Colonial Fantasies

Abstract

In this 1998 book, Meyda Yegenoglu investigates the intersection between post-colonial and feminist criticism, focusing on the Western fascination with the veiled women of the Orient. She examines the veil as a site of fantasy and of nationalist ideologies and discourses of gender identity, analyzing travel literature, anthropological and literary texts to reveal the hegemonic, colonial identity of the desire to penetrate the veiled surface of 'otherness'. Representations of cultural difference and sexual difference are shown to be inextricably linked, and the figure of the Oriental woman to have functioned as the veiled interior of Western identity.

Orientalism, gender and class in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters: to persons of distinction, men of letters & c

“…Yegenoglu argues that Orientalism encompasses claims both to difference and to similarity, and in fact derives its enduring power and unity from its internal schisms and dialogues. 89 While Yegenoglu's point on the nature of Orientalism is well taken, my departure from Lowe and Yegenoglu is of a different nature: While Lowe, who includes class in her framework, gives primacy to the role of feminist discourse in Montagu's disruption of the Orientalism of her day, and Yegenoglu links British feminist discourses to Orientalism, I argue that class discourse is the most salient component of both Montagu's 'feminism' and her contestation of predominant myths of Oriental women.…”

Connectivity in times of control: writing/undoing/unpacking/acting out power performances

“…Western ideas of Cartesianism and classical Newtonian physics exploded in popularity at the time of the European Enlightenment (Barad, 1998: 94), not coincidentally also the time of the expansion of Western colonialism (Merchant, 1980). The creation of these hard sciences, as well as things such as physical anthropology, cartography and what came to be considered evidentiary practices and modern scientific practices, classified things as separated bodies or objects moving in the world, based on a ‘clarity fetishism’ or the desire for a clarity based on, preferably, visibly established distinctions recognised within these sciences (Yeğenoğlu, 1998: 11; Spivak, cited in Braidotti, 2011: 204). 1 This kind of Cartesian, humanist approach assumes a particular priority of what is considered as (most) closely connected, generally through visible, linear spatial closeness or temporal closeness.…”

Postmigrant theatre: the Ballhaus Naunynstraße takes on sexual nationalism

“…46 While stripping and striptease are perceived in Orientalist representations as ways of freeing female bodies from inscription, Yeğenoğlu draws on Foucault's reading of bodies in power to highlight that "not veiling" is as much an inscription of norms as "veiling" is. 47 The body is thus exposed as "the medium through which power operates". 48 In Brecht's political theatre, the concern is similarly to do with making visible the operations of power in which bodies are caught.…”