and subject ?" ( Butler 1997c, 87).

problem of reading agency primarily in terms of resistance to the regularizing impetus of structures of normativity. In particular, I would like to expand But.. ler's insight that norms are not simply a social imposition on the subject but constitute the very substance of her intimate, valorized interiority. But in do.. ing so, I want to move away from an agonistic and dualistic framework-one in which norms are conceptualized on the model of doing and undoing, con.. solidation and subversion-and instead think about the variety of ways in which norms are lived and inhabited, aspired to, reached for, and consum.. mated. As I will argue below, this in tum requires that we explore the rela.. tionship between the immanent form a normative act takes, the model of sub.. jectivity it presupposes (specifi articulations of volition, emotion, reason, and bodily expression), and the kinds of authority upon which such an act re.. lies. Let me elaborate by discussing the problems a dualistic conception of norms poses when analyzing the practices of the mosque movement.

Consider, for example, the Islamic virtue of female modesty
(al..- al
..

�ya') that many Egyptian Muslims uphold and value (discussed in chapter 5). Despite a consensus about its importance, there is considerable debate about how this virtue should be lived, and particularly about whether its realization requires the donning of the veil. A majority of the participants in the mosque movement ( and the larger piety movement of which the mosque movement is an integral part) argue that the veil is a necessary component of the virtue of modesty because the veil both expresses "true modesty" and is the means through which modesty is acquired. They draw, therefore , an ineluctable rela.. tionship between the norm ( modesty) and the bodily form it takes (the veil) such that the veiled body becomes the necessary means through which the

virtue of modesty is both created
and
expressed. In contrast to this under..

standing is a position ( associated with prominent secularist writers) that ar.. gues that the virtue of modesty is no different than any other human attrib.. ute-such as moderation or humility: it is a facet of character but does not commit one to any particular expressive repertoire such as donning the veil. Notably, these authors oppose the veil but not the virtue of modesty, which they continue to regard as appropriate to feminine conduct. The veil, in their view, has been invested with an importance that is unwarranted when it comes to judgments about female modesty (see chapter 5).

The debate about the veil is only one part of a much larger discussion in Egyptian society wherein political diff between Islamists and secular.. ists, and even among Islamists of various persuasions, are expressed through arguments about ritual performative behavior. While I will return to this dis .. cussion in chapter 4, what I want to point out here is that the most interesting features of this debate lie not so much in whether the norm of modesty is sub.. verted or enacted, but in the radically diff rent ways in which the norm is sup..

posed to be lived and inhabited. Notably, each view posits a very different conceptualization of the relationship between embodied behavior and the virtue or norm of modesty: for the pietists, bodily behavior is at the core of the proper realization of the norm, and for their opponents, it is a contingent and unnecessary element in modesty's enactment.

Some of the questions that follow from this observation are: How do we an- alyze the work that the body performs in these different conceptualizations of the norm? Is performative behavior differently understood in each of these views and, if so, how? How is the self differently tied to the authority the norm commands in these two imaginaries? Furthermore, what sorts of ethical and political subjects are presupposed by these two imaginaries, and what forms of ethico..political life do they enable or foreclose ? These questions cannot be answered as long as we remain within the binary logic of the doing and undo.. ing of norms. They require, instead, that we explode the category of norms into its constituent elements-to examine the immanent form that norms take, and to inquire into the attachments their particular morphology gener- ates within the topography of the self. My reason for urging this move has to do with my interest in understanding how different modalities of moral.. ethical action contribute to the construction of particular kinds of subjects, subjects whose political anatomy cannot be grasped without applying critical scrutiny to the precise form their embodied actions take.

This manner of analyzing contemporary debates about Islamic virtues or norms also has consequences for how we might understand the political ef.. fects that the piety movement has generated within Egyptian society. Scholars of Islamist movements have often argued that the resurgence of Islamic forms

of sociability (such as veiling,
_
increased interest in the correct performance of Islamic rituals, and the proliferation of Islamic charities) within a range of

Muslim societies is best understood as an expression of
resista
against West.. em politico..cultural domination as well as a form of social protest against the