Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance (Dress, Body, Culture)

263 Pages·1999·0.72 MB·English

by  Fadwa El Guindi

Veil
Dress, Body, Culture
Series Editor Joanne B. Eicher, Regents’ Professor, University of Minnesota
Advisory Board:
Ruth Barnes,Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Helen Callaway,CCCRW, University of Oxford
James Hall,University of Illinois at Chicago
Beatrice Medicine,California State University, Northridge
Ted Polhemus,Curator, “Street Style” Exhibition, Victoria & Albert
Museum
Griselda Pollock,University of Leeds
Valerie Steele,The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology
Lou Taylor,University of Brighton
John Wright,University of Minnesota
Books in this provocative series seek to articulate the connections between
culture and dress which is defined here in its broadest possible sense as any
modification or supplement to the body. Interdisciplinary in approach, the
series highlights the dialogue between identity and dress, cosmetics,
coiffure, and body alterations as manifested in practices as varied as plastic
surgery, tattooing, and ritual scarification. The series aims, in particular, to
analyze the meaning of dress in relation to popular culture and gender
issues and will include works grounded in anthropology, sociology, history,
art history, literature, and folklore.
ISSN: 1360-466X
Previously published titles in the Series
Helen Bradley Foster,“New Raiments of Self”: African American Clothing
in the Antebellum South
Claudine Griggs,S/he: Changing Sex and Changing Clothes
Michaele Thurgood Haynes,Dressing Up Debutantes: Pageantry and Glitz
in Texas
Dani Cavallaro and Alexandra Warwick,Fashioning the Frame:
Boundaries, Dress and the Body
Thomas S. Abler,Hinterland Warriors and Military Dress: European
Empires and Exotic Uniforms
DRESS, BODY, CULTURE
Veil
Modesty, Privacy and
Resistance
Fadwa El Guindi
Oxford•New York
First published in 1999 by
Berg
Editorial offices:
150 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JJ, UK
70 Washington Square South, New York, NY 10012, USA
© Fadwa El Guindi 1999
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form
or by any means without the written permission of Berg.
Berg is an imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 1859739245(Cloth)
1859739296(Paper)
Typeset by JS Typesetting, Wellingborough, Northants.
Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn.
It is hoped that this book equally reaches those who decided to
veil, those who refused to unveil, those who refused to veil,
those who traditionally always veiled, and those who never ever
veiled.
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Contents
Transliteration and Translation ix
Preface xi
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Introduction 3
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The Veil in Comparative Tradition 13
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Ideological Roots to Ethnocentrism 23
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The Anthropology of Dress 49
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Sacred Privacy 77
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The Veil in Social Space 97
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The Veil Of Masculinity 117
88888
The Veil Becomes a Movement 129
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The Sacred In The Veil: Hijab 147
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Reactions To The New Trend 161
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Contexts Of Resistance 169
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Veiling And Feminism 177
Notes 187
Bibliography 215
Index 235
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Transliteration and Translation
No system of transliteration is followed, except for the HAMZA and ‘AYN,
which are marked here by the apostrophe as a convenience to nonspecialists.
Although some Arabic words or names, such as Mecca, Muhammed or
Koran, have become common English words, in this book I use the spelling
adopted by the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences to approximate
better the Arabic pronunciation of these words, so that they are spelled
Makka, Muhammad, and Qur’an.
Most Arabic words are printed in Italics. In some instances, when it is
relevant to the meaning, I specify the syllable stress in parentheses following
an Arabic word. Also, for each new Arabic word, its triliteral root follows it
in parentheses.
I carefully scrutinized existing English translations of the Qur’anic text
relevant to my analysis, and examined it against the context of the other
sources utilized – the original Arabic Hadith narratives and the Arabic Tafsir,
ethnography and historical accounts. I discovered that often shades of mean-
ings and nuances embedded in the original text are lost in the translations
or slightly modified – enough to alter the meanings significantly for this
anthropological analysis. Possibly it is some English-translated segments that
are responsible for recurring clichés in scholarship, particularly on charged
topics such as women and dress. Most translation of the original Arabic
Qur’anic and Hadith text and of other non-Islamic Arabic sources is my
own.
ix