Habitus

POLITICS OF PIETY: THE ISLAMIC REVIVAL AND THE FEMINIST SUBJECT. By Saba Mahmood. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2005. Chapter 4 of Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety (2011), “Positive Ethics and Ritual Convention,” tackles several assumptions within moral philosophy, anthropology, and feminist theory regarding (1) the elaboration of ethics as an abstract system of regulatory norms, values, and principles; (2) the role of ritual in conforming individuals to social conventions; and (3) a conception of freedom as the discovery of one’s interior interests, distinguished from social convention and authority. Mahmood explicated how Muslim women in the 1990s mosque movement in Egypt were not simply practicing uncritical emulation blindly, reproducing existing patriarchal orders antithetical to discovering their own innate inner desires and aspirations. Rather, they were engaged in bodily techniques to inculcate Islamic virtues such as humility, sincerity, and modesty (123). Utilizing Aristotle’s concept of habitus, Mahmood illustrates the “radically different conceptualizations of the role bodily behavior plays in the construction of the self” (121). Mahmood points to the likely strong influence of Aristotle’s concept of habitus on Muslim scholars such as Ibn Khaldun, who took up the concept of habitus in an excavation of the relationship between interiority and exteriority, desire and social convention, and freedom and authority. In doing so, she read Muslim women’s desire as shaped by and articulated as social convention in contrast to a liberal secular logic, which seeks to discover an authentic interiority. Rereading this chapter prompts a reinterrogation of our frameworks of desire and its potential productive function beyond the binary of social convention and authentic interiority to examine the architecture of the self. In what follows, I explore how Ibn Khaldun’s concept of habitus (or malaka) and fitra (divine predisposition) illustrate alternative itineraries of the self, desire, and authority. It points to the dynamism of cultivation and fortification of the innate dispositions and desires of the soul, opening a realm of investigation that does not necessarily relegate self-restraint, resistance, and moral character to outward behavior and external authority. Throughout the chapter, Mahmood (2011) works to carefully lay to rest accounts of the da‘wa movement in Cairo, Egypt that reduced it to a replacement of nationalism by Islamism: for example, arguments that replace nationalist symbols with Islamist ones, both of which are read as signifying cultural meanings (such as adopting the veil, praying) as a means toward political ends. She also treats acts of bodily enactment, comportment, and discipline to illustrate how they form Muslim moral-ethical subjectivity as an end unto itself. Throughout the ethnography, Mahmood unfolds how ethical-moral subjectivities are formed through discursive practices, instantiated through specific sets of procedures, techniques, and exercises (119–120). Mahmood illustrates how examining bodily comportment can help us understand the complex relationship between social authority and individual freedom. Her turn to Michel Foucault’s conception of Aristotelian positive ethics “as a set of practical activities that are germane to a certain way of life” moves away from viewing ethics as an abstract system of regulatory norms, values, and principles (27). This expansive repertoire of the empirical body brings to mind gestural, affective, and mimetic reproductions of a habitus, the Aristotelian term denoting “acquired excellence at either moral or a practical craft” (136). Thinking alongside Aristotle’s theory of habitus, Pierre Hadot, and Michel Foucault’s conception of positive ethics, Mahmood brings us a body that is not only an instrument, as conceived by Marcel Mauss (1973), but a conceptual instrument. The body as a conceptual instrument not only builds habits through its limbs and performances over time, but also interiorizes “dietary regimes, discourses, dialogues, meditations, intuitions, and contemplation,” manifesting the unconscious in somatic forms and laying out the architecture of the self (122). This genealogy is important, since Muslim scholars transformed Aristotle’s habitus to explicate how “outward behavior shapes moral character” and to align it with Islamic theories of the soul/self, desire, and natural disposition (137). Although modern interiority (one’s true, authentic self) is posited as a state of being arising out of sheer willfulness, which individuals feel must be discovered, Mahmood shows that the external can form the internal. These women insisted that “outward behavioral forms were not only expressions of their interiorized religiosity but also a necessary means of acquiring it” (147). This illustrates their understanding that bodily capacity itself is not simply willed but trained; and so they cried until they embodied crying like Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, they woke up for the dawn prayer, and they remained calm when angered by family members (147). Mahmood notes that not only are these women learning the necessary steps to perform prayers, but that the very “desire to pray five times a day” was also an object of pedagogy (123). Against how anthropologists have often framed ritual (namely, as the ways individuals become reintegrated into the social in order to conform through the suspension of individual psychic drives and control of their spontaneous emotions), Mahmood demonstrates how ritual bridges practice and embodied sentiments (129). A ritual such as salat is not independent from mundane activities, as it both is performed through intention, violation, and sentiment, and it reproduces those very sentiments through its practice. Through these specific sets of procedures, techniques, and exercises, Mahmood argues, these Muslim women in the mosque movement form their desires and dispositions through external performative acts and, as such, their “submission to certain forms of (external) authority is a condition for the self” (149). Under this rubric, freedom is not (as it is conceived in a liberal secular logic) predicated on distinguishing one’s internal desire from social dictates and convention. Rather, Mahmood argues that “freedom from social convention is not an innate desire” (152). These women’s struggle to inhabit pious norms was not always easy, as we read in Mahmood’s ethnography. When we hear Hajja Samira speak of the fear she utilizes to help remind women to be conscious of God, she argues: “Do you think ours is a society that is afraid of God?” and later “We do not even know we are in this condition!” She then concludes that individuals should worry particularly about the condition of having a soul that cannot discern what is essential for itself (141). Another interlocutor, Umm Amal, emphasizes that fear serves as a reminder of the unconscious mistakes she makes. More importantly, she describes the type of fear which “paralyzes, which must be distinguished from the fear that propels you toward God”: “When I hear