From: jevans-AT-eircom.net
Subject: Re: [BOU:] Re: an outline of an investigation of l'affaire dufoulard
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 21:57:08 +0000


Hi

> 1. Our own attitudes towards this issue (like other attitudes of other
> people) are socially constructed and historically contingent. Hence there
> should be an attempt to integrate into the investigation an analysis of the
> practices and rituals surrounding the clothing (?) that is taken to be
> appropriate for public spaces (?) in the societies from which we come (we
> who seek to investigate this issue).

I'd like to say something about "public" spaces.  I don't think this is quite the right phrase (in the context of this putative investigation).  The kind of spaces that have been mentioned by contributors are schools and courts. These are not the same as the street. So what characterises them?

I read in the swedish paper DN that the school system has accepted a system under which schoolgirls in Gothenberg may travel to school wearing the niqab (http://www.alhediya.com/fulniqtiebmo.html) [in the truly public space, the girls can wear what they wish] but, as the teachers have said that they will not accept this in school, the girls then wear the chador/foulard in school, where the face is uncovered, but the hair is covered. [Fanon thus seems to be referring to the niqab and not the foulard in his analysis: the foulard does not hide the gaze or the face].

The school, the court, the hospital are public spaces with an official purpose that is central to their existence.  Bourdieu's analysis of universities and schools constantly refers to the their history as church institutions (and this is true of courts and hospitals as well).  

Bourdieu refers to the church institutions in 19th century France as an early social state (schools, hospitals, orphanages) with which the republican state engaged in a contest. What emerged were a public set of institutions (secular and republican), and a set of religious institutions as well. I know there are Catholic schools in France, but I do not know if they are entirely without state aid. Is it the same with hospitals? 

And with courts? Well, the Catholic Church has its own courts to deal with annulment of marriages (the compromise is, I think, that the couple divorce under state law, and have the marriage annulled under canon (religious) law).

Thus the school, the court, the hospital are (or have been) arenas of contest between the state and the churches (as George Free has mentioned). In Ireland, the rather imperfect implementation of republicanism has left the Churches with some (varying) authority over some schools and some hospitals (all largely funded by the state), but the courts and the constitution are in the public, political domain. 

[One interesting effect of this is that some female medical students from Islamic societies wear the chador/foulard while in Irish hospitals as interns. I have never heard any comment about this, because, I guess, the chador/foulard resembles the headgear of nuns and the older uniform headgear of nurses (an echo of the nun's dress?).  The extraordinary 'butterfly' headgear of French nuns (in the pre-WW2 period?) was one of a defining set of images of France, I guess, for mainly Protestant English-speakers.]

Is it the case then, that the wearing of the chador/foulard has different meanings/connotations in:


A) schools

B)  courts

C)  schools

D)  the street

with the specifics (in any given society) determined by a preceding contest for authority (and outcome) between state and church?

Best Wishes

John Evans

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