'Visible others': a reading of the European obsession with the female veil

Abstract

This article aims to analyse the current European obsession with the practice of veiling. What emerges from this analysis is that the regulation of clothes and images in the public sphere is an integral part of European history and emerges as a necessary act of sovereign power aimed at instituting a precise law and religious subject through regulation of the licit form of visibility in the public sphere. This act, reinforced by the promulgation of exceptional rules of law, is necessary to maintain the unity and homogeneity of European people, in the past as well as nowadays.