ABSTRACT

Unorthodox is a four-episode Netflix series that offers a compelling narrative of freedom from religion for feminine subjects. This paper interrogates the vision of freedom offered by the show through the lens of lived religion (which circumvents the secular/religion dichotomy by treating the moral meaning-making practices of everyday life as “religious.” A close reading of the lived religious practices in Unorthodox shows three, morally-valanced practices sustaining secular feminine freedom: making the private public, overcoming historical narratives, and taking pleasure. Because in Unorthodox the central barrier to freedom for feminine subjects is the racialized religious community, this paper builds on literature about the racial other and religious freedom to propose the concept of “white secularity.” White secularity is a belief system that assumes every individual can freely opt into good forms of religion, coded as white, and out of bad forms of religion. In white secularity, bad forms of religion are racialized because they make visible white dominance in the public sphere. In this way, white secularity divides the interests of women and racialized minorities by pitting feminine freedom against racialized communities.

摘要

《非正统》是一部四集的 Netflix 系列，为女性主体提供了一个关于宗教自由的引人入胜的叙述。本文通过活生生的宗教（通过将日常生活的道德意义创造实践视为“宗教”来规避世俗/宗教二分法）来质疑该节目提供的自由愿景。非正统展示了三种维持世俗女性自由的道德实践：公开私人、克服历史叙述和取悦。因为在非正统女性主体自由的主要障碍是种族化的宗教社区，本文在有关种族他者和宗教自由的文献基础上提出了“白人世俗性”的概念。白人世俗主义是一种信仰体系，它假设每个人都可以自由选择接受良好的宗教形式，编码为白人，并退出不良的宗教形式。在白人世俗主义中，不良的宗教形式被种族化，因为它们使白人在公共领域占据主导地位。通过这种方式，白人世俗主义通过将女性自由与种族化社区相提并论，从而划分了女性和少数族裔的利益。