Patrice
Haynes
Liverpool
Hope University
Paper
Title: 'Religious diversity and
the feminist subject: a perspective
from feminist philosophy of religion'
Abstract
This paper will offer
a feminist philosophical (rather than theological) perspective
on religious diversity. The paper will briefly clarify how
(analytic) philosophy of religion typically overlooks questions concerning
the sex/gender of religious believers and practitioners in debates regarding
the so-called problem of religious diversity. Thereafter, the paper
explores the difficulties raised for feminist thought when it pays
attention to women who affirm a religious subjectivity that does not oppose the
patriarchal structures of their tradition (see especially Saba
Mahmood’s The Politics of Piety). The final part of the paper
will draw on Luce Irigaray’s notion of horizontal and vertical transcendence in
order to craft a possible way to preserve the feminist desire to
respect differences among women (and men), while aspiring to transform
patriarchal orders that systematically subordinate the interests of women to
those of men.
Dr. Patrice Haynes is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at
Liverpool Hope University. She is author of Immanent Transcendence: Reconfiguring Materialism in Continental
Philosophy (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2012). She is
also a founder and co-facilitator of the Association for Continental Philosophy
of Religion.