N ° 36.WHE IS the strange French obsession for the veil?

The tension of the French government on "the veil" is without common measure with what is happening in most other Western countries.In the Anglo-American world, even after September 11, the veil is not considered the standard of an insurrection.The scrub of all ethnic, racial and religious difference is not a necessary condition for integration into the nation.A sentence of the American poet Walt Whitman sums up roughly the way in which diversity is designed: "I am tall, I contain multitudes".

This does not mean that there are no terrible and persistent discrimination problems based on the differences (racial in particular) in the realm. These differences are recognized as an integral part of the national heritage.They are noted in the censuses, described in the collections of institutional data, and understood as being the source of our cultural wealth.The compound appellations ("African-American", "Italian-American", "Jewish-American", "Muslim-American") say enough about the fact that political and cultural identities can coexist without infringing the necessary unitnational.If during the primaries in progress of the next presidential election of major flaws have been revealed, they are more based on economic disparities than on ethnic or religious differences.It is the enormous inequalities of income and not the community affiliations that divide the electorate and our politicians at the moment.

Une « hystérie politique»»

For all these reasons, the French obsession with the Islamic veil seems to us to correspond to what Emmanuel Terray appointed in 2004 a "political hysteria".Unleashed rhetoric, threats and punitive laws targeting female clothes (hijab, full veil, abaya) seem excessive, not to say insane.The alarm launched in 1989 by Alain Finkielkraut, Élisabeth Badinter and others, predicting that the non-proficed hijab in schools would be the "munich" of the Republic led some of us to wonder how these supposed intellectualseriousness could grow the line at this point.Recently, Laurence Rossignol's comment comparing the wearing of the veil to voluntary submission to slavery aroused a question of the same order: did it have the slightest idea of the historical episode to which it alluded?And when Charlie Hebdo then the editorial staff of Liberation warned against the inevitable slippery slope leading from the veil to the terrorist attacks and castigated the "Islamo-leftists" which denounced the amalgam between Muslim traditions and political Islam, it wasDifficult not to read in their articles as many examples of Islamophobia that they denied so noisily.

Another disturbing aspect of focusing on the clothing of Muslim women is the idea that "secularism" would require the prohibition of the veil in the name of equality between men and women.Those of us who know a little about the history of this word are surprised to find it invoked as the principle of gender equality.This was certainly not the concern of anticlericals who invented the term in 1871, nor that of the authors of the law of 1905 which prescribed state neutrality in matters of religion and says absolutely nothing about the way womenmust be treated.Rather, it is "new secularism" (so named by François Baroin in 2003 when the prohibition of the veil was under debate) which brought equality between men and women into the founding principles of the Republic.It transfers the requirement of state neutrality to its citizens, institutions and representatives of the State to all public space and all its inhabitants.The "new secularism" requires individuals they understand that neutrality, defined as the absence of the most modest sign of religious affiliation, is the sine qua non condition of belonging to the nation.

The word "secularism" has been controversial since its creation in 1871 by anticlerical activists.At the time, it was used to counter the power of the Catholic Church now, it was used to define a French identity that excludes Muslims.In both cases, women are considered a potential danger to the Republic.In the 19th and early twentieth century, it was suspected of the French from being under the influence of the priests in the 21st century, it was Muslim women whose scarves are the sign of an unacceptable "assimilation defect", andan aggressive refusal of equality supposedly characteristic of the Republic.Finkielkraut said it bluntly in an interview with the New York Times: "Laïcité won.And we cannot compromise on the status of women.(…) Everything comes from there.»»

Marianne dévêtue

Cultural assimilation is a well -known characteristic of French identity. Le souci de représenter la France comme une nation homogène est anciendes générations d’immigrants ont ainsi été sommés de perfectionner leur pratique de la langue, s’identifier à « nos ancêtres les Gaulois»» et déclarer avant tout leur loyauté envers les fondamentaux culturels et politiques du pays.But supporters of assimilation have very rarely targeted women as they currently do.Why have they become the object of such attention?Most terrorists are men armed with the organization of the Islamic State are completely male.Why French politicians, notoriously reluctant to vote laws on domestic violence, sexual harassment or wage equality, and (for the most part) actively resisting the implementation of the law on parity in politics, why these men-With some feminist supporters-are they so concerned about the status of women as soon as it is Islam?What is their obsession with the clothing of Muslim women tells us about the anxieties of French Republicans?

Admittedly, they appeal to the old idea of a homogeneous French identity and a vision of secularism in which religion is privatized - a question of individual conscience which does not have to be publicly exposed.From this point of view, perhaps, the clothing of Muslim women is seen as marking more visibly their religious affiliation than the clothes of Muslim men. On puise aussi dans les réminiscences de la « mission civilisatrice»» coloniale qui vantait le traitement supérieur des femmes françaises (bien avant qu’elles aient le droit de vote ou qu’elles soient libérées des restrictions du Code napoléonien) sur celui des femmes « indigènes»», dont les voiles avaient alors un attrait érotique, et n’étaient pas comme aujourd’hui un signe de répression sexuelle.And then, there is the undressed Marianne, symbol of the naked nationpitrine, it is freedom guiding the people of Eugène Delacroix and the icon which appears in good place in the city hotels of a large number of municipalities.In the current controversy, Marianne à la Gorge offered embodies emancipated French women as opposed to veiled women who are subject to Islam.

