Falguni A. Sheth is Associate Professor in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University. She is the author of Toward a Political Philosophy of Race (SUNY Press, 2009); the co-editor of Race, Liberalism, and Economics (University of Michigan Press, 2004). Sheth has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the New School for Social Research. Sheth's areas of expertise include race and state-sanctioned violence, national security politics, postcolonial and transnational feminist theory, and critical race and legal studies. She has published numerous articles in political and feminist philosophy, in legal, and critical race theory, and in the philosophy of race. Sheth was a columnist for Salon.com, where she wrote about race, national security, and politics. She has written for a range of public venues including Alternet and Common Dreams. For 15 years, she has been the co-organizer of the California Roundtable on Philosophy and Race, founded as a forum on philosophy, race, and related
themes.

• Acknowledgments


• Introduction


• 1. Ontopolitics: Unruliness, Excruciation, and Dismissal


• 2. Anxieties of Liberalism: Secularism, Feminism, and Suitable Muslim Women


• 3. A Genealogy of Neocolonial Social Comportment


• 4. The Hijab and the Sari: The Strange and the Sexy Between Colonialism and Global Capitalism


• 5. Reversing the Gaze: The Racial-Cultural Aesthetics of Power


• 6. Transparency and the Deceptive Conceit of Liberalism


• 7. EEOC v. Abercrombie and Fitch: Discrimination, Neoliberalism, and Suitable Women


• 8. Dismissal: Neocolonialism, Race and Anti-Blackness


• Conclusion Listening to the Silences


• Appendix I


• Bibliography


• References

By examining the legal treatment of visibly Muslim women, Falguni Sheth uncovers the hidden dynamics of racialized division that have inhabited and bolstered liberal legal neutrality from its inception. Her work studies the experiences of, and responses to, Muslim women of color and Black Muslim women, especially where these women have attempted to use US courts to contest their unfair treatment. Evaluating a wide range of judicial encounters, Unruly Women uncovers a pattern of racialized exclusion from liberal protections. Moreover, it exposes the distinctive ways that courts and other liberal institutions have demanded the self-transformation of individuals who appear unsuited for inclusion into the liberal polity.