Confounded Identities

A Meditation on Race, Feminism, and Religious Studies in Times of White Supremacy

Bibliographic Data

ID5801348
AuthorsAisha M Beliso‐de Jesú (corresponding author), Aisha M Beliso‐De Jesús (Episcopal Divinity School, corresponding author), Aisha M Beliso-De Jesús (Jesús, Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, MA)
Year2017
Volume86
Issue2
Pages307-340
Publication date2017-11-16
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the American Academy of Religion (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7189 • E-ISSN: 1477-4585
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/jaarel/lfx085
OpenAlexW2792910179
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited73

This article addresses the pervasiveness of white supremacy in American identity-thinking. Challenging the use of identity to structure unity platforms in academia, I advocate for Black-transnational feminist-queer strategies that demand coalition-based politics oriented around a transformative radical potential. Religious studies is used as an interdisciplinary case study to understand the problem of academic identity-thinking, where I show first, how white privilege is maintained in the "scholar-practitioner" divide, and second, how white supremacy is naturalized in identity-thinking. Eschewing relative or comparative approaches that reify identity-based logics, I move towards analytic and technical approaches that are productive of an activist-oriented decolonial stance. This gesture draws on the relationality, conflict, tension, power, and politics of studying racialized religious and spiritual subjects with an unapologetically transformative agenda

Identity politics · Oppression · Transformative learning · White (mutation · White supremacy · Critical Race Theory in Education · Race, History, and American Society · Theological Perspectives and Practices

Tools

Open DOISci-HubOpen Access