November 14, 2011, by Adrian Mateo
The Politics of the Female Face
On St George’s Day we were walking in central Nottingham as it started to spit with rain. I placed a scarf around my head and face to protect me from getting wet.
The English Defence League (EDL) had organised a flash mob earlier. A white man with a St George t-shirt began to stare at me with hatred in his eyes. Two days before I had been in a discussion with a ‘liberal’ friend about the banning of the burqa in France. He had been in favour of the ban there and extending it to the UK, arguing that a woman covering her face was an assault to his right to communicate and that ‘we’ British felt excluded by such cultural traditions.
The discourse of ‘othering’ underlying such everyday interactions and discussions involve at its worst an absolute ‘othering’ and de-humanising of women identified as Islamic. Other arguments assume that Islamic women that choose to cover their faces are removing themselves from civilised communication in which ‘we’ (often men) have a right to see a woman’s body and face. It is argued that this act of covering is a form of de-subjectification and a result of oppression. In all cases the political agency and experiences of these women is denied.
One of the most pressing political problematics we are facing in the UK is how this discourse is internalised in everyday desires, understandings and behaviours. Increasing social and economic exclusion is happening in the context of communities broken by the multiple violences of neoliberalism. Many people feel powerless, alienated and betrayed by political elites. The finding of someone to blame for such loss creates a fertile terrain for this discourse of othering to flourish.
Whilst produced by elites it works as a mechanism that pits community against community, race against race and woman against woman. It justifies further interventions by the big brother state into our everyday lives; a state that is implicated in the very violence that has shattered and excluded so many communities.
We must develop ways to connect with people’s legitimate feelings of betrayal, alienation and loss to open up dialogue and lead to different inter-subjective, social and political interactions. A way to do this is to disrupt the simplistic assumptions upon which the discourse of ‘othering’ of Islamic women’s choice to wear a niqāb is premised.
Here, I hope to contribute to this disruption and open up a dialogue by sharing some of the experiences of the Argentine piqueteras (female members of the unemployed movement) of the Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados de Solano (MTD Solano) who often cover their faces in public actions.
In the late 1980s Argentina undertook one of the most radical neoliberal reform processes in the region with full-scale privatisation, deregulation, liberalisation and reductions in public expenditure in health, housing and education. Whilst held up by the IMF as a model of reform it was enabled by policies that actively disorganised and silenced popular politics and participation. It resulted in de-industrialisation, unemployment and rapid increases in poverty and inequality.
For much of the 1990s these dynamics were masked by a credit boom. Suddenly people had access to credit to buy washing machines, microwaves and computers. Social relations and self-actualisation were measured by one’s acquisition of material goods and money. Advertising conglomerates represented the ideals of womanhood and beauty through an ever increasing objectification and sexualisation of women’s minds and bodies.
Relationships built on solidarity, mutual care and histories of political struggle were replaced by relationships based on competition, control and individualism. In many ways the multiple violences that neoliberalism wrought in the UK were mirrored in Argentina.
This appearance of calm and depoliticisation was ruptured by the uprising in response to financial meltdown in 2001.
Those excluded from this market miracle joined together to say ‘que se vayan todos’ (out with them all). Behind such a mass outpouring of discontent could be found a reinvention of politics. This challenged and attempted to transform individualised, hierarchical and instrumental social relationships into forms of living, loving and working based on democracy, autonomy, dignity and social justice. The MTD Solano are paradigmatic of such a politics.
The media and political elites represent such groups as a violent uncivil underclass that doesn’t represent the civil democratic majority. They are known for their use of the piquete- the blocking of roads to disrupt the smooth flow of the economy- as a means to make demands on the state. The Piquete is experienced as a place of freedom. As the MTD Solano explains, ‘…it’s a liberated zone, the only place where the cops won’t treat you like trash. There the cops say to you, “pardon me, we come to negotiate”. That same policeman would beat you to death if he saw you alone on the street’
The majority of members of the MTD Solano are women, often mothers, fighting for the dignity of their children, families and communities. In their thirties and forties they are at the head of piquetes wearing masks and standing behind burning tires. Such women are presented as delinquent, uneducated and unfit mothers. Yet as they argue one of the reasons for wearing a mask is because there is no space for them in political society as they face the coercive power of police and security forces, the de-legitimising discourse of political and media elites and the use of sexual violence to intimidate and silence them. They thus cover their faces to be seen and heard politically.
It is argued that the piqueteras tactics are an attack on democracy. Yet for these women the wearing of the mask has a much deeper significance. It embodies a rejection of the sexualisation and objectification of women and a politics revolving around the marketing and selling of great leaders. To cover their faces is an act of defiance against this.
The piqueteras build spaces in which there are no great leaders speaking, acting and thinking on behalf of the majority. Planning a piquete is organised using procedures of direct democracy and consensus decision-making. As Neka, participant in the MTD Solano, explains ‘We don’t need anyone speaking on our behalf; we can all be voices and express every single thing. They’re our problems and it’s our decisions to solve’. The wearing of masks, as a part of this process, is an egalitarian practice of breaking down hierarchies and relationships of power.
Piqueteras are often represented as the epitome of ignorance, conservatism and irresponsibility. Central to their practice is turning these representations on their head. The Piqueteras presence on the piquete ruptures this discourse of victimhood.
The wearing of masks is a re-articulation of political subjectivity that challenges the limits and norms of an elitist, exclusionary and commodified liberal democracy.
Through covering their faces the piqueteras are attempting through anonymity to re-construct political community and subjectivity. Such re-construction of democracy and politics happens both during piquetes but also in the building of non-commodified social relationships in their community around collective childcare, popular education and co-operative production.
This also involves a politics of effect (or politica afectiva) in which family, womanhood, love, solidarity and community are re-imagined beyond relationships based on competition, hierarchy and inequality. As they argue, ‘We do have a political project…our goal is the complete formation of the person in every possible sense’.
The discourse of ‘othering’ of the piqueteras who cover their faces shares many similarities with the discourse of ‘othering’ of Islamic women in the UK. Exploring the reasons, experiences and political agency of the piqueteras breaks down simplistic representations that present them as uncivil, uneducated and detrimental to democratic communication.
Anonymity in this case is a way of gaining voice in a political context in which there is no space for their political agency and subjectivity. Anonymity is a way of rejecting hierarchical, competitive and commodified forms of communication and subjectification. Anonymity acts as a way to open the possibilities of creating a new politics based on dignity, respect, social justice and inclusion.
This suggests that the political decision of a woman to cover her face is a complex, multi-layered act embedded in political agency, rationality and experience. Before judging the niqāb we need to listen, to ask and to speak to the women who wear it. This will help us to look beyond and behind the gaze of commodification and objectification and towards the building of relationships of mutuality, understanding and solidarity.
Masks and veils have a multiplicity of meanings and can be understood as expressions of agency and political subjectivity which challenge elitist, exclusionary and commodified liberal politics.
Dr Sara Motta (Co-director of The Centre for the Study of Global and Social Justice), School of Politics and International Relations
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