Countering illegibility: Religion, ethnicity and sexuality in public debates and lived experience in Belgium

Brandt, Nella van den

doi:10.1080/14755610.2017.1413409

Cited by 8 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Migrant women in particular are suspected of lacking the right cultural repository and skills to actively participate in Dutch society (Ghorashi 2010). Even though secularism does not necessarily imply gender equality, discursive hierarchical oppositions of secularism/ gender equality/sexual liberation versus religion/women's oppression allows for the framing of Europe as the 'avatar of both freedom and modernity' (Butler 2008, 2) and the marginalisation of Islam, seen as the reverse (Scott 2018;Van Den Brandt 2018). In the Netherlands in particular, women's liberation and sexual emancipation are flagship concerns (Bracke 2011;Mepschen, Duyvendak, and Tonkens 2010, 963;Van der Veer 2006).…”

Section: Theory and Context: Multiple Secularities In Dutch Policy And Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

Respect, freedom, citizenship: Muslim women’s secularities and perspectives on wellbeing

Pool

2021

Religion, State and Society

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The religiosity of people migrating into secular European countries has posed many questions for policymakers and scholars alike, particularly where it concerns Islam. Rather than opposing migrants' religious identities with secular values, this article examines shifts and tensions between the 'multiple secularities' of Muslim women and integration policy alike, through an ethnography of wellbeing. Set in the Netherlands, it demonstrates that Muslim women of Pakistani background embrace a secularity characterised by respect and religious liberty but that despite a 'modernisation' of values, their religion remains the source of their secularity. Dutch integration policy, however, has shifted from a secularity accommodating religious diversity to one characterised by individual liberty (placed in opposition to religion), and, increasingly, towards the progress of a culturally homogeneous nation. By thus failing to recognise religious sources and alternative social dimensions of human wellbeing, Dutch policy risks undermining secular values generally and alienating Dutch Muslims specifically.

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Section: Theory and Context: Multiple Secularities In Dutch Policy And Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

Respect, freedom, citizenship: Muslim women’s secularities and perspectives on wellbeing

Pool

2021

Religion, State and Society

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Contemporary, racialised conflicts over LGBT-inclusive education: more strategic secularisms than secular/religious oppositions?

Kitching

2022

Educational Review

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Secularity, gender, and emancipation: thinking through feminist activism and feminist approaches to the secular

Brandt

2019

Religion

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In this article, I engage with feminist discussions about secularity, gender, and emancipation. The feminist study of the secular was spurred by interventions of Saba Mahmood [2005. The Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press], and can be seen as a critical engagement with at least one basic assumption that underlies much of progressive thinkingthat secularism is beneficial for women and LGBTQ subjects. I begin by exploring how the Belgian feminist activist platform Baas Over Eigen Hoofd! (Boss Over One's Own Head!) builds a locally suited theory and practice of emancipation. I analyse how BOEH! raises questions about gender and secularity. Second, I zoom-out by mapping feminist studies of the secular in Western European contexts, distinguishing various analytical approaches and visions on social-political secular emancipatory alternatives. To conclude, I relate local feminist activism to feminist academic discussions, and argue that there is a continued need for thinking about shared emancipatory futures.Emancipation is not an 'all or nothing' affair. (Nancy Fraser in: Fraser and Liakova 2008, 4) The story [of secularism] has had enormous staying power. Our view of history is shaped by that story. (Scott 2018, 14) Posing questions about emancipation often means criticising political, social, cultural, and religious structures of dominance and revealing the relationships between freedom and its restrictions. Critical theories, such as feminist, postcolonial, and queer theories, and social movements, such as women's, antiracist, and LGBTQ movements, analyse the restriction of freedom in various ways and as such propose differing ideas about progressive change. In Western contexts influenced by a European Enlightenment tradition, 'emancipation' is a layered and emphatic concept, referring to equality, self-determination, liberation, and individual responsibility (Birkle et al. 2012). Posing questions about emancipation within this political-cultural framework leads to asking about the obstacles to equality and self-determination: Liberation from what? Self-determination regarding what? What does it mean to be responsible for building one's 'own life'? (Bauhardt 2004).

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Countering illegibility: Religion, ethnicity and sexuality in public debates and lived experience in Belgium

Cited by 8 publications

References 38 publications

Respect, freedom, citizenship: Muslim women’s secularities and perspectives on wellbeing

Respect, freedom, citizenship: Muslim women’s secularities and perspectives on wellbeing

Contemporary, racialised conflicts over LGBT-inclusive education: more strategic secularisms than secular/religious oppositions?

Secularity, gender, and emancipation: thinking through feminist activism and feminist approaches to the secular

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