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Magritte Meets Maghreb: This is Not a Veil1

2005; Routledge; Volume: 20; Issue: 47 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/08164640500090400

1465-3303

Judith Ezekiel,

Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes My thanks to Carol Sternhell and New York University's School of Journalism where I was a visiting scholar in the spring of 2004. My gratitude to the women in the Toulouse Race et Genre research group, particularly Horia Kebabza, Saloua Chaker, Jules Falquet and Loubna Zaoui, for ongoing discussions and support, and to Graeme Hayes for his useful comments. Though I use the term hijab in this article, some girls, either by order of Muslim authorities or of their own volition, have traded in their hijabs for other head-coverings, notably currently fashionable bandanas that leave neck and ears exposed. Naively, I assumed this would be interpreted as a giant step, a compromise between these girls and the French state. To the contrary, today, while my daughter will never be stopped from wearing her bandanas to school, if a Muslim girl does so she may be expelled (according to the Education Minister, the bandana may not cover the hair entirely and be worn continuously for two months or more). One television report on the ban showed a furious teacher reprimanding a girl for wearing a thick headband that covered the roots of her hair; the girl was threatened with suspension. (I can't help wondering whether headbands have to be smaller than those ‘reasonably-sized’ crucifixes before they will be allowed.) ‘Bandana, couvre-chefs: les termes de la loi laïcité à nouveau débattus’, Agence France Presse, 20 October 2004, , accessed 23 January 2005. Named after its chair, Bernard Stasi, this 20-member commission, included six women (seen by many as a reasonable gender balance), and several individuals of Arab or Muslim descent. The multi-partisan commission included lawyers, elected officials and academics, and internationally known figures such as Régis Debray, René Rémond and Alain Touraine. Georges Malbrunot, Christian Chesnot and Mohammed al-Joundi were released, the former two after 124 days of captivity. ‘Une “Pervenche” parisienne refuse d’ôter son voile sous sa casquette’, Le Monde, 15 September 2004; ‘Interdiction d'un défilé de femmes voilées en banlieue parisienne’, Dépeche, 4 October 2004; ‘Une Etudiante exclue d'un resto U de Paris’, Le Monde, 26–27 September 2004, p. 9; ‘Une Mairie interdit à une femme voilée d’être témoin de mariage’, Le Monde, 26–27 September 2004, p. 9; ‘Voile: débat sur la tenue des mères accompagnant les sorties scolaires’, Le Monde, 17 September 2004. French-language papers indexed in Lexis-Nexis, 10 January 2005; using key words foulard islamique or hijab and France. Note that using ‘France’ limits articles on the hijab in other countries, except when reported by the Agence France Press; 16,000 hits for foulard islamique; , accessed 10 January 2005. Houria Bouteldja et al., ‘Une nouvelle affaire Dreyfus’ in Charlotte Nordmann (ed.), Le Foulard islamique en questions (editions Amsterdam) Paris, 2004, pp. 47–53. The French have never been squarely confronted with a mass anti-racist social movement within its current, hexagonal boundaries. However, as long-time feminist and progressive activist Monique Dental and others have suggested, a significant number of white ‘historic’ feminists supported, many actively, the Algerian independence movement. Nothing, to my knowledge, has been published on this question. Discussion at the Gender and Activism Conference, 27 November 2004, Lausanne, Switzerland. Similarly, personal discussions and interviews with feminists from Algerian families shows that many of their parents and relatives had been active in the National Liberation Front, though their children often only learned this as adults. All translations my own. Bernard Stasi, ‘Commission de réflexion sur l'application du principe de laïcité dans la République: rapport au Président de la République’ (Présidence de la République) Paris, 2003, p. 17. . Jean Daniel, ‘Décidément, non au voile!’, Nouvel Observateur, 15 May 2003. Françoise Kayser, quoted in Anne Dhoquois, ‘Femmes contre les intégrismes ou le danger du relativisme culturel’, Le Magazine de Place Publique, . ‘L'attitude des Français à l’égard du Front national’, IPSOS poll for France 2 and the Nouvel Observateur, 25–26 April 2003, , accessed 12 January 2005; IPSOS poll for Vizzavi, Le Figaro, France 2, Europe 1 and Le Point, 21 April 2002, <http://www.ipsos.fr/CanalIpsos/poll/7549.asp, accessed 12 January 2005; IPSOS poll for Vizzavi, Le Figaro, France 2, Europe 1 and Le Point, 5 May 2002, , accessed 12 January 2005. See, for instance, Pierre Tévanian and Sylvie Tissot, Dictionnaire de la lepénisation des esprits, 2nd edition (Esprit frappeur) Paris, 2002. On the demonisation of Arab men, see Nacira Guénif-Souilamas and Eric Macé, Les Féministes et le garçon arabe (Editions de l'Aube) Tour d'Aigue, 2004. Proposition de loi constitutionnelle visant