Veiling and The Urge

In Sabyn Javeri’s book Hijabistan, the female subject’s introduction to the veil happens at a point where desire is introduced. This point of intersection between veil and desire makes the veil the location of two conflicting ideas – the veil, supposed to hide desire, becomes a tool in its production/navigation. This might seem like an oversimplification of the complex meanings attached to the veil and it is this complexity that makes the veil such a slippery symbol. Its polysemic richness defies any definition or meaning that might be fixed to it. Veil/hijab is a fluid aporia that ever expands in its multiplicity but never comes down to a singular understanding. Part of it is the veil’s popularity in the western discourses where its ambivalence baffles the western subject. Robert Young writes,

“The Western response to the veil is to desire its removal, so that contemporary strategy of liberation in the name of saving women supposedly forced to wear the veil coincide uncomfortably with the colonial violence of the veil’s forcible removal” (Young 2020)

This aspect was new to me and so I googled Tuareg men and saw that they looked very similar to traditional Baloch or Pashtun men. Young’s argument is that the question of veiling is not exclusive to gender but is more situational. The interpretation we give to any veiling depends on how it is being used. This makes the discussion of the veil even broader to a question of hiding and exposing – why, when, where. The concept also made me think of the idea of zahir/batin(roughly) what is shown, and what is hidden inside). Veiling as situational incorporates a broader understanding of this elusive symbol.