Australian Muslim Women’s Borderland Subjectivities

This book claims a discursive space in academic scholarship for knowledges and ways of knowing that capture the diversity, complexity and full humanness of Australian Muslim women’s subjectivities. It draws on in-depth conversational interviews with 20 Australian Muslim women from various ethnic backgrounds during which the women shared their experiences of being at the crossroads of their religious, gendered, racialised and ethnic identities. The book puts forward a decolonial feminist border methodology by weaving the work of decolonial feminist philosophers Maria Lugones and Gloria Anzaldúa with postmodern feminist thinking on subjectivity and with discourse analysis. This methodology is used to centre and attend to the fluidity and plurality of Muslim women’s subjectivities, at the intersections of race, ethnicity, patriarchy, gender, sexuality and Islam.

“Lutfiye Ali's autoethnographic account of her family background and scholarly journey provide an engaging point of entry for her fieldwork with other second-generation Muslim women living in Australia, as well as her wide-ranging survey of the academic literature on decolonial feminism. Her chosen research participants consists of women from a diverse range of ethnic backgrounds, with a focus on those who do not veil.  As Ali notes, this cohort has attracted far less interest from media practitioners and academic researchers than has been paid to their veiled coreligionists. Their articulate and insightful responses chronicled in the book illustrate the cost of this erasure.”

— Shakira Hussein, National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies, Asia Institute, University of Melbourne.
  

“In 'Australian Muslim Women’s Borderlands Subjectivities: Diverse Identities, Diverse Experiences,' Dr. Lutfiye Ali takes us on a profound journey exploring the richness and diversity of Australian Muslim women's subjectivities. Her ground breaking decolonial feminist border methodology weaved with discourse analysis along with her auto-historical account and critical reflexivity bridges the gap between researcher and researched to offer a roadmap for transformative knowledge production towards a deeper understanding of human complexity. This book is a must-read for anyone seeking to disrupt hegemonic representations and explore the complexities of subjectivity in a global context.”

 —Sara Cheikh Husain, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University.

Lütfiye Ali (PhD, BA (Hons.) VicMelb) is a Cypriot Turkish Muslim Australian scholar in the field of Community Psychology. Lutfiye’s research areas include intercultural relations, racialized and gendered dynamics of oppression and resistance, identity, community making and belonging among migrant, second generation Australians and Australian Muslim women. Lutfiye works as a teaching academic in the field of social work and as a researcher at Moondani Balluk – Indigenous Academic Unit at Victoria University, Australia. Lutfiye is also a committee member (grant and project manager) of North Cyprus Turkish Community Centre in Victoria.