Remarks for a Semiotics of the Veil

From birth to death, the human body is constantly veiled and unveiled, clothed and unclothed, wrapped and unwrapped. Nothing of this process is ‘natural’. Through this process, a natural body belonging to the human species is transformed into a cultural body belonging to a human civilization. Each object that is on the body modifies its meaning, for it is impossible for the human body not to communicate. Even nudity, like silence in verbal language, is hardly deprived of any meaning. In order to understand the meaning of the body and its signs, one must distinguish between signification and communication, and between intentional and nonintentional communication. Bodily communication always entails the encounter between two or more interpretative hypotheses, which can completely match or mismatch. Since globalization, misunderstandings concerning the meaning of the body and its signs are more and more frequent as a correct interpretation of the intention and the content of bodily communication strictly depends on the cultural background of those who are involved in it. One of the most misunderstood bodily signs of our époque is the veil of observant Islamic women. The paper initiates a reflection on the semiotics of the veil by proposing a phenomenological grid of its possible meanings.