Dr Sara R. Farris is a Lecturer in Political Sociology at the European Studies Department, King’s College London, and Research Fellow at Princeton, Institute for Advanced Study (2012-2013). She was a research fellow at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam (2007 – 2009), DAAD research fellow at the Humboldt University in Berlin in 2008, and research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Konstanz, Germany in 2011. Her books include Politics Enchanted. Religion, Subjectivity and Nationalism in Max Weber (Brill 2012) and The Political Economy of Femonationalism (forthcoming, 2013). She is member of the Editorial Board of Critical Sociology. In recent years we have witnessed a kind of universal exposition of arguments regarding the inherent misogyny of Islam, the danger of its growth in Western countries and therefore the alleged need to defend women’s equality and freedom against it. Secularism and secularisation have been reinvigorated as subjects of debate, alongside discussions of national identities and the clash of civilisations. A one-dimensional apology for the Enlightenment has been proposed as an antidote against the incursion of religion and particularly Islam into the political realm. This lecture aims to analyse and to explain the contemporary mobilisation of feminist ideas under the banner of the war against the alleged patriarchy of Muslim communities. In particular, I am concerned to account for such mobilisation in terms of its instrumentalisationm, particularly by European nationalist parties and neo-liberal movements, as well as by prominent feminist intellectuals. I propose to call this phenomenon “Femonationalism”. The lecture will therefore focus on analysing the reasons and functions of the femonationalist discourse in the present historical conjuncture, paying particular attention to its political and symbolic economy.

This event has been organized by Rosanne Kennedy, School of Cultural Inquiry, CASS in conjunction with the ANU Gender Institute.