When: Monday, 15 April 2024, 18:30
Where: Konferenzraum, Department for Political Science, NIG, 2nd floor, Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Vienna
Speaker: Eléonore Lepinard (University of Lausanne)
Moderation: Dorit Geva (Department of Political Science, University of Vienna)
Abstract
Muslim women wearing simple headscarves (hijab) have been at the center of intense public scrutiny for several decades in many European countries, and they experience widespread ordinary forms of gendered and racialized discrimination. This study of veiled Muslim women’s reported experiences of stigmatization in France and Switzerland identifies types of interactions that are conceptualized as pedagogies of coloniality. These interactions follow similar scripts in which interlocutors, who are members of the majority group, ask hijabi women to unveil or to veil differently even though it is not legally required in the context of the interaction. This presentation will explore the intersection and articulation of sexism and Islamophobia, as well as class and age, as necessary components enabling the negotiations to submit and discipline veiled Muslim women. It will detail the various processes of otherization at play, and the hierarchies that these interactions attempt to enforce and maintain, including between women.
