Safe Scholarship

Abstract

This article attempts to construct a theoretical category
that can be applied to knowledge production within the fields of culture
and identity politics. To extrapolate the category, safe scholarship, the
work of Akbar S. Ahmed and its intellectual ramifications are examined
and unpacked. Identity, religion, and culture are not fixed concepts but
regulatory regimes and safe, uncritical intellectuals seek to keep the fluid
constructs in a state of (imagined) fixity. Safe scholarship helps
perpetuate the epistemic as well as political status quo. The article builds
the argument that production of critique, in contrast to safe scholarship,
opens up social and public spaces for those subjects and social
conditions usually relegated to the margins. The hypothesis that
emancipatory potential of critique is greater than safe scholarship is
examined in relation to the work of Akbar S. Ahmed.