Veiled or veiling? – Turning back the gaze on the Western feminist. Understanding hijab from the socio-culturally located positions of knowing

Abstract

The article draws on the analysis of qualitative interviews in which young Muslim women in South Africa talk about their hijab practices. Taking a contextual, discursive psychological approach, the study investigates how individuals negotiate their subjectivities of hijabi women within socio-culturally available discourses. Participants' relationship with veiling is examined in terms of its socio-cultural, religious and lived complexity. The analysis is used as the premise of a reflexive critique of the analyst's Occidental position of knowing, whose limitations are consequently exposed. Nuances identified in the analysis are found to belie the binary of submission and resistance, upon which the Occidental view of veiling is formulated. The mono-dimensionality of the view, limited solely to the ideological implications of hijab, is problematized by the lived (affective, pragmatic) contingencies of veiling emergent from the data. The examination of differences underlying the Muslim and the Western sartorial practices leads to the identification of their similarities and commonalities.