4.4.5 Re-Situating Intimacy, Affect, and Critique
Colorful Muslim family in Malaysia. Photo Credit: Jim Boud, 2021. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
In this response to Juliane Hammer’s 2019 book, Peaceful Families: American Muslim Efforts Against Domestic Violence, Ali Mian, Professor of Religion at the University of Florida, traces the way feminist pedagogy intersects with activism and allows ways of knowing that can profoundly inform how we understand religious texts. Mian also considers the role of critique grounded in lived reality and care. To access this piece, please click on the link below and scroll down to the response by Ali Mian, “Re-Situating Intimacy, Affect, and Critique: Reflections on Juliane Hammer’s Peaceful Families: American Muslim Efforts Against Domestic Violence.”
Read: Re-Situating Intimacy, Affect, and Critique // The Maydan
Guiding Questions:
- What does the feminist principle, “the personal is political,” mean? Is intimate partner violence seen as something private, and not the concern of the local government or neighbors, in your community?
- What is “situatedness?” How does learning material 4.4.2, on feminist pedagogy, describe this concept?
- According to Hammer, how did anti-domestic violence activists develop the “ethic of non-abuse?”
- How did this “instinctua[l] recoiling” from violence guide these activists’ understanding of scripture?
- How does Mian’s statement that “the personal is a source of moral knowledge and has deep political implications” change our approach to scripture and tradition?
