Re-orienting Orientalism: From Shafik Gabr’s What Orientalist Painters Can Teach Us About The Art Of East–West Dialogue to Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced by Fawzia Afzal-Khan Arab Stages, Volume 1, Number 1 (Fall 2014) ©2014 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Publications
Abstract: This paper traces the iterability of Orientalist performativity in a post 9/11 world by looking at the cultural interventions of Egyptian millionaire art-collector Shafik Gabr and the Pulitzer prizewinning play, Disgraced, by Pakistani-American Ayad Akhtar. The paper explores the differences between “orientalism” and “exoticism” to ask whether, how and to what degree liminal positionalities can be productively used to create space for a dialogue between the West and its others, particularly its Muslim agonists.
Key words: Orientalism; performativity; Islam; iterability; exoticism
| | | Next → |
