The Politics of the Veil

The Public Square

by Joan Wallach Scott

In 2004, the French government instituted a ban on the wearing of "conspicuous signs" of religious affiliation in public schools. Though the ban applies to everyone, it is aimed at Muslim girls wearing headscarves. Proponents of the law insist it upholds France's values of secular liberalism and regard the headscarf as symbolic of Islam's resistance to modernity. The Politics of the Veil is an explosive refutation of this view, one that bears important implications for us all.
Joan Wallach Scott, the renowned pioneer of gender studies, argues that the law is symptomatic of France's failure to integrate its former colonial subjects as full citizens. She examines the long history of racism behind the law as well as the ideological barriers thrown up against Muslim assimilation. She emphasizes the conflicting approaches to sexuality that lie at the heart of the debate--how French supporters of the ban view sexual openness as the standard for normalcy, emancipation, and individuality, and the sexual modesty implicit in the headscarf as proof that Muslims can never become fully French. Scott maintains that the law, far from reconciling religious and ethnic differences, only exacerbates them. She shows how the insistence on homogeneity is no longer feasible for France--or the West in general--and how it creates the very "clash of civilizations" said to be at the root of these tensions.

The Politics of the Veil calls for a new vision of community where common ground is found amid our differences, and where the embracing of diversity--not its suppression--is recognized as the best path to social harmony.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Politics, Islam, Religion, Gender, France

224 pages, Hardcover

First published September 17, 2007

About the author

Joan Scott is known internationally for writings that theorize gender as an analytic category. She is a leading figure in the emerging field of critical history. Her ground-breaking work has challenged the foundations of conventional historical practice, including the nature of historical evidence and historical experience and the role of narrative in the writing of history, and has contributed to a transformation of the field of intellectual history. Scott's recent books focus on gender and democratic politics. Her works include The Politics of the Veil (2007), Gender and the Politics of History (1988), Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (1996), and Parité: Sexual Equality and the Crisis of French Universalism (2005). Scott graduated from Brandeis University in 1962 and received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1969. Before joining the Institute for Advanced Study, Scott taught in the history departments of Brown University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Northwestern University, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Rutgers University.

Reviews

[Amy Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read Scott's theoretical stuff and was relieved to discover this was written in a more approachable manner. Her concluding chapter had a striking argument about conflicts within France. She concludes that the problem is a fundamental different understanding of sexuality and the differences between the sexes between France and its North African/Muslim population. That she had already considered the role of racism, colonialism, and religious bias made her concluding argument more convincing. I do wish, however, that she could have offered more concrete suggestions for workable solutions.

[Indran · Rating 3 out of 5]

It raises good points but they were not conveyed as clearly or succinctly as they could have been.

Edit: In retrospect, I appreciate this book enough to raise to 3 if not 4 stars. For one thing, it gives direct quotes from different women living in France about why they do or don't choose to wear a hijab. Secondly, it gives an excellent explanation of laïcité, while also offering clear evidence of how its champions have in practice become hypocritical, if not racist.

Another interesting nuance from this book involves Iranian immigrants to France whose children see the hijab as a chance to rebel again their parents, or a chance to exercise agency in building an identity as bicultural, 1st gen immigrants. And the parents are sometimes very opposed to this due to associating the hijab with compulsion under Iranian law. What a complex situation—and how rarely are all these facets considered in the discourse one typically hears regarding the hijab, Islam, and women's rights.

[Shanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I may change my mind and give it five stars instead.
Easy-to-read and informative theory that calls out France's racist and misogynist policies.
I probably want to read everything this woman has written.

[Hannah Baksh · Rating 4 out of 5]

joan scott does it again - this time with a modern historicization of the veil, or hijab, or niqab, or burka, or whatever term the media has decided to conflate.

she proves, yet again, that gender is a useful category of analysis - full 6pg paper coming soon…

[Anna Shuff · Rating 4 out of 5]

love. couldn’t put it down

[Omar Khodr · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5.

Overall insightful and well-written, I recommend it! Sometimes I found her analysis to be a little far-fetched and embellished, which made me question her interpretation of events at times.

[Andreas Bodemer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joan W. Scott makes a good argument that the veil/headscarf is more of a symbol than it is a "threat" to French culture because of how it is almost perfectly opposed to French sexuality and because of how few girls were wearing the scarf prior to the beginning of the controversy which began in the late 1980s and gained serious momentum in the mid 90s and again in 2003. Scott also argues that France retained the social structure of Catholicism that it tried to overthrow; instead of Catholic nuns whipping school boys into fearing God, school teachers are making students beholden to monolithic enlightenment values. French primary and secondary schools have become a Kantian machine that produces "individuals." Scott concludes that the French opposition to the veil is, at its core, racist.

