Cover Image

From Visual Culture to visual imperialism: The Oriental harem and the new Scheherazades

Drawings, paintings, photographs, moving images and the emergence of Visual Culture as a discipline can confirm the growing centrality of the visuality in our everyday life. This visuality shapes people’s attitude and understanding and once constantly reproduced, constructs a fixed set of meaning...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Esmaeil Zeiny,
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2017
Online Access:http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11291/1/16510-54515-1-PB.pdf
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11291/
http://ejournal.ukm.my/3l/issue/view/972
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
id my-ukm.journal.11291
record_format eprints
spelling my-ukm.journal.112912018-01-21T15:00:20Z http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11291/ From Visual Culture to visual imperialism: The Oriental harem and the new Scheherazades Esmaeil Zeiny, Drawings, paintings, photographs, moving images and the emergence of Visual Culture as a discipline can confirm the growing centrality of the visuality in our everyday life. This visuality shapes people’s attitude and understanding and once constantly reproduced, constructs a fixed set of meaning for certain issues, perspectives, cultures, and groups of people. Therein lies the danger when visuality commits the misrepresentation, which is part of the process of ‘Othering’ and the backbone of visual imperialism. The Western representation of the East and its women has been one of these misrepresentations through which East is conceived as exotic, erotic, inferior and slave. By drawing upon Hall’s definition of representation (1997), this paper explores the historical representation of Eastern women through the Oriental harem paintings and photography, and reveals how the misconception of the harem Odalisques was conceived. It examines how this stereotypical representation resurfaced in the post-9/11 contexts through life narratives written by Muslim women known as the new Scheherazade. Unlike the Scheherazade of the Oriental harem who was reduced to a submissive sexy odalisque, these Scheherazade are brave and articulate. I argue that this is a post-9/11 strategy to offset all the negative depictions of Muslim women. These brave Scheherazades have been provided with the platform to relate the plights of living in Islamic societies as a woman, and therefore their texts are, in Whitlock’s term (2007), ‘soft weapons’ in manufacturing consent for the presence of empire in the East by corroborating the Orientalist representation of Muslim women. Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2017 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11291/1/16510-54515-1-PB.pdf Esmaeil Zeiny, (2017) From Visual Culture to visual imperialism: The Oriental harem and the new Scheherazades. 3L; Language,Linguistics and Literature,The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies., 23 (2). pp. 75-86. ISSN 0128-5157 http://ejournal.ukm.my/3l/issue/view/972
institution Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
building Perpustakaan Tun Sri Lanang Library
collection Institutional Repository
continent Asia
country Malaysia
content_provider Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
content_source UKM Journal Article Repository
url_provider http://journalarticle.ukm.my/
language English
description Drawings, paintings, photographs, moving images and the emergence of Visual Culture as a discipline can confirm the growing centrality of the visuality in our everyday life. This visuality shapes people’s attitude and understanding and once constantly reproduced, constructs a fixed set of meaning for certain issues, perspectives, cultures, and groups of people. Therein lies the danger when visuality commits the misrepresentation, which is part of the process of ‘Othering’ and the backbone of visual imperialism. The Western representation of the East and its women has been one of these misrepresentations through which East is conceived as exotic, erotic, inferior and slave. By drawing upon Hall’s definition of representation (1997), this paper explores the historical representation of Eastern women through the Oriental harem paintings and photography, and reveals how the misconception of the harem Odalisques was conceived. It examines how this stereotypical representation resurfaced in the post-9/11 contexts through life narratives written by Muslim women known as the new Scheherazade. Unlike the Scheherazade of the Oriental harem who was reduced to a submissive sexy odalisque, these Scheherazade are brave and articulate. I argue that this is a post-9/11 strategy to offset all the negative depictions of Muslim women. These brave Scheherazades have been provided with the platform to relate the plights of living in Islamic societies as a woman, and therefore their texts are, in Whitlock’s term (2007), ‘soft weapons’ in manufacturing consent for the presence of empire in the East by corroborating the Orientalist representation of Muslim women.
format Article
author Esmaeil Zeiny,
spellingShingle Esmaeil Zeiny,
From Visual Culture to visual imperialism: The Oriental harem and the new Scheherazades
author_facet Esmaeil Zeiny,
author_sort Esmaeil Zeiny,
title From Visual Culture to visual imperialism: The Oriental harem and the new Scheherazades
title_short From Visual Culture to visual imperialism: The Oriental harem and the new Scheherazades
title_full From Visual Culture to visual imperialism: The Oriental harem and the new Scheherazades
title_fullStr From Visual Culture to visual imperialism: The Oriental harem and the new Scheherazades
title_full_unstemmed From Visual Culture to visual imperialism: The Oriental harem and the new Scheherazades
title_sort from visual culture to visual imperialism: the oriental harem and the new scheherazades
publisher Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
publishDate 2017
url http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11291/1/16510-54515-1-PB.pdf
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11291/
http://ejournal.ukm.my/3l/issue/view/972
_version_ 1643738439188742144
score 13.211869

Similar Items