OmarJoseph Nasser-Khoury

The Uniform: Queer Reading Palestinian Dress

 

OmarJoseph Nasser-Khoury

Birzeit University Museum (Palestine) and London College of Fashion

 

 

Abstract

This is an attempt at deconstructing the idea of Palestinian identity manifest in dress. What are the images of power, symbols of the nation, nostalgia, and ideas of gendered-dominance that have been consolidated and gentrified through dress and fashion, (fashion, meaning an European phenomenon of dress), within the occupied Palestinian sub-state.

The essay problematizes the notion of masculinity, which seems central to the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and national identity. The concept of the nation is in itself patriarchal, based on a Eurocentric male-orientated hierarchy. Consequently, the Israeli Occupation, which is both colonial and nationalist, is gendered and, therefore, by default masculine.

Dress, as a visible gauge and reflection of social and political thought and ideology reflects this shift towards globalised pedigrees of reasoning and modes of production. What are the implications of non-western fashion versus non-western dress and what bearing does that have on the bodies that support either.

The essay concentrates on the framing of the cisgender Palestinian body, manifest in the martyr, prisoner, fighter, worker, farmer, 'terrorist' and politician, consistently juxtaposed against the authenticating romantic image of the woman who seems to eternally appear in her uniform of traditional rural dress. In particular, the work stresses on how patriarchy is reinforced by the conversion of women from their man-derivative roles as sisters, mothers and wives in embroidered peasant dress, to man-equals in military fatigues, trousers, hattas etc. Do women, or non-men, create alternatives - or do they adopt the man's narrative of power structures by simply changing uniforms.