A critical technocultural discourse analysis of Muslim fashion bloggers in France: charting ‘restorative technoscapes’

ABSTRACT

Using critical technocultural discourse analysis with attention to netnography and the insights of visual rhetoric, this study evaluates the online productions of 4 hijabi (veiled) French Muslim fashion influencers: Zozoliina, Lady Zorro, Salima Aliani, and the Barchamammas. We assess whether the increasing visibility of French hijabi fashion bloggers like these is changing attitudes about the integration of Muslims in France. The media construction of French Muslim identity and its resulting Islamophobia have created an ‘imaginary Islam’ steeped in negativism and racialised stigma, according to some scholars, to which our surveyed influencers respond, manipulating Orientalist tropes to foster ambiguities about religion, sexuality, and race. In drawing attention to dynamic, consumption-based intersections of modest fashion marketing, ‘erasure,’ and processes of meaning-making, we argue that hijabi French Muslim fashion bloggers are increasingly positioning themselves as ‘cyberarbiters’ of social transformation and shifting attitudes about the intersections of Islam, the body, and female sexuality.

KEYWORDS:

• Technocultural discourse analysis
• modest fashion
• digital Islam
• Islam and sexuality
• Islamic markets

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. French secularism is enshrined in the concept of laïcité, the strict separation of religion and state, in which neither religion (as a concept) nor its representatives can have an influence on the exercise of political and administrative power. While this definition assumes a general neutrality in terms of the State’s response to one religion over another, it does not capture the philosophical and popular understanding of religion as a matter strictly confined to the private sphere, which also seeks to restrict the visibility of religious insignia, symbols, and signs, including and especially on the body of the individual, in the public sphere. While this restriction theoretically would apply to any religious insignia, opposition has focused particularly on the Islamic headscarf and the burkini.

2. See https://zozoliina.fr (Accessed 13 December 2020).

3. See https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/489997 (Accessed 13 December 2020).

4. See https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2ZpWGVsmvyrcb4kFlvOGyw. (Accessed 10 October 2020).

5. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igNW6u3mL8Q. (Accessed 14 October 2020).

6. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hil9tRjdAc0&t=448s. (Accessed 14 October 2020).

7. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igNW6u3mL8Q. (Accessed 14 October 2020).

8. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-rjO8aM9J8. (Accessed 14 October 2020).

9. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpVeu-jQodA. (Accessed 14 October 2020).

10. See https://video.vogue.com/series/beauty-secrets. (Accessed 14 October 2020).

11. Explained in further detail by L’Oréal at https://www.loreal.com/en/articles/the-l-oreal-spirit/. (Accessed 14 October 2020).

12. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvCoY5OFZ3I. (Accessed 14 October 2020).

13. See Zozoliina: https://zozoliina.fr/articles/; Barcha: https://barcha.fr/blog/; and Lady Zorro: http://www.ladyzorro.fr/. (Accessed 19 October 2020).

14. See https://barcha.fr (Accessed 11 December 2020).

15. See http://ladyzorro.fr/(Accessed 11 December 2020).

16. See http://www.ladyzorro.fr/mode-hijabi-style. (Accessed 19 October 2020).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kelly Pemberton

Kelly Pemberton is Associate Professor of Religion and Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) and Director of Undergraduate Studies for the WGSS program at The George Washington University. She is the author of Women Mystics and Sufi Shrines in India (2010), and co-editor of the volume Shared Idioms Sacred Symbols and the Articulation of Identities in South Asia (2009). Her research focuses on South Asia and the Middle East in four key areas: Sufism, religious authority, civil society, and Islamic activism, especially as these relate to gender.

Jennifer Takhar

Jennifer Takhar is an Associate Professor of Marketing and Communication at ISG Business School and a research affiliate at Celsa, Paris 4 Sorbonne. Her research interests lie in Consumer Culture, digital identity politics, transhumanisms, biotechnologies, innovative research methods and articulating marketing dynamics through novel representational forms. Her work is attentive to the rhetorical and literary strategies used to persuade consumers. Jennifer has published on these subjects in marketing journals including Marketing Theory, the Journal of Marketing Management and Consumption, Markets & Culture.