MODERN BODIES: DRESS, NATION, EMPIRE, SEXUALITY AND GENDER IN THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST

摘要

The field of postcolonial studies has long moved beyond the parameters set by the 1978 publication of Said's Orientalism. Modern Bodies: Dress, Nation, Empire, Sexuality and Gender in the Modern Middle East, organized jointly by the School of Architecture and Design, the London College of Fashion, and the Institute for Women's Studies in The Arab World on the spectacular venue of the Lebanese American University (LAU) took off from exactly the point Said's oeuvre had left. Cultural and visual theorists coming both from the 'East' and the 'West' problematized, though without ever mentioning Said's name, his paradoxically both innovative and avowedly conservative ideas raised in the book. Said's argument not only set an undifferentiated west and an anti-west; it also failed to include the Ottoman empire, one of the most significant powers of the period, made no reference to non-western writers and texts, and ignored the gender and class dimensions of the colonialist enterprise. The conference successfully displayed all that Orientalism lacked with additional arguments focusing on the ways in which bodies, both naked and dressed, are key sites for expressing colonial and colonized cultures and cultures in transition.