Identity in movement: The agency of “catholic women” in the battle against secularization (1856-1913)

Abstract

This article puts forth an analysis of the particular nature of a catholic women ´s mobilization in the first decade of the twentieth century. Even though “catholic women” had responded previously, the “catholic women” involved in the battle against secularization in the beginning of the last century were different subjects from their “predecessors”. These early twentieth-century “catholic women” can be understood within the parameters of theoretical considerations of the agency of religious subjects as unfixed, discontinuous identities and unrelated to identity categories elaborated by institutions or religious and political leaders. The usual, dichotomous visions of the relation between religion and modernity give way to the conclusion that these identities that made the movement possible were articulated around modern notions of sexual difference and, it could be said, a secularized, auto-reflexive subject.