The Conundrum of the Veil and Mohja Kahf's Literary Representations of Hijab

Abstract

This essay examines the semiotic complexities involved in the Muslim veil as an object that has almost invariably become a defining feature of Muslim female subjectivity. More specifically, I endeavour to show that the veil has acquired a monstrous power to the extent that even within a transcultural ambit of norms, the Muslim woman – whether veiling or not – is seen either positively or negatively through the presence or the absence of the veil and thus appears as always already improperly covered. I will draw on Peter Schwenger's study of the gaze of the object as a useful analytical tool to probe into the complexities regarding the visual power of the veil. To demonstrate this argument, I will then examine the ways in which Syrian–American writer and scholar Mohja Kahf engages in the scholarly conversation on dress and identity in the context of diaspora and thereby reimagines new ways of being Muslim, Arab and American. Kahf's work intervenes in the trite yet dominant binary manner of thinking about the veil as invariably symbolizing oppression or emancipation. I end the essay with a reference to the works of the French guerrilla artist Princess Hijab and the ways s/he queers the dominant meanings attached to the veil in the field of visual culture. Both Kahf and Princess Hijab draw on the visual power of the veil in an attempt to defamiliarize it. They problematize deep-seated assumptions about the centrality of the veil as a major defining feature of Muslim female subjectivity.

• hijab/veil
• Kahf, Mohja
• Princess Hijab
• semiotics of the veil

Acknowledgements

My heartfelt thanks go to Stephen Slemon for his invaluable comments and excellent advice in drafting this article. I also wish to thank Marco Katz for his generosity and helpful remarks. I am very thankful of Mohja Kahf for generously allowing me to quote from her works.

Notes

1. Naghibi (1999) attends to the complexities involved in the practice of veiling in twentieth-century Iran. She introduces the term bad- hijab as a subversive category, particularly applied to women who do not quite observe the codes of mandatory hijab.

2. See also Rahimieh's (1990) feminist critique of Alloula.

3. For studies about western liberal feminism and issues of women in postcolonial times, see Mohanty (2003) and Naghibi (2007).

4. For the ways in which the East and the West rationalize the position of their women and manage their relation to the ‘other’, see Nader (1989).

5. Clearly, feminist scholars differ on their readings of the hijab. For studies on the practice of veiling as historically specific, see Mernissi (1991) and Ahmed (1992). For a positive theory of hijab, see Bullock (2003).

6. See posts following Aburawa (2009).