Unruly Women PHILOSOPHY OF RACE Series Editors Linda Martín Alcoff, Hunter College and the Graduate Center CUNY Chike Jeffers, Dalhousie University Socially Undocumented: Identity and Immigration Justice Amy Reed- Sandoval Reconsidering Reparations Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò Unruly Women: Race, Neocolonialism, and the Hijab Falguni A. Sheth Unruly Women Race, Neocolonialism, and the Hijab FALGUNI A. SHETH 1 3 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2022 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sheth, Falguni A., 1968– author. Title: Unruly women : race, neocolonialism, and the hijab / Falguni A. Sheth. Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2022. | Series: Philosophy of race series | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021038634 (print) | LCCN 2021038635 (ebook) | ISBN 9780197547144 (paperback) | ISBN 9780197547137 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197547168 (epub) | ISBN 9780197547151 | ISBN 9780197547175 Subjects: LCSH: Muslim women—United States—Ethnic identity. | Neoliberalism—United States. | Marginality, Social—United States. Classification: LCC HQ1170 .S466 2022 (print) | LCC HQ1170 (ebook) | DDC 305.48/697073—dc23/eng/20211013 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021038634 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021038635 DOI: 10.1093/ oso/ 9780197547137.001.0001 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Paperback printed by Marquis, Canada Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America For my mother and again, for Bubba Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. Ontopolitics: Unruliness, Excruciation, and Dismissal 14 2. Anxieties of Liberalism: Secularism, Feminism, and Suitable Muslim Women 34 3. A Genealogy of Neocolonial Social Comportment 58 4. The Hijab and the Sari: The Strange and the Sexy Between Colonialism and Global Capitalism 83 5. Reversing the Gaze: The Racial-C ultural Aesthetics of Power 104 6. Transparency and the Deceptive Conceit of Liberalism 126 7. Discrimination, Neoliberalism, and Suitable Women 147 8. Dismissal: Neocolonialism, Race, and Anti-B lackness 175 Conclusion: Listening to the Silences 201 Appendix 211 Notes 213 Bibliography 231 Index 249 Acknowledgments The world, and especially my version of it, has changed enor- mously since I began this project. Thanks to Inez Valdez, who is- sued the invitation to participate on the American Political Science Association panel that led to this book. I thank Linda Martín Alcoff for soliciting this project well before there was any reason to believe in it, and for her remarkable warmth and generosity and friend- ship. Thanks also to generous and critical anonymous referees for their helpful insights, and Peter Ohlin, editor at Oxford, for his effi- cient and supportive approach. I am grateful to audiences at Emory University’s WGSS Research Seminars, SPEP, APA, FEAST, and SAAP meetings, and the Race- Religion- Secularism conference in Amsterdam, where parts of this work were presented. I thank my colleagues in WGSS for their support as I made my way South, es- pecially Lynne Huffer and Elizabeth Wilson. Thanks to my former chair, Deboleena Roy, and Deans Michael Elliott and Carla Freeman for supporting a year’s leave to finish this book. Thanks also to Beth Reingold, Kadji Amin, Stu Marvel, Pamela Scully, Michael Moon, Sameena Mulla, Aisha Finch, John Lysaker, and other colleagues at Emory for their generosity, collegiality, and support. Deep gratitude to the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry for a year to think and write, and to Walter Melion, Keith Anthony, Colette Barlow, and Amy Erbil for making the Fox Center such a hospitable intellectual and social space. I am grateful to my colleagues during the 2018– 19 Fox Fellowship year for their collegial interlocution and enthu- siastic mischief. I thank Deborah Dinner, John Harfouch, Janine Jones, Daniel LaChance, Joan Cocks, Schirin Amir- Moazami, Mickaella Perina, Katie Terezakis, Allison Adams, and Samia Vasa