This book is my first serious experience with 3rd wave feminism. I found it surprisingly lucid and easy to read. Scott made some dubious Freudianisms, which I did not care much more, but fortunately, her main arguments and insights did not rely on psychoanalysis.

I believe that a better critique of secularism/liberalism as a comprehensive doctrine can be found in John Gray's 'Two Faces of Liberalism'

[Peter Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scott ties the "affair of the veil" together with disparate parts of French history and culture - it's colonializing past, laicite, the French Revolution - into a cohesive and compelling narrative. One misgiving I may have about the book is that I came away from it with the impression that France's ban of the headscarf in public schools was the perceived "perverseness" of the sexuality of Muslims provided more motivation for the ban than France's racism in general toward Muslims (and Arabs and North Africans as the French conflate these into a single undiscernible group), which I'm not convinced is the case. I'm not sure this is Scott's conclusion but the amount of attention she pays to the subject gave me this impression.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like Joan Scott, I come to the veil controversies from an American perspective, where you basically let people wear whatever. The idea you need to strip yourself of communal identifiers — so, ironically enough, you can be an Enlightenment-style individual — to be part of the national community doesn’t make much sense to me. I’ve run into it here, of course. During some of my shittier jobs I was subjected to rants about how people should only fly other countries flags if they flew the American flag at the same height, blah blah. The usual nationalistic nonsense from nationalisms that purport to be about freedom of expression.

AFAICT the biggest irritant here to Joan Scott, a major feminist historian, is that unlike American xenophobia it’s hard to dismiss the French version as just ignorant people being ignorant. Real intellectuals and serious statespeople in France were in favor of the headscarf ban in schools, and later the body-covering ban (which apparently also does unitards? Stupid rules). So Scott tackles the particulars of French universalism that allow for this situation to pass. It’s a picture that doesn’t lack for pathos, even as it veils (heh) xenophobia. The universalist dream isn’t entirely a bad one. The problem is they made (implicitly Catholic, or ex-Catholic) white French men the model of the universal and expect everyone to conform to that. I found myself wondering, “why not mandate baguette eating or cigarette smoking while you’re at it?” if there’s this supposed French way of being everyone needs to do to be French? The answer to that is the usual depressing stuff about racism and colonialism, France’s long war with the Muslims of North Africa. But I guess having grown up free-range, one human thing I have difficulty really grasping is the insistence everyone play the game your way. ****

[Ben Ricketts · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great look at the politics surrounding Islamic headscarves in France, and—by extension—the debates around Islamic dress and feminism that continue around the world. What Scott puts forward here is a feminism with respect to individual religious expressions (including the headscarf), rather than a movement to reject religious expression in the name of rather nefarious understandings of “secularism” and “equality” that overlook inequalities traditionally present in Western societies.

My only complaint is that this book—like many works focused on contemporary issues—reinforces key points until it almost becomes too repetitive. But I recommend it nonetheless.

[Urian · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the issue is one that should be addressed, and much of the evidence supported the claim of the author, she lost some credibility with continuously referring to a Yamaka as a "Jewish skull cap," used terms such as "Islamism," which is vaguely redundant, and made wild jumps from sources to make her point without truly convincing me that they were truly related.

[Sarena · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Politics of the Veil provides a clear, insightful look into the history and "reasoning" behind the Muslim ban in French public schools. I particularly appreciate how the writing is accessible despite its academic nature, as well as how Scott delves into France's colonial past and links that history to contemporary racism and patriarchy.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful, counter intuitive arguments by Scott in defense of difference and multiculturalism. She uses history in one of the most useful ways I've seen to argue against discrimination and contemporary misconstructions of liberty.

[Claude Joven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative theory and very approachable for those outside of the history field. Anyone who has ever pondered what France’s discrimination towards hijabi women should read this book. It’s an important examination of the culture that needs to be talked about more.

[Yasmine Flodin-Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent. Easy read, packed with information.

[Lucy Lawrenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic.

[Erika · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book always teaches well and, as my students noted, seems to be speaking to the day's news in France despite being written over a decade ago.

