Microscopía electrónica (SEM)

Whilst the previous section highlighted key contributions made through this thesis, there are also research avenues that move beyond this particular project. I use this section to set up four questions that have been raised regarding future research. Q1: What are the tensions between addressing clothing practices and the materiality of the Black body?

In Chapter 4, I referenced the ways in which the Black body is layered with other presentations, and how Blackness is figured through my explicit focus on clothing practices. Although this speaks to the function of Blackness in relation to the other identity signifiers being negotiated, it would be interesting to explore the tensions that can occur when clothing practices and signifiers of Blackness are constructed as clashing. In other words, I am interested in exploring how Blackness is seen to be performed (or erased) through the different clothing practices that Black Muslim women engage with. Pushing this work further would enable a continued expansion of the different functions of Blackness through this register of the clothed body.

This would also provide an opportunity to expand on the role of layering within the construction of our beings. This enables me to build on work that currently exists around the construction and performance of Blackness across different spaces (e.g. Fleetwood, 2011; Tate, 2005; Yancy, 2008), but through a specific examination of Black Muslim stylization. Although there have been a few studies recently that examine Black Muslim clothing practices (most notably, see Nayel, 2017), I propose to extend this work through an explicit focus on the grammar of race that constructs specific performances of Blackness within Britain and marginalises Others.

Q2: Where can an exploration of the British grammar of race take us?

The above consideration regarding Black Muslim stylization leads to my primary focus on developing this notion of the British grammar of race further. This is the where I see my own work moving towards: I propose a wider detailing of the histories that

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social histories have shifted in the current post-Brexit socio-political moment (and the racialised language of ‘migration’ within this). Whilst I have been using this British grammar of race as a tool to situate the experiences of Black Muslim women in Britain within a wider history, this grammar has significant scope to be developed in and of itself.

Within this thesis, it is also important to recognise that most of the literature around Blackness travelled from U.S.A. where there is a different socio-historical context that produced (and continues to produce) the racialisation of Black (and Muslim) bodies. Part of pushing this work further includes exploring how these literatures translate within the British context. I also see this as part of a broader task of situating different grammars of racialisation in relation to one another to understand how these

grammars are connected, how they differ, and how they have grown over time. This looks back at processes of racialisation (by figuring how they have been historically constructed) rather than locating these processes on bodies racialized as Other. Q3: What are the opportunities and limitations of comfort as a theoretical concept? Whilst my use of comfort has contributed and expanded on queer and anti-racist phenomenological readings of comfort (e.g. Ahmed, 2014a), it also pushes for a nuancing of the different functions of racism beyond a focus on either systems of oppression or microaggressions. This speaks to the possibilities in exploring a range of affective encounters through addressing the role of racialisation.

However, it has also opened questions regarding how far comfort can push

understandings of being a Black Muslim woman. I was speaking to participants and thinking about comfort within a particular socio-political moment that has shifted significantly following the Brexit referendum. With this change, what it means to recognise one’s body as ‘comfortable’ (or not) has shifted as well. When thinking of the spike in explicit racial violence immediately after the Brexit vote (Forster, 2016), and the anxiety that was felt when moving through public space, is discomfort the right word to describe this? In other words, I am interested in exploring discomfort as an analytic whilst holding onto the (physical and psychological) violence of racial terror. This requires some further thinking regarding what work comfort/discomfort can and cannot do.

Q4: How can we research movements through space and movements through time? This understanding of comfort across different socio-political moments also speaks to wider concerns with how to account for movements across time, rather than focusing solely on movements across spaces. The bulk of the writing for this thesis was done in the lead up to the Brexit referendum, or after the vote had taken place: this was a very different socio-political moment than those associated with the interviews and clothes journals (or even the initial conception of this project). When thinking about where this research can grow, how do we write about these shifting experiences across

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Even when I do reference the different ways that Black Muslim women learn how to present their bodies as they grow older (see Chapters 3 and 5), this is still discussed as a snapshot in time that exposes relations across different spaces.55 _{Whilst this project}

has built understandings of our beings as relational to movement across different spaces, it should also be expanded to further explore our beings as relational to different temporalities. This would provide a wider theorisation of that which cannot be known across different spaces and temporalities.