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marginalization and racism. In this paper, I will probe the cultural specifics as well as the
political complexities that form the background of this affair.
The first part of this paper will lay out the cultural premises that has informed the
West’s encounter with the East. Here, I discuss the impact of the Orientalist project and
its depiction of the East as a land of mystery and danger. The predominance of the veil in
that depiction underscores its importance as a powerful marker of an entire system of
cultural values.
In the second part, I will analyze the coverage of the ‘headscarf affair’ in French
popular press. Here, attention will be paid to main themes as well as voices that seem to
have informed such discourses. Issues of immigration and nationality, la
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cit
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and
religiosity will be related to the articles in Le Monde, Le Point and L’Express.
The last section of the paper will discuss the ways in which ‘l’affaire du foulard’
is inscribed in and re-inscribes issues of (in)visibility and knowledge in relation to the
place of the female body in (post)colonial interactions.
THE VEIL IN THE ORIENTALIST DISCOURSE
In their fervent attempts to make sense of the Orient, its peoples, customs and
beliefs, European travelers, artists, and imperial administrators indulged in an
essentializing discourse of contradictory perceptions of mystery, inferiority, danger and
sexuality. The East fascinated writers and artists with its mysterious world of harems,
hammams, and particularly labyrinthine medinas. Traveling across the Mediterranean
became a freewheeling journey for the senses, a soothing evasion from Victorian prudery
and bourgeois restraints of the 19
th
century. The images invoked by descriptions of
Convention