[D]

School

[Ikram · Rating 4 out of 5]

les fachos tremblent quand ils voient ce livre

[Michaela Mnukova · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was genius I really enjoyed it! It is approachable yet still being academic. Loved it

[Mae Heeringa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little hard to get into, but the second she started to talk about gender and sexuality I was locked in. #HistoryMajor #GenderStudiesMinor

[Hiya Agrawal · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was very informative and interesting, but there were swaths of text that dragged on

[Bilal Anis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good book. Well written and smoothly describben.

[Jowel Uddin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Politics of the Veil

As a history buff and novice political scientist, recently I have been interested in the historical archetype of “clash of the civilizations.” The Politics of the Veil served to be a great reference in studying the long lived “clash of the civilizations”, especially the one depicted in The Politics of the Veil, where it is essentially French secularism against Muslims within France.

Joan Wallach Scott's work essentially is a refutation against the 2004 banning of headscarves in French schools. Scott's arguments are very skillful and she seems to equate both sides of the argument – that of Muslims and that of French secularism. Scott identifies many possible reasons for this constant oppression of Muslims and their culture within Europe, especially France. One of the most memorable reasons and perhaps most fascinating to the historian, is the notion that the French are having this dilemma because they are still trying to integrate old colonial subjects as citizens. The French after their ventures in Algeria and other parts of the Middle East, are trying to assimilate their Muslim citizens. The supporter’s of the 2004 ban, as Scott states, think that the headscarves go against individualism. They think that the headscarves go against the Muslim women's ability to express her individualism; it is holding back the Muslim women in a French secular society. The French have long relished their notion of secularism, especially after the French Revolution, and one feels after reading Sott's arguments, that perhaps being too secular is not too great.

Of course, one wants all countries to be secular, yet a country should also embrace diversity. The French, from what Scott depicts, want a secular republic, yet going as far as abridging the rights of Muslim girls in schools is a bit too far. The United States of America is a secular nation, yet the United States still allows Muslim girls, Jewish boys, and other religious garment wearing students. Perhaps France should dim its extremist secularism and give way, as Scott suggests, to finding common ground on diversity and differences. As Scott suggests, perhaps this archetype: “the clash of the civilizations”, can slowly dwindle down if France starts to embrace difference within its borders.

Overall, The Politics of the Veil was a wonderful read, and I would highly recommend it to both historians or political scientists and the common man alike.

[Ghida · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book provides a lucid and detailed analysis on the roots and causes of the "headscarf/veil affair" in France. The author delves into the colonial history of france as well as into the entrenched racism against Arabs, North Africans, and Muslims (often placed in the same category, heh), which have contributed to the controversial ban on the veil. The book explains that this ban is not just 'racist people being racist', but it rather stems from a history saturated with colonialism and wars, racism, cultural incompatibility, and fight for 'individuality'. France, from its unpleasant past experiences, resorted to promote the concept of a 'one united undivided nation' by eliminating all observable differences among its citizens. Ironically, the land that preaches freedom and equality comes with an instruction manual that teaches how to be acknowledged as a french citizen, with #1 rule is being compliant with the french concept of sexuality and taking off the veil.
Scott discusses the matter by referring to racism, individualism, secularity and laïcité, and sexuality. Although some concepts are redundant, the book is easily comprehensible and provides a solid outlook on the issue.

[Jennifer Waldkirch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her point about religious freedom, gender empowerment, and individualism seems so obvious that it's hard to understand why the French have pursued the policies on headscarf bans. This book has been very important to my understanding of modern European secularism because it's a side of political and religious discourse that few Americans experience. Yet the book also mirrors our own religiously driven injustices and the hysteria over Islam very present in our own society.

[Ann Tonks · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really surprised that a book published by Princeton University Press should be so narrow and so politically unsubtle in its position. It comes across as a Western apologist with Islam. I was ambivalent about the French legislation around banning the veil but this book irritated me so much, that my ambivalence has lessened - which presumably wouldn't be the author's intention.

[Drmeow · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read - I learned quite a bit about the French psyche as well as French politics. However, like many books written by academics for non-academics it was too long and repetitive. It is basically a long essay expanded into a full length book.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

A highly informative discussion and analysis of the reasoning behind French secularists' position on Islamic head wear. It masterfully and in great detail lays out the racial and cultural bias entrenched in French thinking, as well as the history relating to the place of religion.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Surprisingly shallow investigation on some important points, but a pretty good overview with a few very good arguments tucked in.