Veil (Object Lessons) - Softcover

Rafia Zakaria

Softcover

ISBN 10: 150132277X ISBN 13: 9781501322778

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017

Synopsis

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
The veil can be an instrument of feminist empowerment, and veiled anonymity can confer power to women. Starting from her own marriage ceremony at which she first wore a full veil, Rafia Zakaria examines how veils do more than they get credit for.
Part memoir and part philosophical investigation, Veil questions that what is seen is always good and free, and that what is veiled can only signal servility and subterfuge. From personal encounters with the veil in France (where it is banned) to Iran (where it is compulsory), Zakaria shows how the garment's reputation as a pre-modern relic is fraught and up for grabs. The veil is an object in constant transformation, whose myriad meanings challenge the absolute truths of patriarchy.
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

About this title

About the Author

Rafia Zakaria is an attorney, political philosopher, and a columnist for DAWN Pakistan. She is a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Nation, Aeon, Guernica, the New York Times, among other publications. Her book The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan (2015) received acclaim in the New York Times, NPR, Ms. Magazine. Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Globe, The Toronto Star, Bustle, Hindustan Times, DNA India, Indian Express, Calcutta Statesman, Dissent and The Nation.

From the Back Cover

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 150132277X
• ISBN 13: 9781501322778
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 136