“Cool! Bikini and lingerie instead of Burka!” : the discursive representation of Muslim women in Austrian women’s magazines

Kurzfassung/Abstract

Within “Western” controversies, the headscarf is stylised as a symbol of “oppression” and “backwardness” while “unveiling” is simultaneously associated with “self-determination” and “modernity”. As object of a critical discourse analysis, this dichotomisation was also found in Austrian women’s magazines; “the veiled” Muslim woman was constructed as “traditional” and appeared mostly as an “object” of speech. “The unveiled” woman, however, was more frequently featured directly in interviews, typically thematising “modern”—i.e., “Western” assimilated—lifestyles and ways of dressing. Strikingly however, by drawing on Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s concept of subalternity, we conclude that also the more “visible” or “hearable” discourse position—even if it seems to provide Muslim women with agency at first glance—similarly colludes in a further silencing of Muslim women.