Speaking “religion” through a gender code : the discursive power and gendered-racial implications of the religious label
Abstract
Drawing on the scholarship of Critical Religion, this article shows how the modern category “religion” operates through a gender code which upholds its discursive power and enables the production of religious—and therefore racial—hierarchies. Specifically, it argues that mentioning religion automatically makes gender present in discourse. Acknowledging religion as an inherently gendered category in this way gives further insight into the discursive power and functioning of the religious label. With the example of the Westphalian production of the “myth of religious violence” and the employment of “religion” in colonial contexts, I demonstrate how a gender code upholds and enables the discursive power of religion. Religion is both gendered (as part of the Western public/private binary) and gendering (in colonial contexts vis-à-vis non-Christian, non-White religions). Acknowledging the multiple ways in which religion is gendered and gendering, then, has important bearings on the analysis of religion’s racializing function which is upheld and aided by the gender code through which religion is spoken.
Citation
Khan , R M 2021 , ' Speaking “religion” through a gender code : the discursive power and gendered-racial implications of the religious label ' , Critical Research on Religion , vol. OnlineFirst . https://doi.org/10.1177/20503032211015302
Publication
Critical Research on Religion
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2050-3032Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © The Author(s) 2021. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
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