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UNVEILING THE VEIL:
GENDERED DISCOURSES AND THE (IN)VISIBILITY OF THE FEMALE
BODY
INTRODUCTION
Much of the discussion that surrounded the question of the veil in France,
following the 1989 in-famous ‘affaire du foulard”, has been couched in terms of
restricting binaries: secularism-Islam; Us-Them; East-West. There have been few
attempts to look at the resurgence of the veil among Muslim schoolgirls in French public
schools outside of the politicized discourse of ‘Islam is reversing the colonizing process’.
There has been only sporadic reflection on the significance of dress, and other bodily
markers, in the contestation and re-negotiation of group identities within conflicting
cultural spaces. Rather, the predominant discourse, which is consistent with the
Orientalist mystique of the Orient as the ‘Other’, has revolved around the threat Islam
and its dress code pose to the cultural integrity of French society.
The underlying premise behind such a parochial interpretation is the notion of
identity as a bounded, already completed entity. This is mainly due to the limiting
political discourse that has surrounded the veil affair ever since it was made public.
Following Stuart Hall’s argument that identities are contextual and relational positionings
which are never fixed but always ‘in process’, I argue that these young women’s decision
to wear the veil should not be viewed, exclusively, as a religious statement with an intent
to subvert the status quo in French society. Dress is an important marker of difference,
and highlighting one’s religious, cultural, or social difference is expected in a context of
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Convention