Veil
by Rafia Zakaria
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Pub Date 7 Sep 2017 | Archive Date 11 Sep 2017
Description
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
Can the veil be an instrument of feminist empowerment? Does veiled anonymity confer a degree of power to women? Starting from her own marriage ceremony at which she first wore a full veil, Rafia Zakaria explores how the physical reality of the veil as an object is catalyzed by the context of the wearer to produce new and unexpected meanings. Part memoir and part philosophical investigation, Veil unravels modernist assumptions that the seen is automatically the good and the free, while the veiled represents servility and subterfuge. Taking readers through personal encounters with the veil varying from France where it is banned to Iran where it is forced, Zakaria reveals how the veil’s reputation as a pre-modern relic is being reconfigured to contest accepted ideas of meaning and morality. At the end, the veil emerges as an object transformed by post-modernity, whose myriad meanings can pose a collective challenge to the absolute truths of patriarchy.
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
Advance Praise
"An intellectually bracing, beautifully written exploration of an item of clothing all too freighted with meaning." -Molly Crabapple, artist, journalist, and author of Drawing Blood (2015)
"An intellectually bracing, beautifully written exploration of an item of clothing all too freighted with meaning." -Molly Crabapple, artist, journalist, and author of Drawing Blood (2015)
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781501322778 |
| PRICE | US$14.95 (USD) |
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Featured Reviews
Reviewer 153322
Usually, Bloomsbury's series of object books deal with everyday things and examine their meaning--like toasters, socks or eye charts, and wrings unexpected weight from them. Zakaria's take on veils, though, is an immensely personal reflection on the niqab, which she has chosen to wear or not, in Pakistan, London and America, responding to different audiences, interacting with and observing women with and without them, and men's responses, working as a domestic violence lawyer in the US and explaining British, US and Canadian cases of veiling in those legal systems, looking at it generationally and in the course of her own life. This is a complex and thoughtful discussion, sure to deepen the conversation about this practice and its both personal and social meaning in diverse contexts.
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