Beyond the God/Man Duo: Globalization, Feminist Theology, and Religious Subjectivity

Abstract

This chapter considers analyses offered by three important feminist scholars, working in different religious traditions, who attend to specific forms of women's religiosity. In Changing the Subject: Women's Discourses and Feminist Theology, Mary McClintock Fulkerson attempts to carve out a place within feminist theology for Christian women who do not consider themselves feminist. In The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power and Spirit Possession, Mary Keller's analysis of the phenomenon of spirit possession, which affects many more women than men, becomes a site in which to reflect anew on questions of gender and religious subjectivity. In Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, anthropologist Saba Mahmood finds that the issues raised by her study of Egyptian women involved in an Islamic renewal movement challenge certain feminist orthodoxies. Taking each author in turn, the chapter first traces the particular contours of the religious phenomenon each analyzes and shows how they reframe religious subjectivity. The final section brings the three essays together and describes what avenues they open up for constructive feminist theology in a global context.