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This article was downloaded by:[Universidad Granada]On:18 July 2008Access Details:[subscription number 773444442]Publisher:RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Ethnic and Racial Studies
Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713685087
Embodying the nation: Maha Saca's post-intifadapostcards
Annelies MoorsOnline Publication Date:01 September 2000To cite this Article:Moors, Annelies (2000) 'Embodying the nation: Maha Saca'spost-intifada postcards', Ethnic and Racial Studies, 23:5, 871 — 887To link to this article: DOI:10.1080/01419870050110940URL:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870050110940PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLEFull terms and conditions of use:http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdfThisarticlemaybeusedforresearch,teachingandprivatestudypurposes.Anysubstantialorsystematicreproduction,re-distribution,re-selling,loanorsub-licensing,systematicsupplyordistributioninanyformtoanyoneisexpresslyforbidden.Thepublisherdoesnotgiveanywarrantyexpressorimpliedormakeanyrepresentationthatthecontentswillbecompleteoraccurateoruptodate.Theaccuracyofanyinstructions,formulaeanddrugdosesshouldbeindependentlyverifiedwithprimarysources.Thepublishershallnotbeliableforanyloss,actions,claims,proceedings,demandorcostsordamageswhatsoeverorhowsoevercausedarisingdirectlyorindirectlyinconnectionwithorarising out of the use of this material.
 
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Embodying the nation:Maha Saca©spost-intifada postcards
Annelies Moors
Abstract
This article deals with the cultural politics of nationalism. It is argued thatboth the production and display of embroidered dresses and the particularways in which these are presented on one set of picture postcards are partof the material formation of the Palestinian nation. Whereas the dresses onthese postcards draw attention to a rural heritage that stands for territoryand rootedness, the women-bodies presenting these dresses, both in theirappearance and through the act of public presentation, express urban mod-ernity. Such a style of representation avoids associations of the rural with“backwardness” and enables the inclusion of elements of the rural in themodern national project.
Keywords
: Cultural politics; nationalism; dress; postcards; gender; Palestine.
Introduction
Cultural politics is central to the nationalist project. Although themembers of a nation often see themselves as bound by primordial ties,the nation is not a natural entity. As Anderson (1991) has argued, thenation is actively produced; it is a particular style of ‘imagined com-munity’, built on new notions of language, time (simultaneity) and place(territory). In a similar vein, Hobsbawm (1983) points out that thenational project asks for an investigation of ‘invented traditions’, that is,newly created national symbols and rituals that are none the less seen aspresent since time immemorial. In this article I deal with the symbolicmeaning of embroidered dresses
–
in some sense an ‘invented tradition’
–
for the imaginings and material grounding of the Palestinian nation.More specically, I focus on how these dresses are presented on one setof picture postcards, an important medium through which such imagin-ings are disseminated and become generalized.By the mid-1990s Maha Saca’s postcards and posters had become ahighly popular genre of Palestinian-produced imagery.
1
Many hotels andrestaurants in places such as East Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Beit Jala(on the West Bank) displayed these colourful images of lovely women in
Ethnic and Racial Studies Volume 23 Number 5 September 2000 pp. 871
 –
887 
© 2000 Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis LtdISSN 0141-9870 print/ISSN 1466-4356 online
 
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lavishly embroidered and decorated dresses. Many Palestinians and for-eigners bought them, as they liked the bright colours and the beauty of the embroidered dresses and of the women displaying them. They couldalso be found on the walls of Palestinian and Arab organizations abroad.Especially for Palestinian audiences, these images are, however, notsimply beautiful and pleasing to the eye. Their evaluations of these post-cards and posters are framed by the ways in which embroidered dresseshave become a key symbol of Palestinian national identity.The politics of dress is a much-debated subject among historians,anthropologists, and other social scientists.
2
Clothing styles have not onlybeen instrumental in the reproduction of specic statuses in such differ-ent periods and places as, for instance, the Ottoman empire (Quataert1997) and late twentieth-century Oman (Chatty 1997), but elements of dress and cloth in themselves may embody power, as Bayly (1986) andCohn (1989) have pointed out for pre-industrial India. Colonial adminis-trators and missionaries attempted to ‘dress the natives’, and new rulersof independent nation-states often propagated new dress codes as a formof cultural politics. For instance, soon after establishing the TurkishRepublic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, in an attempt to bring about culturalWesternization, banned the wearing of the fez, promoted the donning of hats, and strongly encouraged women to unveil (Göle 1996). In Iran,Reza Shah proclaimed similar reform programmes, and even went as faras to forbid women to wear the chador, an order that remained in forcefrom 1936 to 1941. In a counter move Ayatollah Khomeini, after comingto power, obliged all women to wear
hijab
(Islamic dress) in order tostress the Islamic character of the new Republic (Paidar 1995).But it was not only rulers who engaged in the politics of dress; sub-altern groups also have often employed specic styles of dress as a formof resistance. This may entail more or less subtle subversions, asComaroff and Comaroff (1997), for instance, elaborate on when dis-cussing how Tswana subjects have been fashioned in colonial SouthAfrica, and Macleod (1991) when she denes the new veiling of lower-middle-class working women in Cairo as ‘accommodating protest’. Inother cases issues of dress led to direct confrontations with the (colonial)state, as with the
 swadeshi
(home production) movement in Bengalduring the rst decade of this century (Bayly 1986) and the
khadi
(handwoven) movement, which aimed at uniting the Indians against theincreased Westernization of Indian dress (Tarlo 1996).These sartorial debates and struggles point to the centrality of clothingstyles in the construction, maintenance and transformation of collectiveidentities. Women’s dress has become the hallmark in this eld of culturalpolitics. As some of the examples above indicate, during the nineteenthand early twentieth centuries changes in male dress were also dealt within debates on whether progress is to be equated with Westernization orshould be built on notions of cultural authenticity. As wearing some form872
 Annelies Moors
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