I suggest that within these parameters the veil acts to
eliminate expressions of both difference within and unity of female
identity; it both defines and disguises the individual self. 2

My discussion of these problems
of identity and agency incorporates psychoanalytic theory, cultural
theory, postmodern and postcolonial studies and feminism.

If men build their
world upon fear is it not possible for women of the new millennium
to find an alternate space of their own making, where they may regain
agency? My own conclusion as to whether or not veiling indicates
or eradicates agency and identity involves the important question
of women’s ability to make choices. Both veiling and unveiling can
be liberating or suppressive, depending on the context and on where
and how women see themselves dominated.7

By
extension, in my present analysis, much of the literature written by
women in the Arab Middle East or Hindu India cannot be prejudged
as necessarily ‘feminist protest’ citing the veil as the foremost
indicator of social ills. For many writers, the veil is a given fact: it
is not highlighted as a specific issue but passes as part of the
traditional milieu.9

(RE)PRESENTING THE VEIL

It is important from the outset to understand
that to speak of ‘the veil’ in fact engages in a misleading reductionism;
the phenomenon of veiling cannot be reduced to a single explanation
or ‘solution’.10

The power of the imagery of the veil ‘lies in its vacuity’ (Lindisfarne-
Tapper and Ingham, 1997: 15), a concept which in itself indicates a
palimpsest open to theoretical and semantic reinscription.

11
Writers such as Marnia Lazreg advocate an understanding of
women’s experience beneath the veil, to eliminate the preconception
that the veil is simply a symbol of women’s identity. She complains,
Ironically, while the veil plays an inordinate role in representations
of women in North Africa and the Middle East, it is seldom
studied in terms of the reality that lies behind it. Women’s strategic
uses of the veil and what goes on under the veil remain a mystery.
(1994: 14)

The roots of European notions about veiling lie in nineteenthcentury
attitudes on both women and the ‘orient’. In the Middle East
and beyond, since the beginning of the twentieth century, the veil
has been a symbol of national identity and resistance. At the present
time, the issue of veiling is still at the cutting edge of political and
social change.

20
In seeking to transcend the polarised western
view (veiling as oppressive) and Muslim view (veiling as liberating),
it is imperative that we realise that veiling is as much a response to
change in the world as it is an expression of ‘religious tradition’.

21
It is relevant here to question to what extent dress defines identity.
Even in the west, fashion critics examine how far ‘a piece of cloth’
can define and expose identity.

Similarly, the figure of the veiled woman is in danger of
becoming a palimpsest written over with the desires and meanings
of others. It is imperative that we let ‘veiled woman’ speak for herself,
if possible. Spivak, however, argues that to retrieve the lost voice of
the subaltern subject is to risk complicity in an essentialist, and
western, model of subjectivity that ultimately keeps the subaltern
woman muted, because her speech is always improperly interpreted.

Even in the early days of the new millennium, feminists are still
struggling to resolve two basic questions: how to free women from
the iconic function to which phallocentrism has confined them, and
how to express a different, positive vision of female subjectivity.

25
Within the parameter of ‘female space’ women
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are placed outside the suppressive elements of patriarchy. If we view
the location of veiled women (outside male space) as equivalent to
a ‘wild zone’, then through veiling women may gain access to an
area of inner experience that is a psychological life force of women,
a prerequisite for regaining rather than losing self-identity.

European feminists such as Hélène Cixous and Julia Kristeva claim that the whole basis of women’s writing,
l’écriture féminine, is the female body. All women, according to this
argument, regardless of geo-historical position – and behind a veil
or not – have been effectively silenced. Teresa de Laurentis has
expanded upon the problem: ‘Feminism discovered the non-being
of woman: the paradox of being at once captive and absent in
discourse, constantly spoken of but of itself inaudible or inexpressible’
(1990: 115). Luce Irigaray, meanwhile, insists that women’s
difference must be written into culture and the Symbolic Order in
order to challenge woman’s ‘othering’ by western patriarchal culture
and thus her absence as woman (1985).

