Un/veiling Women’s Bodies

Abstract

Heated discussion in the media, costly and laborious government commissions, and restrictive legal recommendations in France and Québec, Canada, have recently focused on the undesirability of face-covering veils (burqas and niqabs) in the public sphere. This article charts how these sites have, at the same time, concretized a contrasting idealized presentation of a desirable secular female body. This examination is grounded in recent Secularism Studies scholarship that argues that, like forms of religiosity, secularisms include a range of social and physical dispositions (Warner, 2008; see also Asad, 2003; Calhoun et al., 2011; Fadil, 2011; Jakobsen and Pellegrini, 2008; Mahmood, 2009). Through consideration of two recent niqab-wearing women’s cases outside of Paris and in Montréal, and with reference to theories of governmentality (Fassin, 2010; Foucault, 1980, 1988; Guénif-Souilamas, 2006) and to Joan Wallach Scott on seduction (2011), I examine the regulatory functions and normalizing delineations of female sexuality within restrictions against full-face hijabs.