Critique as Care

Saba Mahmood be gins the ac knowl edg ments in Politics of Piety by thanking her men tors and teach ers. Talal Asad’s think ing, she writes, per me ates “prac ti cally ev ery page of this book: there is no greater gif that a scholar can be stow. . . . If I am suc cess ful in re­cre at ing even a mo di cum of the acu men and cour age that Talal’s work rep re sents, I will be hap py.” Jane Collier, she con tin ues, “has ex tended to me both her in tel lect and her la bor through prac ti cally ev ery phase of this pro­ ject. . . . This is a debt that I can never hope to re pay ex cept per haps by extending to my own stu dents the same gen er os ity that Jane has of ered me.”1 Rereading these words now, I am struck by how what Saba val ued in her men tors mir rored her own life as a scholar and teach er, how her work ex em pli fied both in cred i ble acu men and un com mon cour age, how she ex tended an ex traor di nary gen er os ity to her stu­ dents, how much her think ing per me ates our own. For as much as she was a bril liant schol ar, Saba was an equally bril liant teach er, and in writ ing this essay, I was moved to read what some of her stu dents had to say about her in their own ac knowl edg ments. Noah Salomon calls Saba “both a loyal sup porter and an un fail ing critic through out [his] ac a demic ca reer.”2 Mi chael Allan writes that Saba “pro vided [him] a gen er ous form of interlocution at once com pas­ sion ate and crit i cal.”3 Their words echo my own: “her in tel lec tual rig or,” I write, and by that I meant her un wa ver ing cri tique, was “con sis tently matched by her care for me.”4 It is un sur pris ing that we all in voke cri tique: Saba was a no to ri ously crit i cal reader and ad vi sor. Equally un sur pris ing is that we also in voke sup port, com pas­ sion, and care: Saba took re mark ably good care of us, not just as schol ars, but also as peo ple. She coun seled me in mat ters pro fes sional and per son al, de lighted in my successes, reassured me in my mo ments of sad ness and fear. Indeed, though as an anx ious grad u ate stu dent it took me years to re al ize this, for Saba, cri tique was a form of care, per haps the highest, most eth i cal form of care. And much of her work