Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (57 page)

To many readers this conversation may exemplify an obsequious deference to social norms that both refl and reproduces women's subordination. In.. deed, Amal's struggle with herself to become shy may appear to be no more than an instance of the internalization of standards of effeminate behavior, one that contributes little to our understanding of agency. Yet if we think of "agency" not simply as a synonym for resistance to social norms but as a modality of action, then this conversation raises some interesting questions about the kind of relationship established between the subject and the norm, between performative behavior and inward disposition. To begin with, what is striking here is that instead of innate human desires eliciting outward forms of conduct, it is the sequence of practices and actions one is engaged in that de.. termines one's desires and emotions. In other words, action does not issue forth from natural feelings but
creates
them. Furthermore, pursuant to the be.. haviorist tradition of Aristotelian moral philosophy discussed in chapter 4, it is through repeated
bodily acts
that one trains one's memory, desire, and intel.. lect to behave according to established standards of conduct.3 Notably, Amal
does not
regard simulating shyness in the initial stages of her self..cultivation to be hypocritical, as it would be in certain liberal conceptions of the self where a dissonance between internal feelings and external expressions would be considered a form of dishonesty or self..betrayal ( as captured in the phrase: "How can I do something sincerely when my heart is not in it ?"). Instead, tak.. ing the absence of shyness as a marker of an incomplete learning process, Amal further develops the quality of shyness by synchronizing her outward behavior with her inward motives until the discrepancy between the two is dissolved. This is an example of a mutually constitutive relationship between

3
It is interesting to note that the women I worked with did not actually employ the body.- distinction I use in my analysis. In referring to shyness, for example, they talked about it as a way of being and acting such that any separation between mind and body was diffi to discern I have retained the mind.- distinction for analytical purposes, the goal being to understand the spe. cifi relation articulated between the two in this tradition of self..formation.

body learning and body sense-as Nama says, your body literally comes to feel uncomfortable if you do
not
veil.

Secondly, what is also signifi in this program of self- ultivation is that bodily acts-like wearing the veil or conducting oneself modestly in interac. tions with people (especially men)--do not serve as manipulable masks in a

game of public presentation, detachable from an essential interiorized self. Rather they are the
critical marke
of piety as well as the
inelucta means
by

which one trains oneself to be pious. While wearing the veil serves at fi as a means to tutor oneself in the attribute of shyness, it is also simultaneously in.. tegral to the practice of shyness: one cannot simply discard the veil once a modest deportment has been acquired, because the veil itself is part of what defi that deportment.4 This is a crucial aspect of the disciplinary program pursued by the participants of the mosque movement, the signifi of which
is
elided when the veil is understood solely in terms of its symbolic value as a marker of women's subordination or Islamic identity.

A substantial body of literature in feminist theory argues that patriarchal ideologies-whether nationalist, religious, medical, or aesthetic in character work by objectify women's bodies and subjecting them to masculinist sys.. tems of representation, thereby negating and distorting women's own experi.. ence of their corporeality and subjectivity ( Bordo 1 993 ; Gole 1996;

1 998; E. Martin 1987). In this view, the virtue of al.-Q. ( shyness or mod.. esty} can be understood as yet another example of the subjection of women's bodies to masculinist or patriarchal valuations, images, and representational logic. A feminist strategy aimed at unsettling such a circumscription would try

to expose al..Q. for its negative valuation of women, simultaneously bring.. ing to the fore altern representations and experiences of the
·
feminine body that are denied, submerged, or repressed by its masculinist logic.

A diff perspective within feminist theory regards the recuperation of "women's experience" to be an impossible task, since the condition for the possibility
·
of any discourse, or for that matter "thought itself' ( Colebrook 2000b, 35 ), is the rendering of certain materialities and subjectivities as the