Reimagining the Burqa

Abstract

Throughout the recent war in Afghanistan, the burqa has represented the oppression of the Taliban. It has acted as a site of intersection and contestation among discourses of beauty, freedom, women's rights, human rights and religion. This article explores the 2010 Afghan Parliamentary campaign of Farkhunda Zahra Naderi, who uses the symbol of the burqa rather than her own face on her campaign posters. Naderi's campaign represents a disruption of the purported essence of the burqa because it denaturalizes the garment, purporting to turn the little window into a ‘window of power’. Naderi removes herself from her position of power as an educated Afghan woman with access to many opportunities and instead places the spotlight on the faceless Afghan woman in the burqa, symbolizing that it could be any woman on that campaign poster; it could be any Afghan woman running for office. This is her goal: to enable any woman to be successful, in the burqa or not, able to make the choice not to wear the burqa, but also to make the choice to wear the burqa but not be subjugated as a result. In this way the notion that there is any essence to the burqa itself is disrupted.