Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (12 page)

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Although Foucault draws a distinction between "code..oriented" and "ethics..oriented" moralities, he does not consider them incommensurable. For example, he argues that Christianity has had both moralities fu side by side, even if, during diff periods, the relative em.. phasis on each has varied (Foucault 1990, 30).

sumes that there are many diff ways of forming a relationship with a moral code, each of which establishes a particular relationship between ca.. pacities of the self (will, reason, desire, action, and so on) and a particular

norm. The precise embodied form that obedience to a moral code takes is not a contingent but a
necessary
element of ethical analysis in that it is a means to describing the specifi constitution of the ethical subject. In other words, it is

only through an analysis of the specifi shape and character of ethical prac.. tices that one can apprehend the kind of ethical subject that is formed. These practices are technical practices for Foucault and include corporeal and body techniques, spiritual exercises, and ways of conducting oneself-all of which are "positive" in the sense that they are manifest in, and immanent to, every..

day life. Notably, the importance of these practices does not reside in the meanings they signify to their practitioners, but in the
work they do
in consti-

tuting the individual; similarly, the body is not a medium of signifi on but the substance and the necessary tool through which the embodied subject is formed.

I fi Foucault's analysis of ethical formation particularly helpful for con- ceptualizing agency beyond the confi of the binary model of enacting and subverting norms. Specifi ly, he draws our attention to the contribution of external forms to the development of human ethical capacities, to specifi modes of human agency. Instead of limiting agency to those acts that disrupt existing power relations, Foucault's work encourages us to think of agency: (a) in terms of the capacities and skills required to undertake particular kinds of moral actions; and (b) as ineluctably bound up with the historically and cul- turally specifi disciplines through which a subject is formed. The paradox of subjectivation is central to Foucault's formulation in that the capacity for ac- tion is ·enabled and created by specifi relations of subordination. To clarify this paradox, we might consider the example of a virtuoso pianist who submits herself to the often painful regime of disciplinary practice, as well as to the hi.. erarchical structures of apprenticeship, in order to acquire the ability-the requisite agency-to play the instrument with mastery. Importantly, her agency is predicated upon her ability to be taught, a condition classically re - ferred to as "docility." Although we have come to associate docility with the abandonment of agency, the term literally implies the malleability required of someone in order for her to be instructed in a particular skill or knowledge a meaning that carries less a sense of passivity than one of struggle, effort, ex- ertion, and achievement.51

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One of the meanings listed for docility in the
Oxf English Dictiona
is: "the quality of teachableness, readiness and willingness to receive instruction, aptness to be taught, amenability to training" (OED 1999 ).

modes ofsubjectivation and the mosque movement

The approach I am suggesting can be further elaborated by reference to the four elements Foucault posits as central to the study of ethics. This fourfold scheme, however, cannot be taken as a blueprint for the study of ethics; rather, the utility of Foucault's analytical framework lies in the fact that it raises a series of questions about the relationship between moral codes and ethical conduct, questions that are answerable only through an examination of specifi practices through which historically located moral norms are lived. The fi component, which Foucault calls the "substance of ethics," refers to those aspects of the self that pertain to the domain of ethical judgment and practice. The substance of ethics in medieval Christianity, for example, was fl and desire, whereas the part of oneself most subject to analysis and labor in the modem period is feelings (Foucault 1 997b, 263 ). The second aspect of
ethics,
which
Foucault calls the "mode of subjectivation," refers to how peo-
ple are incited or called upon to recognize their moral obligations-for exam.. ple, whether through divine law, rational rule, or cosmological order. As Nikolas Rose has pointed out, this aspect of ethics draws our attention to the

kind
of authori
through which a subject comes to recognize the truth about

herself, and the relationship she establishes between herself and those who are deemed to hold the truth ( Rose 1 998,
27).
The third aspect of ethics pertains to the operations one performs on oneself in order to become an ethical subject-a process analyzed under the label "techniques of the self." Finally,

the fourth component of ethics is
telos:
the mode of being one seeks to achieve

within a historically specifi authoritative model.

