Iranian Women’s Veiling as a Gender Performance: Since Premodern Era to the Current Age

Iranian women’s veiling, as one of the major concerns of both women and the state, has been the subject of various studies. The present study in its broad range of investigation covers discussion of Iranian women’s hijab since pre-modern Iran to the current age. Meanwhile, it is more than a new historicist reflection on the way discourses construct norms. Here, within the framework of Butler’s performative theory, veiling is approached as a gender performance, which constructs and represents the identity of the wearer. The question is how Iranian women’s veiling as a gender performance is associated with competing discourses, and how recitations of veiling give them agency. It is hypothesized that women are not simply imposed the norm of veiling by the dominant discourses; rather, as active agents they can change the norms as they perform deviated recitation of norm of veiling. Veiling as a signifier has given different significations in each era, ranging from modesty, backwardness, nationalism, revolutionary, to displaying protest. We address the meanings that different dressing styles represent in three eras of pre-constitutional, post-constitutional, and postrevolutionary in Iran. Homogenized imposed veiling by Islamic authorities in pre-modern Iran, withdrew with secularization of state, was invoked as sign of revolution against the state, re-imposed by the state and ultimately fashioned by women. Thus, veiling in Iran is burdened with more cultural and even political meaning. In each discourse, the performance of veiling style defines women’s subjectivity as normal or abject. Women to be identified as viable subject perform the norms of religious or secularized modern discourse. The two produced binary polar, representing two kinds of subjectivities produced a gap between veiled, unveiled women or properly veiled and misveiled women. The imposed, removed and re-imposed hijab has not been the terminal decision of discourses. It is confirmed that today, Iranian women, supplied with education and global media can reflexively consider and fashion their identity. Nowadays, Iranian women’s fashion hijab is a deviated recitation of the idealized norm to resist the imposed norm. Fashion hijab as a deviated recitation of originally intended hijab by Islamic state is a threat to the Islamic discourse. Therefore, it is regarded as soft war imposed by Western culture on Iran. It is concluded that there has been a dialectical relationship between veiling performance of subjects as agents and viability of the dominant discourse.

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