UC Riverside

The “Veil” was a metaphor used by the African American pioneer of sociology W.E.B. Du Bois in the twentieth century to explain “a ubiquitous fracturing of society along racial lines.” The Veil is closely related and used in tandem with Du Bois’ famous term double consciousness. In regard to the Veil and its contribution to sociology, scholars have acknowledged and reaffirmed Du Bois’ Veil in connection to the color line, race relations and divisions in the United States, and the phenomenology of black subjectivity (Lemert 1994, Lynn & Keith 2013, Long 2018, Itzigsohn & Brown 2020). In more subversive ways, others have described that those who are veiled, are in fact, able to see others more clearly than they see themselves (Blau & Brown 2001). While scholars have explored the Veil in regards to race and sight, others have connected it to religion, religious acts, spirituality, and resistance (Bruce, 1992, Schrager 1996, Baehr 2019). This essay will primarily explore the latter, and will examine how the Veil – in connection to religion and spirituality – is associated with resistive practices. In the main part of this essay, Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk is placed in conversation with the French Jesuit philosopher Michel De Certeau, and De Certeau’s concept of “tactics” is used to further explore the Veil in connection to resistive practices. In this reading of Souls, religion emerges and interconnects with practices of resistance to develop new methodologies for the study of religion. Ultimately, this essay reveals how Du Bois used tactics to resist what De Certeau defines as “strategies” – or dominant structures – and how Du Bois simultaneously demonstrated the limitations and flaws of such strategies in the process.