27
Yet why do men assign such importance to women’s bodies and
clothing in the context of nationalism, and why is such ideological
weight given to the veil? Cynthia Enloe identifies five major reasons
why the veil and sexual purity are important in terms of nationalist
causes. She suggests that women are: 1) the community’s/nation’s
most valuable possessions, 2) the principal vehicles for transmitting
values to the next generation, 3) bearers of the next generation
(‘nationalist wombs’), 4) the members of the community most
vulnerable to defilement and exploitation by oppressive alien rulers,
and 5) the most susceptible to ‘assimilation and co-option by insidious
outsiders’ (1990: 52). She notes that in every case women are passive
vehicles for male-imposed meaning.

and advocate a feminism that seeks to reflect the wide diversity of
women’s experiences and views

Moreover, recent antagonisms and distinctions between ‘first
and third world’ feminists (such as arguments put forward by Kanneh,
Kabbani and others) are fast being eroded. Afro-American feminist
writer bell hooks has long advocated a solidarity that will embrace
differences. In her important essay ‘Sisterhood: Political Solidarity
between Women’, hooks argues that
women do not need to eradicate difference to share solidarity. We
do not need to share common oppression to fight equally to end
oppression. We do not need anti-male sentiments to bond us
together, so great is the wealth of experience, culture and ideas we
have to share with one another. We can be united by our
appreciation for diversity. (in Kouramy et al., 1995: 104)

To talk about feminist praxis in global contexts would involve
shifting the unit of analysis from local, regional, and national
culture to relations and processes across cultures. Grounding
analysis on particular, local praxis is necessary, but we need to
understand the process in larger, cross-cultural processes.

The postcolonial emphasis on the search for identity has more
recently been superseded by Homi Bhabha’s concept of culture being
‘less about a pre-given identity ... and more about the activity of
negotiating ... often conflicting demands for collective self-expression’
(1999: 38–43).23 Bhabha regards people in cultures today as living in
an ‘in-between state’, in a state of suspension of time, space and
identity.

Yet, as Bhabha emphasises, ‘we should
remember that it is the “inter” – the cutting edge of translation and
negotiation, the in-between space – that carries the burden of the
meaning of culture’ (1994: 1–2). The veil creates such an ambiguous
space; it defines identity and yet simultaneously removes any identity.

remaining unseen.

Since experience itself comprises both external and internal, subjective
and objective phases of activity, this shift could come about through
a prioritisation of internal, subjective space as a place of agency.

Freud’s discussion of the gaze in particular relates most centrally
to the problematic of veiling. To summarise briefly: in an essentially
patriarchal theory, Freud claims that the exclusive rights of the gaze
belong to men. In his ‘Three Essays on Sexuality’, he isolates woman’s
basic quality as one of lack. In the patriarchal subconscious, the
woman, because of her lack, symbolises a threat of castration. In this
situation, based on both fear and obsession, man is able to play out
his fantasies and obsessions, since he is the bestower of meaning, the
rightful owner of language and the symbolic order.

Alexandra Warwick and Dani Cavallaro have discussed the veil in
its paradoxical role of both concealing and exposing: concealing the
truth by giving ‘familiar realities an unknown turn’ and as a means
of exposing since ‘defamiliarisation enforces discovery’ (1998: 134).

33
A Freudian reading suggests that woman as the other harbours a
secret, a mystery that is both desirable and dangerous for man. The
signifier of ‘woman’ negates the ‘reality’: an enigma that raises the
question ‘is there any reality behind the female facade at all?’ The
signified seems to be ultimately deferred, or an empty void

35
Freud defines the uncanny (das Unheimlich)
as ‘the name for everything that ought to have remained secret and
hidden but has come to light’ (Freud in Jay, 1994: 332).

The perceived female aggression –
in the example of El Saadawi’s ‘Ex-Minister’, suggested in a woman’s
refusal to acknowledge shame and inferiority – is threatening both
to the man as individual and to society as a whole. In Islam, woman
is the symbol of fitna, ‘the embodiment of destruction, the symbol
of disorder, the polarization of the uncontrollable, the representative
of the dangers of sexuality and its rampant disruptive potential’
(Mernissi, 1975: 130).