Egalité du même, égalité de l’autre (sexe)

But I think there is more than all this.Something that could be called the political unconscious of French republicanism, which fuels hysteria around the clothing of Muslim women.This hysteria from which we are witnesses comes from an unshaven, but persistent contradiction between political equality and sexual difference.It is possible that this is not the direct reason in the case of Badinter or Manuel Valls, but I think that it goes so far as to tarnish their inflexible defense of the secular republic and helps to explain more generally the fixation on Muslim womenand their scarves.

The contradiction has been obvious since 1789 and has not disappeared when women obtained the right to vote in 1944.Citizenship in France is based on an abstract individualism.The individual is the essential unity, regardless of religion, ethnicity, social position or profession.Once all these elements have, the individuals are all the same, that is to say equal. Mais dans la longue histoire de la politique française, la différence sexuelle a constitué le principal obstacle au « même»», à la ressemblance, vue comme une distinction naturelle et donc impossible à éliminer.Nature has decreed a lack of similarity (therefore an inequality from this point of view) that society cannot correct.There is a deep incompatibility between the universal promise of equality in republican political theory and sexual differentiation created by nature.This does not enter the republican logic.

When women obtained the right to vote, it was as a particular group, not as an individual.In the debates on parity, the argument that ultimately allowed the law to pass was that which replaced the individual with the heterosexual couple.Sylviane Agacinski thus affirmed (for parity and against the PACS in 1999) that there could not be a monosexual parliament as there could be monosexual families.Complementarity thus replaced the equality of individuals. Dans l’éloge de la séduction comme trait de caractère national, la complémentarité est asymétrique : les femmes « consentent amoureusement»» à leur subordination aux hommes.

The emphasis on the game of seduction open between men and women, and in particular the public display of the body of women, is used to demonstrate their difference and the need to treat them differently.In this sense, the problem posed by sex to republican political theory is denied. Paradoxalement, l’« objétisation»» de la sexualité féminine sert à « voiler»» une contradiction inhérente au républicanisme français : son incapacité à réconcilier la différence sexuelle « naturelle»» avec la promesse d’égalité pour tous.

Le voile au pied de la lettre

The veil of Muslim women seems to present a challenge from this point of view, threatening to expose the denied or repressed contradiction of republican theory. L’habillement « modeste»» répond directement aux problèmes posés par le sexe et la sexualité dans les relations sociales et la politique.He attests that sexual relations are prohibited in the public square.Some Muslim feminists say that this is what frees them in fact, but whether it is the case or not, or that each woman who puts a veil understands symbolism in this way or not, the veil signals the acceptance of thesexuality and even its celebration, but only in particular circumstances - in private, within the family.The paradox here is that the veil makes explicit - visible for everyone - the rules of gender interaction which declare that sexual exchanges are outside the public space.

C’est la reconnaissance explicite d’un problème que la politique française veut nier qui rend le voile « visible»» au sens sexuel du terme.The clothing of Muslim women is proof of the difficulties presented by sex for exchanges in the public sphere - difficulties that French Republicans want to deny.Their pious declarations on equality are in total contradiction with their deep discomfort as soon as it comes to sharing power with the other sex.Seduction is for them an alternative preferable.

I do not want to deny the patriarchal aspects of Muslim practices, but we must not ignore the fact that there is no perfect gender equality in France.Women are objected in both systems, although differently.I just want to say that political hysteria on the veil must be understood not as a simple and logical response to terrorism, nor as the defense of gender equality.It is rather a way of denying the persistence of inequalities within French society (inequalities that go from the genre to race and ethnicity). Ces inégalités ne sont pas accidentelleselles sont consubstantielles à un système politique qui fait du « même»» abstrait le fondement de l’égalité, et de la différence sexuelle concrète l’exception et la justification d’une inégalité qui, parce qu’elle est « naturelle»», ne peut pas être nommée.

This is perhaps another way of saying that all the attention paid to inequality that would characterize the fate of Muslim women is a way to evacuate problems concerning French women in general-different of course, but whichhave not been resolved by law (vote, changes in the civil code, parity) or by other means.One thing is certain, if gender inequality also exists in the Anglo-American world, it has not taken the form of this obsession with Muslim women and their sails which can be said to be a French singularity.

Joan Wallach Scott, author of this article is a historian, professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, New Jersey).His work, initially devoted to the French workers' movement, moved from the 1980s to the history of women from a gender perspective.Translated from English by Françoise Feugas.

Courtesy Orient XXI.Orient XXI is an independent media, free and without advertising, you can give it a tax exemption online, or by check.

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