The Politics of Body, Life, and the Hijab: Norms of Convivencia as Practices of Abjection

• In Event: More-Than-Human Matterings and Curricular Troublings, (Re)Centerings, and Noticings

Abstract

This inquiry draws on the case of one young Spanish woman who was suspended for wearing a hijab to school to argue that norms of convivencia in culturally and racially diverse educational spaces work as a practice of abject ion that excludes in the name of inclusion. It examines three strategies that made this girl’s veiling an issue of public safety: problematizing Muslim girls’ veiled bodies, normalizing what the responsible female citizen’s body looks like, and pathologizing the desire to veil. This inquiry contends that norms of convivencia in education carry embedded notions of a salvationist agenda that other and exclude those who devi ate from normative, liberal images of a responsible pers on hood.

Author

• Belén Hernando-Lloréns, University of Iowa