ABSTRACT
The attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2015 demonstrated how visual artefacts play an increasingly important role in shaping international political events and our understanding of them. This event also showed the uneasy relation of culture and politics, especially when cultural activities in civil society become engulfed in global politics. In the 1990s, the process of globalisation eroded many national cultures as it challenged state sovereignty. Culture is re-nationalised in the service of the state for domestic politics. The author examines the visual politics of the veil as an illustration of how visual images, artefacts and performances are a key site for this uneasy mix of culture and global politics. He explores how the veil provokes visual global politics as a material artefact. Veiling is a visual cultural performance that marks communities of race and religion in the popular culture of everyday adornment; it is a choice, an assertion of a woman's "cultural sovereignty" at the personal level.
