Saba Mahmood on Concepts and Their Unequal Careers

Abstract

How should issues of historical and cultural specificity inform both the analytics and politics of any feminist project? —Politics of Piety (1) How do we render such historical differences conceptually visible, while at the same time being attentive to the globally shared features of secularism? —Religious Difference in a Secular Age (10) ANYBODY WHO HAS SEEN Saba Mahmood engrossed in a heated debate would have seen her signature drive to question key concepts and the distinct social and political imaginaries they release in the world. In her two major works, Politics of Piety (2005) and Religious Difference in a Secular Age (2016a), Mahmood’s writings likewise deliver a searing inquiry into the universalizing ideals of freedom and equality, two core pillars of secular-liberalism that have animated feminist and secularist movements with transnational reach. Central to her scholarly ethic is a mode of critique that counters the taken-for-granted terms often translated unthinkingly across historical periods and geographic regions. Mahmood’s critical practice was one of interrogating the unequal power relations that concepts carry and as they unfold in specific times and spaces. To the extent that her vigilance was directed toward the hierarchies at play in any conceptual endeavor, she might also be remembered for her commitment to cultivating the as-yet-unforeseen ends of freedom and equality (Mahmood 2016b).