Gender and Religion Research Centre Seminar
Department of the Study of Religions
School of Oriental and African Studies
Rm 336, 1:00-2:30 pm
Friday 16th March 2001
'Gender and Feminist Theory in a Post-Colonial World of Religious Bodies'
Dr. Mary Keller,
University of Stirling
Abstract:
The charge has been raised by Oyeronke Oyewumi in her book The Invention of
Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses that "gender"
as an analytical category is so deeply embedded in Western models of
subjectivity that it has become a category that inflicts epistemological
violence in cross-cultural study. Other scholars have not attacked the
category of gender itself, but have delivered fierce criticisms of Western
feminist analyses as perpetuating a colonializing mentality in the
representation of indigenous women and women of color as "oppressed
sisters." Critiques of Western, feminist neo-colonialism can be found in
Afro-American, Native American, Indian, South American, and Asian feminist
work, which argue that gender is not the priority as an analytical tool for
understanding experience for "people of color", but rather the effects of
race (that Fanon called the epidemialisation of subjectivity) are the
primary axis of power with which they must contend in coalition with their
people, not in a universal coalition of women.
Within this wider debate, religious bodies occupy a pervasive and uniquely
charged location as sites where feminist theory comes into conflict with
indigenous evaluations. For example, the contentious debates regarding the
representation and evaluation of practices such as sati and female
circumcision (Spivak, Mani, Mugo), are debates that hinge on the figure of
the religious bodies of women though this element of the debate is rarely
made explicit. Scholars of religion can contribute an important shift for
the post-colonial, feminist discussion of women's religious lives by
identifying a more powerful paradigm for analysing religious lives based on
practice-oriented understandings of religiousness. The religious studies
scholar is also uniquely positioned to contribute to the contemporary
comparative study of women's lives because we have developed strategies that
recognize the priority of a person's cosmological concerns and that, within
the umbrella of belonging to a tradition in which men and women feel equally
involved, there are identifiable spheres of difference for men's and women's
lives.
In speaking to colleagues unfamiliar with religious studies who are likely
to think of religiousness as a kind of anachronistic mystification, I would
argue that the religiousness of bodies will not go away. Rather, scholars
will be challenged to make sense of the importance religious practices
continue to play in a post-colonial context, practices related to the
recollection and valorisation of indigenous memory and epistemology.
Religious studies scholars have long understood that gender is of crucial
importance, but it is high time we listen to post-colonial feminists and
recognise that gender is a secondary concern that follows after the analysis
of overarching models of personhood and belonging which are central to
religious practice.
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