Foucault's analysis of ethics is usefu for understanding key aspects of the women's mosque movement I worked with, and of the piety movement in general. The practices of these movements presuppose the existence of a di.. vine plan for human life-embodied in the Quran, the exegetical literature, and the moral codes derived therefrom-that each individual is responsible for following. Participants in the mosque movement are summoned to recog.. nize their moral obligations through invocations of divine texts and edifi .. tory literature. This form of morality, however, is not strictly juridicaL There are no centralized authorities that enforce the moral code and penalize infrac.. tions. Rather, the mosque movement has a strong individualizing impetus that requires each person to adopt a set of ascetic practices for shaping moral con.. duct. 52 Each individual must interpret the moral codes, in accord with tradi..

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Chapter 2 describes the ways in which this individualizing trend has been accelerated in the twentieth century.

tional guidelines, in order to discover how she, as an individual, may best re.. alize the divine plan for her life.

In comparison with other currents within the Islamic Revival, the mosque movement is unique in the extraordinary degree of pedagogical emphasis it places on outward markers of religiosity-ritual practices, styles of comporting oneself, dress, and so on. The participants in the mosque movement regard these practices as the necessary and ineluctable means for realizing the form of religiosity they are cultivating. For the mosque participants, it is the various movements of the body that comprise the material substance of the ethical do.. main. There exists an elaborate system of techniques by which the body's ac.. tions and capacities can be examined and worked upon, both individually and collectively. The mosque lessons are one important space where training in this kind of ascetic practice is acquired. As I will explore later, women learn to analyze the movements of the body and soul in order to establish coordination between inner states ( intentions, movements of desire and thought, etc. ) and outer conduct (gestures, actions, speech, etc. ). Indeed, this distinction be.. tween inner and outer aspects of the self provides a central axis around which the panoply of ascetic practices is organized. As we will see in chapter 4, this principle of coordination has implications for how we might analyze the con.. ceptual relationship the body articulates with the self and with others, and by extension, the self's variable relationships to structures of authority and power. The teleological model that the mosque participants seek to realize in their lives is predicated on the exemplary conduct of the Prophet and his Compan.. ions. It would be easy to dismiss this ideal as a nostalgic desire to emulate a by.. gone past, a past whose demands can never be met within the exigencies of the present. Yet to do so would be to miss the signifi nce of such a telos for practical ethical conduct. Among mosque participants, individual efforts to.. ward self.realization are aimed not so much at discovering one's "true" desires and feelings, or at establishing a personal relationship with God, but at han.. ing one's rational and emotional capacities so as to approximate the exem.. plary model of the pious self (see chapter 4). The women I worked with did not regard trying to emulate authorized models of behavior as an external so.. cial imposition that constrained individual freedom. Rather, they treated so.. cially authorized forms of performance as the potentialities-the ground if you will-through which the self is realized. As a result, one of the questions this book raises is: How do we conceive of individual freedom in a context where the distinction between the subject's own desires and socially prescribed per.. formances cannot be easily presumed, and where submission to certain forms of (external) authority is a condition for achieving the subject's potentiality?

In other words, how does one make the question of politics integral to the analysis of the architecture of the self?

ETH ICS AN D PO LITI CS

Two objections may be raised to my proposal that we think about agency in terms of ethical formation, particularly in its Foucauldian formulation. One, it may be argued that despite my objections to a humanist understanding of the sovereign subject, I have in fact smuggled back in a subject.. centered theory of agency by locating agency within the efforts of the self; and two, it may be ar.. gued that I have sidestepped the crucial question of politics and social trans.. formation that the formulation of agency.. as..resistance was primarily oriented to address. The fi objection is, I believe, based on some common misunder.. standings about what it means to say that the subject is an effect of power. It is often presumed that to speak about ethical self..formation necessarily requires a self..conscious agent who constitutes herself in a quasi..Promethean manner, enacting her will and hence asserting "her own agency" against structural forces. This presumption is incorrect on a number of scores. Even though I fo.. cus on the practices of the mosque participants, this does not mean that their activities and the operations they perform on themselves are products of their independent wills; rather, my argument is that these activities are the prod.. ucts of authoritative discursive traditions whose logic and power far exceeds the consciousness of the subjects they enable. The kind of agency I am ex.. ploring here does not belong to the women themselves, but is a product of the historically contingent discursive traditions in which they are located. The women are summoned to recognize themselves in te�ms of the virtues and codes of these traditions, and they come to measure themselves against the ideals furbished by these traditions; in this important sense, the individual is contingently made possible by the discursive logic of the ethical traditions she enacts. Self..reflexivity is not a universal human attribute here but, as Foucault suggested, a particular kind of relation to oneself whose form fundamentally depends on the practices of subjectivation through which the individual is produced.