Unruly Women by Falguni A. Sheth;

Author:Falguni A. Sheth;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OUP Premium
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Paul unwittingly offers a genealogy of the secular-liberal doxa of the courtroom as a mirror of the larger society in which it is located. The transition from church to a secular “business meeting” signals markets as the neutral priority of secular-liberal societies. Therefore, those who dress for business meetings are more likely to show a neutral visage. As Paul points out “[t]he corporate uniform is a token of belonging, to a company or a middle-class community,” but it “also acts as a disguise, a cover for complicated individuality.” Traits or outfits that signify “powerful and particular wants” are liabilities for any individual who will be subject to scrutiny in a courtroom, since those wants raise doubts and questions about the individual. They will fare better if they appear like any of us—presumably, we who are a hegemonic, homogeneous population. Indeed, Paul asserts that corporate wear signifies both homogeneity and a “blank screen” onto “which jurors can project their own feelings or fears” (Paul 1997, 20).

This projection is true for judges as well, I would suggest. The niqab betrays the inconsistency of liberalism’s claim that individuality is accepted and welcomed—or at least illustrates that it is a limited one. In this case, the judge’s position betrays a preference for a certain cultural-political comportment that somehow reflects certain shared or transparent understandings, views, attitudes. We have seen in prior chapters that “proper” cultural-political comportment entails a certain etiquette, a stylized behavior that is often expected of good citizens in liberal publics—which follows from the secular-liberal doxa that serves as the colonial backdrop of those liberal publics. That behavior should express certain key characteristics that are thought to be features of liberalism. Included in those presumed features is a certain familiar sociability—or the ability to engage and interact with other liberal subjects. The features of this liberal subject include an exhibition of collegiality (a smile or a placid public facial expression), a mild temper or a certain reserve that is sustained despite disagreements or tensions, an ability to follow and mimic the logics of other liberal subjects (what we might call “rationality,” following Enlightenment philosophers), a certain autonomous public visage (the lone individual who does not have a family in tow, but is likely embedded in a nexus of family and social networks), an average build (“height/weight proportionate”).7 These traits culminate in a familiarity, a certain recognizability of what the liberal public subject should look like.

That recognizability is expressed through an etiquette of easy and clear communication (mild accent, minimal speech impediments, recognizable facial gestures). All of these, in turn, point to (an)other who is very similar to oneself—someone who is easily readable, you might say. That readability, in many ways, betrays the express commitments of liberalism, which are constituted by a set of rules, codes, and vehicles of transactions that enable its practitioners to interact without having to prove one’s “readability” qua trustworthiness. Another way to understand readability is that the presumption of familiarity is the bedrock of the rules of liberalism.

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