The comment on Orientalism seems to me to relate to another difficulty I had
with Sontag's most recent as there were many references to the others, those
people, those victims. Again, I may be misreading her and I'm not labelling
her 'conservative'. It's more like she has here gone along with popular
ways of thinking which tend to divide things into us and they and she fails
to highlight and point out this way of thinking.
tom bell
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alison Croggon" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, June 06, 2003 11:09 AM
Subject: Re: Theory
> Thanks, Rebecca, for that very clear distinction between erotic and
> pornographic imaginations. Too right, it's a huge topic. I've just
> finished re-reading Said's classic Orientalism, which seems to me
> such urgent reading now, in its analysis of the creation of "The
> Oriental" and how a western fiction called Orientalism has inflected
> our views of about a third of the world's population. Particularly
> valuable now, perhaps, for its insistence on the specifics of human
> beings in all their diversity and humanity. Its end essay, written
> in 1995 to address some of the various misinterpretations of the book
> since its publication in 1977, is equally interesting. I hadn't read
> that before.
>
> He refers often to the sexualising of the Arab in particular and the
> Orient in general in Western discourse (from Chateuabriand on), a
> theme which has persisted even through what he describes as the huge
> sea change of oriental studies from 19C European literary and
> philological studies to contemporary American sociological/political
> analyses.
>
> Best
>
> A
>
> At 11:47 PM -0600 4/6/03, Rebecca Seiferle wrote:
> >This is, I think anyway, very different
> >from the erotic which is posited upon subjectivity and the
> >individual response, whether to another person, or to a work
> >of art, or the beauty of a particular landscape, etc. It is,
> >I think, the pornographic impulse that is most closely allied
> >with right wing ideologies, for pornography is similarly
> >preoccupied with constructs of power and is, being dependent
> >for much of its frisson upon an assumption of common 'morality,'
> >moralisizing and sentimental. Hence, I think prior to the invasion
> >of Poland, various Nazi official and unofficial branches of
> >the government flooded the country with anti-Semitic pornography,
> >finding in its effects and appeals a preparation for the effects
> >and appeals of Nazi rhetoric, which could both affect and appeal
> >in the same crude emotive terms while positing itself as a
> >a restoration of 'cleanliness' in every sense of Nazi 'cleansing'
> >of a society. Similarly the making of various peoples into 'filth'
> >is a deeply pornographic impulse, entitling those who have
> >succeeded in so doing to then use those peoples to their own
> >pleasure or ends and then disposing of them. Another characteristic
> >of pornography is the use of the stereotype, rather than the
> >erotic which creates persons with subtlety of
> >thought and feeling, and this, too, was characteristic of
> >the Nazi use of the pure German maiden, the Teutonic hero,
> >etc. Well, there is too much to go into here
>
> --
>
>
> Alison Croggon
>
> Editor, Masthead
> http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
>
> Home page
> http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
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