unguided tour » veil

Another argument for the burqa

bettina mathes — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:09:12 +0000

In yesterday’s New York TimeS Martha Nussbaum’s gives an excellent analysis on the undemocratic and islamophobic principles governing bans on Muslim veils and burqas in many Western European countries. Read her essay “Veiled Threats” here

Read my “An Argument for the Burqa” here

Another argument for the burqa originally appeared on unguided tour on July 13, 2010.
All rights reserved (c) bettina mathes

An argument for the burqa

bettina mathes — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:23:19 +0000

On June 20, 2009 Neda Agha-Soltan, a student at Teheran’s Islamic Azad University is shot by Iranian police on her way to join an antigovernment protest march. She is 26 years old. Someone films her dying on the street, and immediately uploads the video on Youtube making Neda Agha-Soltan the symbol of the student protests and a martyr for democratic reform in Iran.

On June 20, 2009 Neda Soltani, a lecturer of English literature at Teheran’s Islamic Azad University, is in her office revising a book manuscript. She does not join the protesters on their march. It doesn’t matter that Neda Soltani does not know Neda Agha-Soltan, the identities of the two women are about to merge.

Western media, hungry for images, need a face to go with the story — they find it on Neda Soltani’s facebook page. To our disinterested ears the names sound close enough. Why double check the spelling? It is the icon we’re interested in, who cares about the identity of the individual woman? CNN, BBC, CBS, ARD, ZDF, major newspapers — they all use Neda Soltani’s portrait. Sometimes her name is given with Neda Agha-Soltan’s image. For several weeks — until the government breaks down the opposition — Neda Soltani’s portrait can be seen on banners and posters mourning the shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan.

Neda Soltani tries everything to reclaim her image. She calls TV stations and news channels, she writes follow-up emails and letters explaining the mix-up, demanding that her image be removed, stating over and over again that she is neither dead nor Neda Agha-Soltan. It’s too late, her image has become the face of a brutally crushed struggle for freedom.

Neda Soltani’s photograph has been circulating in the mass media and on social networking sites for over a week when the Iranian government pressures her to denounce the shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan as a hoax instigated by the student protesters in conjunction with Western media. Frightened she flees the country for Germany where she seeks political asylum. Since her arrival in July Ms Soltani has been confined to a dismal refugee detention center waiting to be granted refugee status. No one has apologized to her.

To be robbed of one’s image can destroy a life. Neda Agha-Soltan’s publicized death and Neda Soltani’s loss of control over her image demonstrate how difficult it is for women to protect themselves from the intrusion + manipulation of Western media and their shameless consumers? We condemn the burkha as symbol and instrument of female oppression, we advocate the forced unveiling of Muslim women, we assume we alone know the truth. When will we explain to them we consider their naked faces our property?

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links

The New York Times reports on June 22, 2009 getting the facts right;

The Guardian reports on June 22, 2009 the death of Neda Soltani using Neda Agha-Soltan’s photograph;

An article in the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung tells Neda Soltani’s story of how the ‘false’ image destroyed her life;

A Wikipedia entry on Neda Agha-Soltan’s death.

An argument for the burqa originally appeared on unguided tour on February 8, 2010.
All rights reserved (c) bettina mathes

Primal Screen 6 (post partum)

bettina mathes — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:19:01 +0000

The primal screen is a Christian fantasma.
I must be careful not to impose it onto cultures which have incorporated their own religious beliefs, and which have developed ideas of the nature of woman as well as the function of visual images different from mine.

The Christian veil marks the beginning of the history of the primal screen. A history that is not over yet.

“Men look at women, women watch themselves being looked at.” (John Berger) The wish to see her naked — not as she would see herself but as he wants to see her. Nude. The convention of the female nude, unique to European art, presents a form of nakedness that reduces the lived diversity of women’s bodies to an idealized surface, a screen. The nude wears her nudity like a garment. A naked veil. A sight to be looked at by others and by herself. The female nude is never a mother.

The saturation of public spaces with images of the nude affect me. I begin to imitate the image. I have shed the veil long ago. Over the centuries layer after layer of clothing has disappeared. When in the 1960s the bikini becomes an acceptable form of dress, I have mastered the art of likening myself to the image of the nude. I rarely talk about this part of my history when I revile the Muslim woman’s veil.

Much pleasure & satisfaction can be found in turning myself into a sight. It makes me feel seductive & desirable, powerful, in control. But this should not lead me to conclude that the veiled Muslim woman lacks the freedom to experience pleasure. Her pleasures may be different from mine. It is that difference I perceive as a provocation to my hard-won freedom.

The veiled Muslim woman does not pretend she’s flat. There is a female body underneath the veil. A sexual body. It is this body I’m obsessed with, want to drag into the open, expose, defile. This is my wish: to reduce her to an image, a nude, a flat screen. Why? Because her presence forces me to acknowledge that not only am I less secular than I pretend to be, I am also not as free and liberated as I want to be.

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read primal screen 5

Primal Screen (0)

bettina mathes — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:31:46 +0000

“The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.“ (John Berger, Ways of Seeing) Why, then, “is it so hard for us to believe that our truths are often fantasies?” (Amy Bloom, Normal) Perhaps because we have learned to believe in the Truth of science.
As a scholar I am in a peculiar position: the tools of academic reasoning and scientific exploration are embedded in a culture of surveillance. How can I understand the meaning of the visual, of visibility in my own culture when scholarly discourse forces me to occupy the position of the gaze, the voyeur? Invisible, observing the other, hiding my desire. Pretending to be not involved, I am expected to present ‘penetrating arguments.’ — Do I always have to follow orders?

Leap of faith. In a letter Paul the apostle teaches the Corinthians why a Christian woman ought to cover her hair and why man may go uncovered:

“A man should not have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God. But the woman is the glory of the man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man.“ (1 Corinthians, 11:7)

To anyone with eyes to see Paul’s words don’t make sense. Not then. Obviously man is of woman born. So is woman. The pronouncement that woman comes from man disregards the obvious in favor of an understanding of masculinity and femininity that is at odds with the visible world. As symbol of this new vision of men and women, the veil contradicts what we think of as nature.

The Christian veil symbolizes a new relation between man & woman, masculinity & femininity. Woman is a copy to man’s original. He has depth, she is flat. He is the beginning, she is history. Man is created in the image of God, woman is man’s glory. Glory appeals to the sense of sight. It implies the perception of “an unearthly beauty attributed by imagination.” (OED) Woman’s appearance conceived in man’s mind. The Christian virgin as primal screen — untouched, passive, flat.

Non-sequitur: The modern unveiling of western women does not break away from the christian doctrine of woman as the image of man. It is its fulfillment. The fabrication of a naked veil. Invisible, untouchable, hard to prove. But this is not to say it doesn’t exist.