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Cultural Flows The ‘Oriental Woman’

Oriental Woman

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Cultural Flows

Cultural FlowsThe Oriental Woman

General questionsHow have cultural texts (lit/art/film/philosophical writing) been produced and consumed across national boundaries? How are other peoples/cultures represented in cultural texts? What happens when cultural others represent themselves?

Why the Oriental woman?The figure of Oriental woman (or the exotic/foreign woman) is a privileged symbol in transnational/transcultural relations. Among other things she has been made to symbolise:- all the mystery and allure of the foreign/exotic- the threat/danger posed by the unknown- resistance to colonial ad neo-colonial forms of powerThe history of this myth is closely bound up with the history of European colonialism.But the legacy of this myth-making endures today (one might think of anxieties surrounding practice of veiling).

Overview of next few weeks1. Colonial perspectives: Orientalism/ExoticismConsider the role the Oriental woman plays in the colonial imagination. Does figure of OW in colonial representations tell us much about the lives of women in other countries ? Or does it tell us more about the fantasies/anxieties of the West?What is the nature of these fantasies/anxieties?

2.) Assia DjebarHow does Djebar, as an Algerian woman, engage with a colonial legacy that positions her as doubly different (a foreigner and a woman)? What is at stake in Djebars decision to write in French (the language of the coloniser)?

3) Postcolonial perspectives 2: Samira Bellil / Princess HijabWhat is at stake politically and personally when women perceived as ethnically other speak out against male oppression? What are our expectations, as readers, when we approach a text by an author marked as culturally/ethnically other?How might writers/artists seek to skew expectations and reframe debates about gender and cultural difference?

4.) Postcolonial perspectives 3: Marjane SatrapiHow are the East and West represented in Persepolis? In what ways does Satrapi complicate the picture?How are we positoned as (Western) readers of the text? In what ways might the protagonist be seen to have a transnational identity? How does Satrapi deal with traumatic subject matter?Why might the graphic novel form be a particularly apt genre for transnational subject matter?

France/AlgeriaFrench colonisation of Algeria begins in the 1830s. Subjugation of Algeria is extremely brutal and bloody.Algeria remains under military rule until 1870 when a civilian administration is established. Algeria is not a colony but an integral part of France itself (LAlgrie franaise)However this does not mean all colonized subjects are equal citizens. There is a hierarchised system of citizenship that excludes Muslim Algerians. One of the major official justifications for the colonial enterprise in late 19C is the mission civilisatrice or civilising mission: the idea that advanced Western societies have a moral duty to bring civilization to backwards peoples. This entails the dissipation and destruction of indigenous cultures and ways of life. French-Algeria ends in 1962 after bitter war of independence begun in 1954.

What is the place of the Oriental Woman in the French colonial imagination?She appears as a privileged fantasy figure. Like many myths she is double-sided. - She represents the colonizers fantasy of domination.- She represents the colonizers fear of failing to establish power and of being conquered himself.Some pictorial examples from the 19C

Eugne Delacroix: Women of Algiers in their apartment (1834)

Dominique Ingres: The Turkish Bath (1862)

Eugne Delacroix: The Death of Sardanapalus (1827)

Colonial feministsColonial feminists like Hubertine Auclert represented OW as victims in need of rescue. This serves toa.) Justify the colonial mission b.) Lend succour to a domestic feminist agendacolonies provided context for European women to prove their usefulness to the nationCF represented indigenous women as key to success of colonial enterprise and European women were ideally placed to influence them.

The veiled womanNot only hopes but also fears of coloniser projected onto figure of Oriental woman. In the colonial imagination, the veil comes to signify a barrier that prevents the colonizer from taking possession of the oriental woman and by extension the colonised land. The veil can also appear to put the woman in a position of power she can see without being seen.

The Battle of Algiers (dir. by Gillo Pontecorvo 1966)

Marc Garanger:Femmes Algriennes 1960