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Producing pious subjects and bodies: the ethics of consuming veiling-fashion in Turkey
Abstract
In the last decade ‘veiling-fashion’ – a diversity of trendy styles marketed as women’s Islamic dress— has been on the rise in Turkey, as well as globally. In the Turkish context, the debates about veiling-fashion have proliferated along the fault line of Islamism and secularism and placed veiled women at the very center of fiercely contested ideas about capitalist consumerism, Islam, and ethics. This paper turns to the fashionably veiled women and analyzes how they form themselves as pious subjects in the midst of these controversies. Our discussion is based on the focus group interviews we conducted in two cities in Turkey, the metropolitan center of Istanbul and the conservative provincial city of Konya, in 2009. Our focus group interviews with consumers of veiling-fashion in Istanbul and Konya show that women see veiling-fashion as morally ambivalent and they manage the tension between veiling and fashion through various bodily spatial practices. Their discussions focus on the concept of nefis, literally meaning breath, self, or soul. Women describe nefis as the pesky force that pulls them to fashion, the display of beauty, and material pleasures. Nefis disrupts the Islamic ideal of harmony between dress, conduct, and faith, leaving women with the ethical problem of suturing this rupture. While women encounter veiling-fashion as ethically problematic, they also describe how they enlist it selectively in the management of their nefis. Through veiling-fashion, they satisfy their nefis and cultivate the bodily habits and dispositions that help develop the ethical capacities to reign in unruly desires. This paper takes us from the intimate spaces of the body and home to city streets, the beach, and even bars to show how women’s everyday dress practices participate in the production of pious bodies and subjects. This analysis contributes to feminist geographical approaches to subjectivity through its examination of embodied practices of piety, consumption, and gender.
Discipline
Geography
Geographic Area
Turkey
Sub Area
Gender/Women's Studies