Unruly Women: Race, Neocolonialism, and the Hijab

Description

Despite the disapproval that "visibly" Muslim women face in the West, the U.S. does not ban the hijab or niqab. Nevertheless, it does find a way to manage assertive Muslim women. How so? Subtly and without outright confrontation: through the courts, bureaucratic processes and liberal discourses. From a range of juridical decisions connected not only by a distinctly neocolonial gaze, but also through the tacit dimension of race, Muslim women-among other women of color-are reconceived as neonates who must be taught to behave: as Americans, as professional women, and as autonomous, mildly independent subjects. Focusing on the discrimination claims of Muslim women, this study examines juridical and political approaches that dismiss Muslim women and other populations of color as culturally backward, misguided in their thinking, and gratuitously nonconformist. Likewise, it analyses the experience of racial dismissal through excruciation: the phenomenon by which vulnerable populations are pressed into hopeless performances of cultural assimilation. Racial dismissal is excavated through legal opinions, court transcripts, and other encounters between Muslim women and the state. Ultimately, this work finds that the racial address of dismissal and the phenomena of excruciation have been pivotal to a liberal juridical order that otherwise claims neutrality. By concentrating on the treatment of Muslim women, this book uncovers dynamics of social and racial division which have inhabited and bolstered liberal legal neutrality from its inception. This book's framework, while focusing on Muslim women in the U.S., is a template for understanding how exclusion is juridically implemented for other racialized and marginalized populations. Cover Half-Title Series Title Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 2nd Half-Title 1. Ontopolitics: Unruliness, Excruciation, and Dismissal 2. Anxieties of Liberalism: Secularism, Feminism, and Suitable Muslim Women 3. A Genealogy of Neocolonial Social Comportment 4. The Hijab and the Sari: The Strange and the Sexy Between Colonialism and Global Capitalism 5. Reversing the Gaze: The Racial-​Cultural Aesthetics of Power 6. Transparency and the Deceptive Conceit of Liberalism 7. Discrimination, Neoliberalism, and Suitable Women 8. Dismissal: Neocolonialism, Race, and Anti-​Blackness Conclusion: Listening to the Silences Appendix Notes Bibliography Index