20 years on, (re)read Saba Mahmood

20 years after the book's release in English, the French edition, translated in 2009 by Nadia Marzouki, is no longer available from the publisher (La Découverte), preventing the work from being disseminated. Yet the anthropology of Saba Mahmood, who passed away in 2018, has had a major influence in the USA and elsewhere, in approaches to Islam and gender studies due in particular to her questioning of the presuppositions of secular liberal feminism.

In France, reception remains proportionally weak despite the strength of the epistemological and theoretical statement restoring an ethnography conducted among pious women in Egypt within five mosques.

The anniversary of the publication is an opportunity to (re)read Saba Mahmood and reflect on its contributions - and limitations - and above all on the way we do social science and think, among other things, about domination and agency, ethics and politics.

Program

9:30am: Welcome

10am-12pm: Round-table "Reading Saba Mahmood and overcoming epistemological biases"
With Hamza Esmili (GERME), Nacira Guénif Souilamas (Legs) and Mehdi Ayachi (ZM- Berlin)

1:30pm-3:30pm: Round-table "Reading and (re)thinking agency"
With Fatiha Ajbli (Ceraps), Jeanne Leblay (CéSor / Cems) and Anis Zerde (Ceraps)

4pm-5pm: Concluding lecture "Saba Mahmood and the politics of hope"
By Nadia Fadil (Department of social and cultural anthropology)