Colonial and Orientalist Veils: Associations of Islamic Female Dress in the French and Moroccan Press and Politics

Bijdiguen, Loubna. 2015. Colonial and Orientalist Veils: Associations of Islamic Female Dress in the French and Moroccan Press and Politics. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]

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Abstract or Description

The veiled Muslimah or Muslim woman has figured as a threat in media during the past few years, especially with the increasing visibility of religious practices in both Muslim-majority and Muslim minority contexts. Islamic dress has further become a means and technique of constructing ideas about the ‘other’. My study explores how the veil comes to embody this otherness in the contemporary print media and politics. It is an attempt to question constructions of the veil by showing how they repeat older colonial and Orientalist histories. I compare and contrast representations of the dress in Morocco and France. This research is about how Muslimat, and more particularly their Islamic attire, is portrayed in the contemporary print media and politics. My research aims to explore constructions of the dress in the contemporary Moroccan and French press and politics, and how the veil comes to acquire meanings, or veil associations, over time. I consider the veil in Orientalist, postcolonial, Muslim and Islamic feminist contexts, and constructions of the veil in Orientalist and Arab Nahda texts. I also examine Islamic dress in contemporary Moroccan and French print media and politics. While I focus on similarities and continuities, I also highlight differences in constructions of the veil. My study establishes the importance of merging and comparing histories, social contexts and geographies, and offers an opportunity to read the veil from a multivocal, multilingual, cross-historical perspective, in order to reconsider discourses of Islamic dress past and present in comparative perspective.

Item Type:

Thesis (Doctoral)

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.25602/GOLD.00014844

Keywords:

Islamic dress, veil, colonialism, orientalism, Moroccan and French press

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Media, Communications and Cultural Studies

Date:

31 August 2015

Item ID:

14844

Date Deposited:

16 Nov 2015 12:47

Last Modified:

08 Sep 2022 13:51

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/14844

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