à supprimer le mot ‘race’ de l'article premier, Présidence de l'Assemblée nationale, 15 November 2004, . In the images that do show women, they are usually a small minority and often in the background. In certain sequences, showing workers or soldiers such as the tirailleurs senegalais, for example, this accurately represents disproportionate or exclusively male populations. But why, when showing the children of immigrants, are there almost no girls? Why are the deported Jews all men? The images also correspond to common stereotypes: the rappers, for instance, are Arab boys, while the women shown are disproportionately Asian. Cité nationale de l'histoire de l'immigration, ‘Leur histoire est notre histoire’, online permanent exhibit, , accessed 8 January 2005. Le melting pot is one of those expressions French people use to show their knowledge of America; one history of French immigration borrowed and translated it: Gérard Noiriel, Le Creuset français: histoire de l'immigration XIXème–XXème siècle (le Seuil) Paris, 1988. Pointed out by Ira Katznelson, quoted in Daniel Gordon, ‘Democracy and the Deferral of Justice in France and the United States’, Yale French Studies, no. 100, 2001, p. 85. Philippe Roger goes back to the eighteenth century in his remarkable book, The American Enemy: the History of French Anti-Americanism, Sharon Bowman (trans.) (University of Chicago Press) Chicago, 2005. Judith Ezekiel, ‘Rocking the Boat: September 11 Viewed from France’ in Bronwyn Winter and Susan Hawthorne (eds), September 11 2001: Feminist Perspectives (Spinifex) Melbourne, 2002. Judith Ezekiel, ‘Antiféminisme et américanisme: un mariage politiquement réussi?’, __Nouvelles Questions Feministes__, vol. 17, no. 1, 1996, pp. 59–76. Jean-Marie Colombani, ‘Le Désaveu’, Le Monde, 30 March 2004. ‘Les Ravisseurs accusent la France d’être “ennemie de l'islam”’, Radio France International, 15 September 2004, , accessed 12 January 2005. Philippe Guittet, ‘Sous le foulard, l'intégrisme’ in Jean-Michel Helvig (ed.), La Laïcité dévoilé: quinze années de débat en quarante ‘Rebonds’ (Libération/Editions de l'Aube) Tour d'Aigue, 2004, p. 47; Aline Baïf, ‘Le Débat sur la laïcité scolaire: deux commissions pour quel projet?’, Prochoix, nos 26–27, Autumn 2003, p. 89. See Françoise Gaspard and Fahrad Khosrow-Khavar, Le Foulard et la République (La Découverte) Paris, 1995. See Judith Ezekiel, ‘Le Women's Lib: Made in France’. ‘“Laïcardes” puisque feminists’, Prochoix, no. 25, Summer 2003, p. 13. ‘Un voile tâché de sang’, . After the hostages were taken, girls and women in hijabs spontaneously flocked to demonstrate for their release. ‘Send me instead’, one told journalists. ‘I don't want my hijab stained with blood’, said another. Whereas days earlier, media coverage made these girls appear sinister, overnight, full, front-page portraits recast them as moving heroines of the Republic. Alain Lipietz, ‘Les Verts, loi Veil: un week-end difficile, 15 janvier 2005’, , 5 February 2005. Delphy participated in a 2004 London European Social Forum session called ‘The Hijab, a Woman's Right to Choose’. I cringed, remembering the veiled Iranian delegation at the United Nations Beijing Conference in 1995 distributing glossy posters of women in chadors, subtitled ‘The veil is my nature’, and below, the bloody image of a supposed aborted fetus. I recognised the photo: it came from the national headquarters of the anti-abortionist Right to Life Society. Indeed, the local and global meet in strange ways. These terms are not used by the women themselves, but after a year-long discussion in my research group, Race et Genre, none have come up with a term they prefer. Nacira Guénif-Souilamas and Eric Macé, Les Féministes et le garçon arabe (Editions de l'Aube) Tour d'Aigue, 2004. Horia Kebabza, ‘Jeunes filles et garçons des quartiers: une approche des injonctions de genre’, Rapport GIP Justice et Délégation interministérielle à la Ville, Septembre 2003. The misplaced attention to the supposed and real purveyors of violence is reminiscent of the 1964 United States Moynihan Report, even if nobody is calling these women ‘matriarchs’. Fadela Amara, with Sylvia Zappi, Ni Putes Ni Soumises (la Découverte) Paris, 2003, pp. 146–7. ; ‘Ni putes, ni soumises: émergence d'une nouvelle iconographie de la femme en France’, 1 August 2003, . Some of this information comes from preliminary oral history interviews I have conducted as a part of a research project on this new feminism as well as discussions within the Race et Genre research group. See also Patricia Mercader and Marie-Carmen Garcia, ‘Le Mouvement Ni putes, Ni soumises: un féminisme nouveau?’, paper delivered at the Gender and Activism International Conference, 26 November 2004, Lausanne, Switzerland. Cf. the petition ‘Oui à la laïcité, non aux lois d'exception’, Prochoix, no. 25, Summer 2003, pp. 14–17. Houria Kebabza, interview with the author, 24 January 2005. I.F. Stone, ‘The Lesson Faubus-era America May Still Learn from Algeria’, 1958, in Neil Middleton (ed.), The IF Stone's Weekly Reader (Vintage) New York, 1974.