Il soggetto religioso femminile nello spazio pubblico e la questione dell’agency

As many scholars point out, the epistemic form of modern subjectivity (liberal, secular) includes a strong emphasis on individual agency. As a result, religious agencies are often interpreted as ‘defective’ – ascribed to what lies outside the self. When dealing with religious pluralism in European societies, the public and political debates often frame the women’s rights as sites of tension between different religions, and between religious traditions and secular societies. Women’s conditions then become the proofs of evidence of religious diversity, and women’s bodies come to personify cultural identities (religious, secular, national). In light of the extensive debate on gender citizenship and the long-lasting discussion over the relationships between religion and political citizenship, the focus on religious women offers an interesting site to explore how religious and gender diversities are conceptualized and combined in the definition of contemporary political citizenship. I focus on the burkini affair, analysing the political and public discussion in the Italian press (2004-2016), in order to shed light on how religious and female agencies are variously combined in the representation of ‘Muslim women wearing burkini’. The results show the differences in the conceptualization of Christian and Muslim religious agencies in the public construction of religious women as a political subject and highlight the relevance of the studies focusing on women, religion, and gender.