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Latest Updates: orientalism RSS
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thabet
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thabet
The Moor Next Door has a detailed review of Robert Irwin’s Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and its Discontents.
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johnpi
Speaking of images of Arab night life, Muslimah Media Watch has a critique of the “Funky Arabs” video from Jad Choueiri:
My biggest problem with this music video is not the gratuitous amounts of flesh on show by the scantily clad women–which let’s face it, has become the norm in many similar Arabic music videos–but the political implications of Choueiri’s message. Because if not a parody, then the video is certainly a textbook case of cultural appropriation. Listening between the lines, you could well take home the message: the only way we can prove we are not evil is if we try to erase our identities and emulate selective (read: the most materialistic) aspects of Western culture.
Choueiri’s only concessions to Arab culture: bellydancing and shisha smoking, of course! Nothing else we have “over here” is worth anything anyway. The orientalist image is complete once an x-ray machine shows us that a woman is carrying on her person handcuffs, a mask, and a whip. Arabs are all hypersexual, doncha know?
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plimfix
“Desiring Arabs will venture to show that modern and contemporary Arab historiography developed to a considerable extent around the repudiation not only of men’s love for boys but also of all sexual desires it identified as part of the Arab past and which the European present condemns and sometimes champions.” The introduction to Joseph A Massad’s intellectual history would seem to be in the same territory (if not quite the same city) as that of Anne McClintock’s (although she is not referenced in Massad’s bibliography), but I wonder whether Massad will be able to compete with McClintock’s rivetting analysis of Hannah Cullwick.
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islamoyankee
Osama and Orientalism, my latest over at Religion Dispatches.
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Fatemeh
This week on MMW, we deconstructed Sarah from LMOTP, assessed Golshifteh Farahani’s issues with Iran over the headscarf, roll our eyes at NPR’s Orientalism, celebrate the fact that Egypt has jailed its first conviction of sexual harassment, and unfurl a great Friday Links.
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Fatemeh
This week on MMW, we discuss the polarizing politics of Muslims who speak against Islamism, provide a kick-ass review of The Jewel of Medina (it’s especially kick-ass because we have an audio clip of Ethar’s interview with Sherry Jones that you won’t find anywhere else), give point and counterpoint on Mohja Kahf’s Washington Post piece, discuss the racism and sexism that keep African American Muslim women out of Muslim representation, satirize the publishing industry’s interest in Muslim women, and keep you up-to-date on news about Muslim women.
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aziz
At City of Brass, I argue that orientalism is a concept that western muslims should reject. What do you think?
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willow
So I’m reading Lawrence Durrell’s orientalist masterwork The Alexandria Quartet, which, if you haven’t read it, is excellent. Durrell is certainly guilty of a few of Said’s more serious pet peeves–under much discussion, as we’ve seen, now that Orientalism is entering its fourth decade–but overall the picture he paints is complex and thoughtful. (He focuses on Coptic rather than Muslim culture, it should be noted, and has a very astute handle on how the British complicated the relationship between the two.)
When I read, I dog-ear pages that I think contain really amazing phrases/insights. This was one I ran across today:
“To have a grasp of the language was nothing, he now realized; for Leila exposed the hollowness of the knowledge when pitted against understanding.”
My take: so, so true. A concise summary of what fells most western expats/travelers in the Middle East: you arrive thinking you know something, discover you know nothing, and retreat into racism because it’s the only thing you have in your intellectual arsenal that makes sense.
Thoughts?
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thabet
Supporters and critics debate Orientalism at 30.
Gary Kamiya says “Robert Irwin proves it was Said who didn’t have the full picture.”
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thabet
In his introduction to a new book on Islamic theology, Timothy Winter (aka Abdul Hakim Murad), argues “that older ideas of Western Islamic studies as a monolithic and structurally anti-Islamic project now need to be modified, if not discarded altogether.” (pdf)
(Via DeenPort.)
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thabet
New Wave Orientalism is rubbish, and it could learn something from Classical Orientalism.
Side note: Not all Orientalists were hostile to Islam.
