Enoughness, accent and light communities: Essays on contemporary identities

 

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Netherlands to introduce a special tax for women who insist on wearing the 

hijab. A large and growing popular and media literature documents such 

conflicting interpretations. Hijabistas, thus, assume a place in an area of 

controversy and conflict. Their sartorial practices need to balance between 

different worlds of interpretation, none of them socioculturally and politically 

innocent.  

‘Western’ fashion is designed to cover specific kinds of bodies, and to a large 

extent cover them only minimally – hence the exclusion of bodies that are seen 

as non-fitting due to their ‘wrong’ shape, as well as the ‘awkward’ mix with 

bodies that are not available for the generous display of bare skin or are not by 

default aiming at attracting (often erotically interpreted) attention to 

themselves. Thus the emergence of niche fashionistas such as fatshionistas and 

hijabistas, with specific micro-hegemonies entailing specific micropractices of 

self-fashioning and self-consciousness. 

These specific micro-practices play into the creation of what we have elsewhere 

(Blommaert & Varis 2012; chapter 2 above) called ‘culture as accent’ – a space 

for uniqueness and individuality within overwhelming pressures towards 

conformity. One’s accent – the details that contribute to the making of one’s 

unique identity – are often the result of very complex articulations where even 

seemingly contradictory identity discourses are brought together for the 

production of the totality that is ‘my (unique) accent’. Articulation, in the words 

of Stuart Hall (1986: 53, emphasis original), is  

(…) the form of the connection that can make a unity of two different 

elements, under certain conditions. It is a linkage which is not necessary, 

determined, absolute and essential for all time. You have to ask, under 

what circumstances can a connection be forged or made? The so-called 

‘unity’ of a discourse is really the articulation of different, distinct 

elements which can be rearticulated in different ways because they have 

no necessary ‘belongingness’. The ‘unity’ which matters is a linkage 

between the articulated discourse and the social forces with which it can, 

under certain historical conditions, but need not necessarily, be 

connected.  

Our accents are the result of specific articulations, and all of this is tied into 

consumer culture and the consumption and display of certain consumer 

commodities. As Entwistle (2000: 124) puts it, in the “production of the ‘body 

beautiful’”, “the modern ‘care of the self’ has become one of the defining features 

of consumer culture. Rather than imposed on us, these practices call us to be self-

conscious and self-disciplining.” The preoccupation with the micro-practices of 

self-in-consumerism is very prominently manifest in e.g. the change of style 

according to occasion, year and season (hence, for instance, the fear of being a 

target of the damning ‘that is so last season’ remark for anyone who wishes to be 

stylish). As for the case of hijabistas, Jones (2007: 211) in her discussion on 

Islamic fashion in Indonesia points to these consumerist articulations as “an 

index of two apparently contradictory or mutually exclusive phenomena, a rise 

in Islamic piety and a rise in consumerism.” However, here we should be wary of 

constructing any essentialist fundamental break between ‘Western’ fashion and 

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‘Muslim’ clothing and of implying the impossibility of combining these two. Just 

because the mix is not necessary does not mean that it is impossible, and, as we 

shall see below in more detail, our late modern consumer culture indeed enables 

and encourages the articulation of a whole range of identities, each with their 

own defining accent. 

The product of engaging in specific practices of articulation is a tailored self – in 

the case of different fashionistas very literally so. This means striking a balance 

between ‘standing out’ and ‘fitting in’: “We can use dress to articulate our sense 

of ‘uniqueness’ to express our difference from others, although as members of 

particular classes and cultures, we are equally likely to find styles of dress that 

connect us to others as well” (Entwistle 2000: 138, 139). It is, as said above, a 

trade-off between conformity and uniqueness. Striking this balance is always 

easy, for one may – either accidentally or on purpose – produce too strong an 

accent that will be the target of criticism, ridicule etc. We will start by looking at 

corrective ‘how to’ discourses on unacceptable accents. 

How (not) to be hijab 

The wish to be recognizable as someone and as a certain kind of person is part of 

the articulation of one’s accent, as the failure to be recognizable as X may lead 

not only into non-recognition, but to the wholesale rejection or disqualification 

of one’s identity (‘misrecognition’, in Bourdieu’s sense). The first step in most of 

the how-to literature is therefore that of demarcation: defining what is in and 

what is out, what is authentic and what is fake, what is enough in the way of 

accent and what is not.  

This is the case also with hijabistas. The three images below, found on different 

online forums, give a taste of the kinds of ongoing battles over acceptable accents 

and their articulations.  

 

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Image 1. 

http://islamfashionandidentity.blogspot.com/2010/02/does-hijab-has-

to-be-black-is-it-must.html

  

 

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