Beyond the Secular, the Sacred, and the State: Alternative Vocabularies of the Disagreement in Secular and Pious Feminist Narratives in Turkey

Abstract

This paper rethinks the different ways in which civil society activism might be able to transform radical political disagreements about feminism, secularism, and religiosity under authoritarian pro-conservative state policies. I pursue this task by bringing in my previous work on the interpersonal feminist relationship between secular/Kemalist feminists and pious/Islamic feminists in Turkey. In the intersection of ethnography and theory, I argue that locating alternative feminist vocabularies of disagreement in women’s own their own narratives can help us challenge the broader dichotomies dictated by the secular, sacred, and the state. From a relational theoretical framework that stresses the iterative importance of unexpected interpersonal everyday life interactions, this paper contributes to the broader debates on pious women’s agency and the limits of feminist friendship.