Brenda Segone: Occidentalism in Egypt, Gebunden

Klappentext

"From the odalisques to the pashas, to the orange sellers, there is no shortage of depictions of Arabs from the western world. But what about Europeans? How are they perceived and understood in the Arab world? Focusing on visual culture, Occidentalism in Egypt sets out to establish a typology of Europeans and Europe as they are perceived and represented by Egyptians through an interdisciplinary study that takes into account painting, cinema, literature, popular culture, and the satirical press. Eschewing the binary of alienating Westernization and authentic Egyptianness, Brenda Segone shows how the quest for identity in modern Egyptian artistic expression unfolded during a period of profound upheaval, decolonization, and the assertion of national independence. She divides this period into three phases, which she distinguishes as a time of advocacy of Egyptianness associated with authenticity (1937-45), a time of implementation of that Egyptianness (1946-56), and a time of testing Arabness (1956-73). She argues that unlike the Orientalists, who made their act of appropriation invisible, Egyptian Westernist artists gave it a visible form, and, even where the West appears as a negative authority or as a threat to local culture, the artists transcend stereotypes to achieve a form of universality. Occidentalism in Egypt therefore writes against a traditional narrative of an "authentically" Egyptian artistic geography within a politized perimeter that places it on the periphery of the international scene, arguing instead for a much more complex and interesting artistic and cultural reality"--