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A Postcolonial Inquiry of Women's Political Agency in Aceh, Indonesia: Towards a Muslim Feminist Approach?

In this dissertation, I develop a postcolonial theoretical approach to localized Muslim feminism(s) in Aceh, Indonesia, based on interviews with women in Aceh in 2009 and 2010. One of the central aims of this study is to challenge the dominant exclusivist discourse of "Islamic" feminism by providing a viable alternative for "Muslim" feminism(s), derived from collaborative, indigenous, and post-secular politics. I address the need for a religious feminist model of subjectivity that incorporates both the political and ethical dimensions of agency in potentially non-patriarchal and non-state-centric formations. I suggest a communal understanding of religious law as an alternative to conceptualizing religious law (syariah) in terms of a personal ethical code or a system of laws emanating from a state. I propose an alternative discourse of feminist agency and religious identity, one that reaches beyond a secular-liberal epistemology and challenges the hegemonic discourse of state-centrism within a privatized religious identity. / Ph. D.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/39190
Date04 September 2012
CreatorsTaylor, Reed W.
ContributorsAlliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought, Gillman, Laura J., Smith, Barbara Ellen, Scott, Rachel M., Schmitthenner, Peter L.
PublisherVirginia Tech
Source SetsVirginia Tech Theses and Dissertation
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeDissertation
Formatapplication/pdf
RightsIn Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
RelationTaylor_ReedW_D_2012.pdf

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