Fanon, F. (1989 [1959]) “Algeria Unveiled,” Studies in a Dying Colonialism. London: Earthscan, pp. 35-67.
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Opening
How does society perceive itself through clothing? When the colonial gaze views Algerian society as a whole through a veil, that classification unfolds as a way for the subjugated society to recognise and defend itself. In this process, the veil becomes a 'uniform' for women, and the context of female oppression is pushed beyond nationalist rejection of colonialism. The nationalist reduction of women can be seen as the first form of oppression. The more colonialism (or empire) attacks the veil, the more it is reinforced as a taboo and cultural element of the nation. The second oppression occurs at the moment when the veil is lifted and the body is exposed. At this point, women are reduced to expressions of a 'liberated body', and exposure acts as another form of discipline. The act of removing the veil dismantles the bodily pattern of clothing and the body, but this dismantling is reborn through the muscles, gait, and gaze training of colonial women and activists — a method the empire’s cities cannot doubt. Therefore, there is no linear narrative from concealment to liberation; female activists either assimilate into the empire or appear to be liberated while passing through colonial norms. Algerian identity exists only within the nationalist framework of resistance in veiled defiance and unveiled harmony. The tactic of the veil through fashion disrupts this dichotomy but still remains between the demand to make the veil inviolable for the nation and the politicisation of conscripting one's body for the nation.
Excerpts
- The way people clothe themselves, together with the traditions of dress and finery that custom implies, constitutes the most distinctive form of a society’s uniqueness, that is to say the one that is the most immediately perceptible. Within the general pattern of a given costume, there are of course always modifications of detail, innovations which in highly developed societies are the mark of fashion. But the effect as a whole remains homogeneous, and great areas of civilization, immense cultural regions, can be grouped together on the basis of original, specific techniques of men’s and women’s dress.1
- One may remain for a long time unaware of the fact that a Moslem does not eat pork or that he denies himself daily sexual relations during the month of Ramadan, but the veil worn by the women appears with such constancy that it generally suffices to characterize Arab Society (…) The masculine garb allows a certain margin of choice, a modicum of heterogeneity. The woman seen in her white veil unifies the perception that one has of Algerian feminine society. Obviously what we have here is a uniform which tolerates no modification, no variant.2
- European women settle the conflict in a much less roundabout way. They bluntly affirm that no one hides what is beautiful and discern in this strange custom an ‘altogether feminine’ intention of disguising imperfections. And they proceed to compare the strategy of the European woman, which is intended to correct, to embellish, to bring out (beauty treatments, hairdos, fashion), with that of the Algerian women, who prefers to veil, to conceal, to cultivate the man’s doubt and desire. On another level, it is claimed that the intention is to mislead the customer, and that the wrapping in which the ‘merchandise’ is presented does not really alter its nature, nor tis value.3
- The body of the young Algerian woman, in traditional society, is revealed to her by its coming to maturity and by the veil. The veil covers the body and disciplines it, tempers it, at the very time when it experiences its phrase of greatest effervescence. The veil protects, reassures, isolates. One must have heard the confessions of Algerian women or have analyzed the dream content of certain recently unveiled women to appreciate the importance of the veil for the body of the woman.4
- Without the veil she has an impression of her body being cut up into bits, put adrift; the limbs seem to lengthen indefinitely. When the Algerian woman has to cross a street, for a long time she commits errors of judgment as to the exact distance to be negotiated. The unveiled body seems to escape, to dissolve. She has an impression of being improperly dressed, even of being naked. She experiences a sense of incompleteness with great intensity. She has the anxious feeling that something is unfinished, and along with this a frightful sensation of disintegrating.5
- The absence of the veil distorts the Algerian woman’s corporal pattern. She quickly has to invent new dimensions for her body, new means of muscular control. She has to create for herself an attitude of unveiled-woman-outside. She must overcome all timidity, all awkwardness (for she must pass for a European), and at the same time be careful not to overdo it, not to attract notice to herself. The Algerian woman who walks stark naked into the European city relearns her body, re-establishes it in a totally revolutionary fashion. This new dialectic of the body and of the world is primary in the case of one revolutionary woman.6
- Removed and reassumed again and again, the veil has been manipulated, transformed into a technique of camouflage, into a means of struggle. The virtually taboo character assumed by the veil in the colonial situation disappeared almost entirely in the course of the liberating struggle. Even Algerian women not actively integrated into the struggle formed the habit of abandoning the veil.7
reader’s Notes
- The weaving of a dress is the interlacing of ‘recognition’ threads. However complex or diverse they may be, the crossing of a garment’s warp and weft leads one to believe that they can be deciphered. The society perceived through clothing or, the society that clothing represents, is nothing more than that which has not been filtered through the mesh of the weave. ↩︎
- Women’s fashion is abstracted as a collective identity or a proof of civilisational/cultural differences, representing the entire society. The veil is aestheticised through gender politics that utilise women’s appearance as a social indicator, just as much as colonialism does. ↩︎
- Does the unveiled woman become the liberated woman as an autonomous subject? Fanon’s concept of European-style beauty and fashion manages the female body to fit the evaluations of the (male-centric) market. ↩︎
- A veil protects and reassures by covering the body. Whilst a veil is something imposed by colonialism or patriarchal structures, it is also a material that enables the wearer’s body to recognise the boundaries between themselves and the world (and thereby isolates them). Discipline ultimately maintains ‘consistency’ and ‘constancy’ in an ambivalent manner. When this disappears, what is newly required? ↩︎
- This passage rejects the distinction between clothing and the body. Our bodies are constituted alongside garments, with their own area, volume, boundaries, sense of distance, and evaluations of appropriateness. This is why simply changing or removing clothes cannot tell a story of subject recovery or liberation. ↩︎
- Can gestures that maintain an appropriate balance between excessive localisation and excessive maladaptation as a ‘stranger’ also be regarded as a form of self-expression or authenticity? Does cultural assimilation never occur, and is there only appropriate disguise? ↩︎
- Veil indicates Algerian identity, but is this characteristic of Algeria, since it is a tactic used only by those who do not possess their own territory to mock inspections within another’s space? ↩︎
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