Creative Conformity: The Feminist Politics of U.S. Catholic and Iranian Shi'i Women

Conclusion

X 160 X Conclusion ) Here I summarize the payoffs of a comparative case study that attempts to redefine feminist politics. Earlier in the book, descriptions of actual arguments women used helped us understand how feminist politics employ various tactics to construct ethical knowledge. The analysis broke down arguments to see better the practice of justification and the interactions of moral discourse. The aim was to see the precise production of women’s creative conformity. Despite a focus on radically different issues, various feminist tactics of intellectual engagement are observed cross-culturally: symbolics, procreation, hermeneutics, embodiment, and republication. Three tasks remain. First, we can now stand back and consider the Catholic and Shi‘i women through the shared audience assumptions implied in their arguments. This allows us to identify commonalities and differences between them and their rhetoric to better explain why some politics work in one context but not in another. Second, it is now possible to further describe the system of ethical knowledge the women participate in. I use the metaphor of a game to visualize the interplay of clerics and women to better understand how tradition is maintained and conveyed and the social aspects of authority. Third, although the core chapters of this volume explain and describe the ways in which the religious women are creative conformers, still more can be said about these actions in terms of feminist politics. I address how creative conformity produces distinct ethical knowledge in the religious community, return to the issue of intention, and comment on the importance of comparison to identifying and understanding women’s contributions to public discourse and religious norms. The Big Picture: Shared Audience Assumptions 161 THE BIG PICTURE: SHARED AUDIENCE ASSUMPTIONS In the introduction, I discuss how rhetoric persuades through a logical form and affective logos. If the five chapters focus on informal logical form by deconstructing arguments into logical components and considering rhetorical responses, this conclusion looks more closely at how affectivity is used in women’s rhetoric through their references to the value-charged ideas that a community adheres to.1 In what follows, the five rhetorical performances of each respective community are considered together through the Perelman inspired categories of rhetorical analysis developed in the introduction (facts, presumptions, values, and hierarchies) in an attempt to identify the assumed agreements the rhetoric is built on. These agreements are the motivations already in place that women leverage for their political goals. In this way, these agreements map the contours of the discursive field the women reconstitute and give a general account of a more or less coherent religious ethical vision on the part of U.S. Catholic and Iranian Shi‘i women, respectively. Facts I have defined facts as data that conforms to an audience’s understanding of what is real. This means that attention to the facts women use in their rhetoric is an opportunity to understand local perceptions of reality. The Catholic and Shi‘i women studied share three categories of facts that are important for the moral life: gender dualism, history of the religious community , and cultural origins of patriarchy. All the women studied assume the reality of the category of women and that gender dualism is an important component of the moral life. They speak about gendered duties or rights (Arshad, Koulaei, and Kissling), and the special challenges and opportunities women face for being good and living a full life as women within their respective religious communities (Isasi-Díaz, Hayes, Abbas-Gholizadeh, and Sherkat). The reality of a gendered moral life for some is ontological (Hitchcock), for others cultural and social (Hayes and Isasi-Díaz). Most women do not bother to ground gender difference at all, and yet this fact is the foundation of all the women’s feminist ethics. Both groups of women assume that early history of their respective communities contributes to contemporary ethical reflection. This can be seen in the women’s use of sources such as the Bible (Isasi-Díaz and Hayes) and hadith (Gurji and Ebtekar), emphasis on the egalitarian nature of the early community (Isasi-Díaz, Gurji, and Ebtekar), and use of historical moral exemplars such as Eve, Hagar, Mary, and Fatimah (Isasi-Díaz, Hayes, Gurji, and Ebtekar). 162 CONCLUSION Another fact all the women assume to some degree is the cultural origins of patriarchy. The distinction between religion and culture allows the women to affirm their religious tradition yet...