the talk on fear [kalam an al-khauf], it has an effect on me because it reminds me of the acts of disobedience I have committed unknowingly, given how absorbed I have been in my life with raising my children and working” (142). Another woman noted how easy it is to get lost in the attractions of the world and that piety is a very difficult path. Here, the women speak to the importance of discerning what is essential to the self/soul. I want to emphasize how (as they articulate it) fear that compels virtuous actions ignites desire and fortifies fitra (divine disposition), while acts of disobedience committed unwittingly are raised to the level of consciousness for reexamination of their desirability and alignment with the self/soul. These women strive toward giving an account of themselves: toward discerning what is essential to their self/soul; toward cultivating and shaping their desire. That is, emulation here is intended for honing discernment of the self/soul and igniting desire; it is a complex relationship between interiority and exteriority, as we find in Muslim scholars’ transformation of Aristotle’s writings on habitus. The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said: “Every infant is born with a fitra [natural disposition]. It is his parents that make him Jewish, Christian, or Magian.” Inasmuch as the soul is first affected by the first of two qualities, the first moves it away from the other and finds it difficult to acquire it. If the habits/customs of khayr [the good] enters the soul of an individual inclined to khayr first and acquires a malaka [habitus] then she is moved away from wickedness [sharr] and that path is made difficult. The same applies to the wicked person if wicked habits/customs first affect him. Sedentary city-dwellers, due to their constant exposure to various pleasures, habits of luxury, indulgence in worldly matters, and preoccupation with their desires, have had their souls tainted by many reprehensible traits and wickedness, making the paths to khayr distant and difficult for them (2000, 96). Ibn Khaldun describes the ideal Bedouin environment in which the path of khayr is made easy. As Ibn Khaldun writes, the Bedouin lives by necessity; she has neither walls nor gates to secure her, she guides herself through her land, can locate water sources, bravely defends herself, and exercises great self-restraint. As such, she maintains her fitra through the fortitude of her soul by way of bodily discipline, relying not on external force and authority but maintaining her fitra in its originary orientation toward God. On the other hand, sedentary city-dwellers are enveloped by the architecture of city life, “sunken in well-being and luxury”; they are enticed by various crafts, arts, and pleasures, moving through the city leisurely, unconcerned for the safety of their dwelling or bodily safety comforted by the guardianship of their rulers, governors, and militias (257). The superficial ease felt by sedentary city-dwellers within the walls of the city, the presence of luxury, and leisure time create a dependency that corrodes their fitra and sense of trust in themselves as guides, protectors, and agentive resisters. Their constant overexposure to wicked habits alongside good habits makes the path to khayr difficult. While nomads also exhibit wicked habits and blameworthy qualities, Ibn Khaldun argues that these are fewer and are not reinforced by those customs and habits that openly permit them and thus rigidify one’s soul. Sedentary city-dwellers “rely on laws and are dominated by them from the very beginning of their education and instruction in the crafts, sciences, and religious matters, are thereby deprived of much of their own fortitude” (96). It is no argument against the (statement just made) that the men around Muhammad observed the religious laws, and yet did not experience any diminution of their fortitude, but possessed the greatest possible fortitude. When the Muslims got their religion from the Lawgiver, the restraining influence came from themselves, as a result of the encouragement and discouragement He gave them in the Qur’an. It was not a result of technical instruction or scientific education. (The laws) were the laws and precepts of the religion, which they received orally and which their firmly rooted (belief in) the truth of the articles of faith caused them to observe. Their fortitude remained unabated, and it was not corroded by education or authority (1958, 260). Reflecting on Mahmood’s ethnography with Ibn Khaldun, we resist the formulation that these Muslim women’s realization of the self through emulating authorized models in order to inhabit pious norms is the application of external authority upon one’s desire. As Mahmood also writes, the concept of agency at stake here is bounded by both a social and an eschatological structure (173). The former formulation does not explore the complex architecture of the self and the contingency of social convention, the importance of the vitality of desire as the engine of the soul, and the relationship between fitra and malaka in thinking beyond the dunya (temporal life). Let us finally underscore the labor of the women’s piety movement and the obstacles they faced from the state. Mahmood noted that many of the self-trained preachers avoided government-administered religious institutions, wary of how these were utilized to harness postcolonial state power. Meanwhile, these mosques serve as organizational centers for “dissemination of religious knowledge and instruction and provision of medical and social services” (3). These women preached and participated despite state monitoring, surveillance, and repression. As such, we must understand that forms of Islamic piety emerging where people are surrounded by injustice and corruption ignites the productive function of desire. As Ibn Khaldun lived at a time when Muslim authority had corrupted divine law by usurping power, much as has the postcolonial Egyptian state, thinking with him retains a commitment to the vitality of individual desire and the revitalization of fitra that is necessary to inculcate and transmit the Islamic tradition. Ibn Khaldun considers laws that are enforced with brute force and intimidation to break the fortitude of the soul and desire, deprive individuals of the power to resist, and congeal an inertness in the soul of the oppressed (1958, 261). It is precisely by understanding the importance of fitra to malaka, the polysemy of desire and its cultivation of the nafs (self/soul), that allows us to ask: what is the innate desire for freedom where desire, as the engine of the soul, is itself at stake? How is it that such questions become analytically and politically suspended, although creating space for the desire of the other is essential to any form of innate freedom and solidarity

Binary opposition · Convention · Habitus · Islam · Piety · Politics · Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies · Islamic Studies and History · Marriage and Sexual Relationships

• Techniques of the body∗

  Marcel Mau, Marcel Mauss•Economy and Society•1973

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