Ostentation and republican civility: Notes from the French face-veiling debates

Abstract

France’s prohibition on public face-veiling was rationalised partly with reference to ‘fraternity’ – the third prong of the republican motto – as well as liberty and equality. Correspondingly, the voile intégral (‘full veil’) was widely described as transgressing republican standards of civility. Yet counterintuitively, republican civility was not understood, at least primarily, in terms of sociability or expressivity – but rather as requiring discretion, modesty and self-restraint. Therefore, the ‘full veil’ was not portrayed as an austere interpretation of religious modesty, but as precisely the opposite – as an ‘ostentatious’ defiance of republican civility. It was deemed anti-republican not because it was too modest – but rather because it was too flamboyant. In this light, I argue that the law should be understood neither as a coherent republican response to problems of domination in religious life nor, however, should it be seen purely as an expression of ethno-nationalist defensiveness. Rather, it can be understood as an attempt to legislate a republican habitus, that is a set of social mores – and bodily techniques – deemed appropriate in republican society. I use the French example to consider the political function of civility understood not in relation to speech constraints but rather in terms of bodily and linguistic technique.

Disaggregating Civility: Politeness, Public-Mindedness and Their Connection

“…Crucially, these rules are neither universal nor static; rather, they are based on customs, which are relative and vary between societies (Kekes 1984; Sinopoli 1995). Noting a similar idea in his analysis of the French face-veiling debates, Daly (2015, 313) points out how ‘the bodily and linguistic techniques that constitute republican civility [as politeness] are highly encoded partly because they embrace a situational or cultural specificity which will appear arbitrary and perhaps incomprehensible to those not already endowed with it’. Relatedly, Strachan and Wolf (2012, 402) lament the fact that ‘measuring the level of civility present in society … is especially difficult because the specific behaviours defined as appropriate in one culture, or even in different settings within the same culture, can be inappropriate in others’ 3 .…”

The Passion for Civility

“…Thus, it may mean one thing to be politically civil, and quite another to be ethically civil (Lægaard, 2011). But the distinction is hazy: there is clearly an overlap between the two concepts and the domains to which they refer, and there is a tendency for the two to blur into one (Daly, 2015: 312). 2…”

“…Some authors favour a scope yet broader still wherein civility pertains to the practice of social and political rituals and traditions. As Eoin Daly (2015) has it, the claims of civility are to be seen as aspects of a particular ‘ habitus ’, which conveys a sense of how ‘citizens orient themselves, and ought to orient themselves in the social world’ (p. 312). For example, we may in this sense imagine the civility ritual of ‘persons of political experience, looking at each other fiercely across the table’ (Hampshire, 1989: 188).…”

“…It seems there is something about the plea for civility that brings out the bully in its opponents. 8 On this last as an instance of legislating for civility, see Daly (2015). 9 There is some discussion of the political question in Pettit (1997, pp.…”

Liberal national identity: Thinner than conservative, thicker than civic?

“… 8 This is not to deny that veiling has often been interpreted as an explicitly public activity, and indeed an ostentatious one, as opposed to a sign of a private choice (Daly, 2015; Gustavsson, 2015; Gustavsson et al., 2016). …”