Strategic subversions of the sacred: The cultural psychology of religious identities

Abstract

Traversa’s (2012) study on the Italian Islamic and Catholic women demonstrates that religion is a liberating force rather than the source of entrapping female subjectivities. In this commentary, I situate the participants’ interview responses within the larger debates about modernity, secularism and religious identity. I argue that the Italian and Catholic women’s narratives are a response to the cultural secularization of global modernity. The secular doctrine deploys a new vocabulary of self—where meaning making is detached from the sacred and divine and becomes primarily articulated through the triumph of reason. The participants’ encounter with global modernity and contradictory discourses of religion create ruptures and uncertain social conditions in their lives. I examine how Italian Muslim women strategically use religion to subvert the meaning of hijab, Islam and patriarchy, and the Italian Catholic women challenge orthodox views about abortion, God, and the Catholic Church. I argue that the religious experiences of these women are constantly interacting with location of race, religion and gender and are continually transforming all the ambiguous meanings present in various axes of difference that make up their identity.