Since critics first allegedthat feminism claimed tospeak universally for all
women, feminist researchers havebeen acutely aware ofthe limitations of 
genderas a single analyticalcategory. In fact, feministsare perhaps alone in
the academy in theextent to which theyhave embraced intersectionality – the 
relationshipsamong multiple dimensions andmodalities of social relations
and subject formations – as itselfa central category ofanalysis. One could 
evensay that intersectionality isthe most important theoreticalcontribution 
that women’s studies,in conjunction with relatedfields, has made sofar.1

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/426800

The Complexity of Intersectionality

In the present paper a research has been done on the essay ‘Can the Subaltern Speak’ by’ Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’. It has been explained into much simpler language about what the author conveys for better understanding and further references. Also the criticism has been done by various critiques from various sources which is helpful from examination point of view. The paper has been divided into various contexts with an introduction and the conclusions. Also the references has been written that depicts the sources of criticism.

/pdf/can-the-subaltern-speak-559i22edvt.pdf

Can the Subaltern Speak

Culture and Imperialism

WOMEN Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, by Saba Mahmood Princeton, NJ and Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press, 2004 xvi + 199 pages Gloss, to p 203 Refs to p 223 Index to p 233 $55 cloth; $1795 paper This book explores "the conceptual challenges that women's involvement in the Islamist movement poses to feminist theory in particular and to secular-liberal thought in general through an ethnographic account of the urban women's mosque movement that is part of the Islamic Revival in Cairo, Egypt" (p 2) However, Saba Mahmood promises more than an ethnography based on two years of fieldwork (1995-1997) She embarks on an intellectual journey of selfreflection in which she has come "to believe that a certain amount of self-scrutiny and skepticism is essential regarding the certainty of my own political commitments, when trying to understand the lives of others who do not necessarily share these commitments" (p xi) By refusing to take her own political stance as the necessary lens through which the analysis proceeds, the author opens up the possibility that "my analysis may come to complicate the vision of human flourishing that I hold most dear and which has provided the bedrock of my personal existence" (p xii) It is necessary, the author cautions as she embarks upon her inquiry, not to assume that the political position we uphold will necessarily be vindicated or provide the ground for our theoretical analysis As readers, we are invited to join her in "parochializing our assumptions, about the constitutive relationship between action and embodiment, resistance and agency, self and authority - that inform most feminist judgments from across a broad range of the political spectrum about non-liberal movements such as the women's mosque movement" (p 38) It is within that spirit that I have critiqued this book The five chapters are a running argument with and against key analytic concepts in liberal thought as these concepts have come to inform various strands of feminist theory through which non-liberal movements, such as the women's mosque movement, are analyzed Through each chapter Mahmood makes her ethnographic talk back to the normative liberal assumptions about human nature against which such a movement is held accountable "The Subject of Freedom" illustrates the different ways in which the activism of the mosque movement challenges the liberal conception of politics Mahmood analyzes the conception of self, moral agency, and politics that undergird the practices of this non-liberal movement in order to come to an understanding of the historical projects that animate it The pious subjects of the mosque movement occupy an uncomfortable place in feminist scholarship because they pursue practices and ideals embedded in a tradition that has historically accorded women a subordinate status "Topography of the Piety Movement" provides a brief sketch of the historical development against which the contemporary mosque movement has emerged and critically engages with themes within scholarship of Islamic modernism regarding such movements We sense the broad-based character of the women's mosque movement through the author's description and analysis of three of six mosques where she concentrated her fieldwork Despite the differences among the mosque groups - ranging from the poorest to the upper-middle income neighborhoods of Cairo - they all shared a concern for the increased secularization of Egyptian society and illustrate the increasing respect accorded to the da 'iya preacher/religious teacher (who undertakes da'waliterally call, summons or appeal that in the 20th century came to be associated with proselytization activity) "Women and the Da'wa" (pp 64-72) is particularly insightful, as the author juxtaposes the emergence of secular liberalism with the da'wa movement and concludes that "the modernist project of the regulation of religious sensibilities, undertaken by a range of postcolonial states (and not simply Muslim states), has elicited in its wake a variety of resistances, responses and challenges …

Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

Preface (1999) Preface (1990) 1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire I. 'Women' as the Subject of Feminism II. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire III. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary and Beyond V. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance VI. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement 2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix I. Structuralism's Critical Exchange II. Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade III. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender IV. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification V. Reformulating Prohibition as Power 3. Subversive Bodily Acts I. The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva II. Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity III. Monique Wittig - Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions Conclusion - From Parody to Politics

Postmodern Subjects, Postmodern BodiesThinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary WestYearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural PoliticsGender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

2 ‘notes toward a politics of location’

Cross-cultural dressing is usually seen as a Western activity, but elite Ottomans would have been by the end of the empire perfectly accustomed to wearing Western clothes - something which challenges current theories about cross-cultural dressing. The following considers photographs of cross-cultural dressing in books written by two friends: the Ottoman Zeyneb Hanum, who with her sister, Melek Hanum, collaborated with Pierre Loti on his novel, Les Desenchantees, and the English feminist and Turkophile, Grace Ellison. Zeyneb Hanum's epistolary account, A Turkish Woman's European Impressions (1913), was edited by Ellison, whose own story of visits to Turkey, An Englishwoman in a Turkish Harem, appeared two years later in 1915. In both books the authors appear cross-culturally dressed, yet the images register very differently.

/pdf/cross-cultural-dressing-in-the-late-ottoman-empire-2syyyn0p93.pdf

Cross-cultural Dressing in the Late Ottoman Empire

Style, Fashion And Media In South Asian Youth Cultures

Absent Bodies/Absent Subjects: The Political Unconscious of Postmodernism

This article explores how UK women encounter religious dress and behavior codes in religious work contexts. It compares two very different case studies: women working at faith-based organizations in the UK and women working for secular organizations who travel for work to Saudi Arabia. Using 65 semi-structured interviews, participant wardrobe photographs, and observation in regional modest fashion retail, the article analyzes women workers’ experience in religious contexts as a form of aesthetic labor. It investigates the gendered and religious components which structure women’s different responses to workplace modesty codes. Detailing the additional aesthetic and emotional labor demanded of women in crafting modest professional appearances in religious contexts, the research reveals continuities in how workplace modesty requirements impact on women’s occupational performance and sense of self. The conclusion argues that religion-related workplace modesty codes constitute a religiously-inflected form of organizational aesthetics that may operate simultaneously with, but be experienced differently from, secular-driven organizational aesthetics. We find that religious dress codes are arbitrated by the avoidance of shame, an affect accompanying the government of modesty for all involved. We find that organizations benefit from, but do not recognize or recompense, the additional aesthetic labor that modesty demands of women. 

Reina Lewis

Papers

2 ‘notes toward a politics of location’

Cross-cultural Dressing in the Late Ottoman Empire

Style, Fashion And Media In South Asian Youth Cultures

Absent Bodies/Absent Subjects: The Political Unconscious of Postmodernism

Esthetic Labor in Religious Contexts: Women Encountering Modest Dress in the Workplace in the UK and Saudi Arabia