Last December, when the Institut d’Egypte was burned down, I thought immediately of Edward Said. Napoleon’s expedition to Europe is described at the beginning of Orientalism, where it is a classic example of how academic and scientific discoveries anticipate and enable imperial conquest. The Institut was established shortly after Napoleon’s invasion, and remained a powerful reminder […]
I’m feeling a little puzzled by M.I.A’s video for Bad Girls (which originally appeared on her Vicky Leekx mixtape). In what I suppose is intended to be edgy imagery, M.I.A gyrates in the midst of ‘veiled’ women and men in kheffiyahs who drive fast cars. Some sites claim her target is Saudi Arabia’s ban on […]
Is the new narrative of Arabs and north Africans simply “replacing the long held ‘Arab Exceptionalism’ narrative, which held sway for decades and argued that Arabs because of sociological and cultural reasons are ‘immune’ to democracy and democratization”? This new all-encompassing story imposed on the “so-called ‘revolution’ and more broadly the Arab world is being constructed […]
James North: Orientalism takes a different form in sub-Saharan Africa. There, Orientalists do not emphasize the “Islamic” angle quite as much, although they do sometimes suggest that a “fault line” running across the Sahel, with an expansive “Islam” to the north and “Christianity” to the south, is a reliable guide to conflict in many countries. But […]
What popular images did young American males in the 1950s and 1960s–fed on a diet of parochial media–have of Arabs. For one, they took their cues from men’s adventure magazines: “… In those days, [Arab] tended to conjure up images of sheiks, harems and desert adventure in the Lawrence of Arabia style.” [It explains a […]
The Middle East Institute in Washington, DC, has put out a short PDF of critical responses to the late Edward Said’s Orientalism thesis. This is the quick view of the PDF from a close collaborator who studies Said’s work closely and knows the Institute:
