(Un-)veiling the west: Burkini-gate, Princess Hijab and dressing as struggle for postsecular integration

Abstract

The ban of the burkini in the summer of 2016 in France is the latest stage in a long political history, where the French depreciation or fear of the veil, and of Islam, has come to play a more significant role since the end of the cold war. Unveiling female bodies at the beach in Nice expose conditioned values of the French republic. In this context, drawing black veils on public advertisements becomes a performative act commenting on consumerism, religion, secularity, and the imagined Muslim woman. In this article we discuss freedom and integration in "third spaces" via an analysis of "hijabisation" in street art and the official reactions against certain types of beachwear. In line with Talal Asad (2006) we want to raise the issue on how the secular state addresses the pain of people who are obliged to give up part of their religious identity to become acceptable. Race-thinking was once an explicit part of celebrated values like modernity, secularity, democracy and human rights. However, the fact that the idea of races has been erased from articulations of Western nations and international bodies does not mean that traces of race-thinking in the heritage from the enlightenment are gone. By following Princess Hijab and the "Burkini-gate" a nationalist fantasy intertwined with the idea of the secular state reveals itself and acts of un/dressing emerge as signs of integration revealing a challenged imperialist paradigm.

‘After all, I have to show that I’m not different’: Muslim women’s psychological coping strategies with dichotomous and dichotomising stereotypes

“…When examining ‘Western’ discourses 2 on ‘the Muslim woman’, there is a strong and problematic focus on the headscarf as a sign of oppression. Wearing the headscarf is frequently – and often simultaneously – associated with a ‘rigid’ Islam that constrains the personal liberty of Muslim women (see for instance Ahmed, 1992; Berg and Lundahl, 2016; Macdonald, 2006: 8; Razack, 2004: 130; Rommelspacher, 2009). Thus, Muslim women who wear the headscarf are represented as living within ‘traditional’ circumstances characterised by an inflexible set of ‘patriarchal’ and ‘conservative’ rules – hence are constructed as ‘backward’ (Bilge, 2010: 8; Macdonald, 2006: 8; Morey and Yaqin, 2011: 1–17; see also Vintges, 2012: 284).…”

From Islamic Dress and Islamic Fashion to Cool Islam: An Exploration of Muslim Youth Hybrid Identities in the West

“…The local authorities issuing the ban on the burkini from the beach, before its cancellation by the Conseil d'Etat, thus articulated the argument of threat to public order in their decision (Berg and Lundah 2016). Following this line of reasoning, signs of religious visibility such as the veil or the burkini become thus equated, cognitively, along with the same continuum as terrorism (Blanc, Loisel, andSherrer 2005: Berg andLundahl 2016). In parallel, 55 percent of Europeans wish to suspend the entry of Muslim immigrants into Europe (Goodwin, Raines, and Cutts 2017).…”

“…When the hijab is perceived as a threat, the assumptions underlying its significance for non-Muslim Europeans navigate between viewing it as the symbol of oppression of women, a sign of support for Islamic extremism, an assertion of hatred for Western society or a sign of backwardness, among others. In sum, depictions made in the purest Orientalist fashion, ignoring change (Berg and Lundahl 2016). Orientalist and neo-colonial discourses reactivating binary readings further deprive Muslim women of their agency (O'Brien 2016).…”

What Space for Female Subjectivity in the Post-Secular?

“…In contrast, the traditional and the religious have been equated with female oppression, patriarchy and hierarchy (Spivak, 1999; Giorgi, 2016). The first dyad is predominantly theorized as a space of affirmation, female subjectivity, agency and autonomy, whereas the second dyad is primarily conceived as a space of negativity, antithetical to female subjectivity, agency and autonomy (Mahmood, 2005; Braidotti, 2008; Bracke, 2008; Reilly, 2011; Aune, 2015; Berg and Lundahl, 2016).…”