Abstract
This essay provides a historical evaluation of how scholars have employed
Saidian Orientalism to analyse the representation of Arabs, Muslims, the Middle
East and North Africa in American popular culture from the revolutionary period
to the present day. The scholarship examined here focuses on the American
media, film, literature, material culture, world fairs, the expansion of the
westward frontier, and consumer culture. I argue that whereas academics in the
1980s were concerned primarily with the extent to which European stereotypes
of the Middle Eastern Arab/Muslim other proliferated in contemporary American
popular culture and politics, this concern with negative stock images failed to
provide a compelling and satisfactory explanation for how Americans actually
engaged with ‘the Orient’ in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A
historical approach to studying Orientalism in American culture has produced
what I am calling post-Saidian analyses showing that American society has not
merely been constructed in contradistinction to the Oriental other; rather,
traditions of self-Orientalising have also played a vital part in creating multiple
American selves.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1-17 |
Number of pages | 17 |
Journal | Critical race and whiteness studies |
Volume | 10 |
Issue number | 1 |
Publication status | Published - 2014 |
Keywords
- Orientalism
- American popular culture
- American media
- Arab/Muslim stereotypes
- consumerism
- gender