Falguni A. Sheth - Unruly Women (Philosophy of Race)

Series Editors

Linda Martn Alcoff, Hunter College and the Graduate Center CUNY

Chike Jeffers, Dalhousie University

Socially Undocumented: Identity and Immigration Justice

Amy Reed-Sandoval

Reconsidering Reparations

Olfmi O. Tw

Unruly Women: Race, Neocolonialism, and the Hijab

Falguni A. Sheth

FALGUNI A. SHETH

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Oxford University Press 2022

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sheth, Falguni A., 1968author.

Title: Unruly women : race, neocolonialism, and the hijab / Falguni A. Sheth.

Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2022. | Series:

Philosophy of race series | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021038634 (print) | LCCN 2021038635 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780197547144 (paperback) | ISBN 9780197547137 (hardback) |

ISBN 9780197547168 (epub) | ISBN 9780197547151 | ISBN 9780197547175

Subjects: LCSH: Muslim womenUnited StatesEthnic identity. |

NeoliberalismUnited States. | Marginality, SocialUnited States.

Classification: LCC HQ1170 .S466 2022 (print) | LCC HQ1170 (ebook) |

DDC 305.48/697073dc23/eng/20211013

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021038634

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021038635

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197547137.001.0001

For my mother and again, for Bubba

The world, and especially my version of it, has changed enormously since I began this project. Thanks to Inez Valdez, who issued the invitation to participate on the American Political Science Association panel that led to this book. I thank Linda Martn Alcoff for soliciting this project well before there was any reason to believe in it, and for her remarkable warmth and generosity and friendship. Thanks also to generous and critical anonymous referees for their helpful insights, and Peter Ohlin, editor at Oxford, for his efficient and supportive approach. I am grateful to audiences at Emory Universitys WGSS Research Seminars, SPEP, APA, FEAST, and SAAP meetings, and the Race-Religion-Secularism conference in Amsterdam, where parts of this work were presented. I thank my colleagues in WGSS for their support as I made my way South, especially Lynne Huffer and Elizabeth Wilson. Thanks to my former chair, Deboleena Roy, and Deans Michael Elliott and Carla Freeman for supporting a years leave to finish this book. Thanks also to Beth Reingold, Kadji Amin, Stu Marvel, Pamela Scully, Michael Moon, Sameena Mulla, Aisha Finch, John Lysaker, and other colleagues at Emory for their generosity, collegiality, and support. Deep gratitude to the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry for a year to think and write, and to Walter Melion, Keith Anthony, Colette Barlow, and Amy Erbil for making the Fox Center such a hospitable intellectual and social space. I am grateful to my colleagues during the 201819 Fox Fellowship year for their collegial interlocution and enthusiastic mischief. I thank Deborah Dinner, John Harfouch, Janine Jones, Daniel LaChance, Joan Cocks, Schirin Amir-Moazami, Mickaella Perina, Katie Terezakis, Allison Adams, and Samia Vasa for reading various versions of this manuscript. In particular, I am grateful to Mickaella, Katie, Debbie, Danny, and John for reading multiple drafts of the same chapters without complaint.

This book has been subject to many stops and starts. Many friends came together as my world changed over the last six years. Because of their support, I was able to move forwardand, ultimately, to write this book. Sincere thanks to friends from Middlebury College for their warmth and support: Amy Holbrook, Peter Matthews, Timmy Mayer, Caitlin Meyers, Ani Mitra, Marcos Lopez, Sujata Moorti, Phani Wunnava, and Susan Burch. Special thanks to former Middlebury President Ron Liebowitz and Dean Andrea Lloyd for their caring responses. To my people at Hampshire College, a wonderful and supremely undervalued place for intellectual courage and camaraderie, a simple thanks cannot begin to describe your critical importance. I am especially grateful to Wilson Valentn-Escobar, Yaniris Fernandez, Diana Sutton-Fernandez, Sue Darlington, Rachel Engmann, Jennifer Hamilton, Monique Roelofs, Uditi Sen, Onni Gust, and the rest of my warm and supportive former colleagues and studentsespecially Seth Wessler, Yasmine Farhang, Rage Kidvai, and Tripp Johnson.

I continue to realize how rare good friendships are in the academy, and specifically in philosophy: I want to acknowledge the loyal and deeply brilliant friends who keep me sane in this field and support my intellectual endeavors: Alia Al-Saji, Amy Allen, Sybol Anderson, Linda Martn Alcoff, Namita Goswami, Mickaella Perina, Katie Terezakis, John Harfouch, Devonya Havis, Janine Jones, Eddy Souffrant, Paul C. Taylor, and Lisa McLeod. Special thanks to Alia Al-Saji and Amy Allen, for quietly taking up my SPEP EC responsibilities without fuss, and for supporting my career through a marked transition.

In Georgia, I found a set of colleagues and friends whose generosity and care is superlative and rare: Diana and Robyn Sutton-Fernandez, Yanna Yannakakis, Aiden Downey, Allison Adams, Debbie Dinner, Derrick Gervin, Michelle Gordon, Michelle Wright, Carol Anderson, Daniel LaChance, Karen Stolley, Calvin Warren, Jenny Wang Medina, Mel and Wes Green, and Malinda and Lydia Lowery. Love and appreciation to Tex, who has entered and anchored my life at exactly the right moment, neither too early or late, and fills it with laughter, serenity, baseball, and perspective.

And then there are the friendships and connections that are unconstrained by geography, moods, or emotions. For cradling me through the dark years: Anita Balachandra, Asim Ali, Marcellus Andrews, Linda Martin Alcoff, Bob Emmons, John Harfouch, Mickaella Perina, Kristen Luschen, Uma Narayan, Tanda Neundorf, Rekha Patel, Flavio Risech, Pierre and Arlene Rouzier, Ragesh and Yaminee Sheth (and my nephew Ajay Rohan Babycakes Spiderman, who always lifts my spirits), the Garbers, Sudha Setty, Sangeeta Kamat, Marcos Lopez, Kevin McCarron, Michael McDonald, Laurie Stenberg, Bess Purcell, Katie Terezakis, Janine Jones, Paul Taylor, and Lucious Outlaw. Charles Mills made my research and presence as a philosopher not only possible but joyous. Charles, without your work and insistence upon the significance of my work, I would not have been able to continue in this field. I am, as always, supremely grateful for your friendship and mentorship, from the beginning and through the dark years, and I will miss you so much. I promise to carry on your work. Mickaella, Kristen, Katie, and TandaI wont corrupt the perfection of your presence in my life by trying to describe it. Special thanks to John Garber for being my fellow outlaw, to the Anitas, and to Asim and Laurie for their decades of care and love, including chauffeuring me around Maryland.