Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T02:09:46.676Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Thinking Through Veils: Questions of Culture, Criticism and the Body

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Donnalee Dox
Donnalee Dox
Affiliation:
Donnalee Dox is Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre Arts at theUniversity of Arizona
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

When Homi Bhabha discusses the problematics of signification and coding in intercultural interpretation, he questions the relationship between practices and the experience of culture. By questioning the power of codes and signifiers to fix cultural identity, Bhabha allows that the stable object of culture might be caught ‘in the disturbed artifice of its signification’, that is, ‘at the edge of experience’. This suggests to theatre and performance studies that the culturally inscribed body need not be viewed as a stable repository of displaced and deferred codes. The body may be intercepted in situations, or at moments, when signification dissolves and is reconfigured.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , Summer 1997 , pp. 150 - 161
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. I wish to thank Cassandra Shore of the Cassandra School in Minneapolis, Minnesota for her expertise in the performance history of belly dancing, as well as her expertise in the studio.

2. Bhabha, Homi, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 126Google Scholar. See also Scheduler, Richard, ‘Intercultural Themes’, Performing Aits Journal, 11.3/12.1, 1989, pp. 151–62Google Scholar, and Turner, Victor, ‘Body, Brain, and Culture’, Performing Arts Journal, 10.2 (1986), pp. 26–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For distinctions between interpretative and experiential techniques in anthropology, see Clifford, James, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art, especially Chapter 1, ‘On Ethnographic Authority’ (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

3. David Yanko and Gulgun Kay im, with generosity and enthusiasm, contributed photographs of their wedding for this publication. This article is dedicated to the memory of Mr Hayati Kayim.

4. Bhabha, , Location of Culture, p. 246.Google Scholar

5. For a Jungian analysis of goddess worship in the West, which also touches on dance, see Qualls-Corbett, Nancy, The Sacred Prostitute (Toronto: Inner City Books, 1988).Google Scholar

6. Denis, Ruth St., Ruth St. Denis: An Unfinished Life (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1978), p. 48.Google Scholar

7. deCerteau, Michel, Heterologies: Discourse on the Other, translated by Massumi, Brian, (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1968), pp. 69–70Google Scholar. For a detailed description of the image of the oriental dancer in the West, including St. Denis, Ted Shawn, Mata Hari, Theda Bara, Anna Pavlova, Agnes DeMille, and Collette, see Buenaventura, Wendy, The Serpent of the Nile (New York: Interlink Books, 1990)Google Scholar. See also Wheeler, Mark, ‘The East/West Dialectic in Modern Dance’, in Kleinman, Seymour, ed., Mind and Body: East Meets West (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Publishers, Inc., 1986)Google Scholar. For the images dispersed by the Orientalist painters, see Stevens, Mary Anne, The Orientalists: Delacroix to Matisse: The Allure of North Africa and the Near East (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1984)Google Scholar and Jullian, Philippe, The Orientalists: European Painters of Eastern Scenes (Oxford: Phaidon, 1977).Google Scholar

8. For a brief but thorough summary of the history of contemporary popular belly dance, see Carlton, Donna, Looking for Little Egypt (Bloomington, IN: IDD Books, 1994), pp. 86–7.Google Scholar

9. See Said, Edward, Orientalism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), p. 243Google Scholar, and deCerteau, Michel, The Writing of History, translated by Massumi, Brian (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), p. 21.Google Scholar

10. deCerteau, Michel, Heterologies, p. 69.Google Scholar

11. The mashrabiya is the carved screen which separated the women in the harem, but could also be seen through like the veil.

12. Shaarawi, Huda, Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist 1879–1924, edited and translated by Badran, Margot (New York: The Feminist Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Bouhdiba, A., Sexuality in Islam (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985).Google Scholar

13. Vaka, Demetra, Haremlik (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909), pp. 246–7Google Scholar; Penzer, N. M., The Harem (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1937), p. 183.Google Scholar

14. Mernissi, Fatima, The Forgotten Queens of Islam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), p. 27.Google Scholar

15. Shaawari, , pp. 13, 123, 126Google Scholar. For a detailed discussion of the political significance of women in traditional dress as opposed to western-style dress to designate both political conservatism and rural or urban representation in public life see Sullivan, Earl L., Women in Egyptian Public Life (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986)Google Scholar. See also Brooks, Geraldine, Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women (New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1994).Google Scholar

16. In 1834, all dancers (ghawazee) were banished from Cairo in efforts to modernize Egypt under western influence. See Tucker, Judith E., Women in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), Chapter 4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17. Buonaventura, Wendy, The Serpent of the Nile: Women and Dance in the Arab World (New York: Interlink Books, 1994), p. 152Google Scholar; Mishkin, Julie Russo and Schill, Marta, The Compleat Belly Dancer: For Everyone Who Wants to be Healthy and Slim and Have Fun Getting There (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1973), p. 17Google Scholar. For an historical discourse on the position of women in Muslim society, including the codes of dress and costume, see Mentissi, Fatima, The Forgotten Queens of Islam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).Google Scholar

18. For a Lacanian analysis of the veil using film images, see Doane, Mary Ann, Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, and Psychoanalysis (New York: Routledge, 1991)Google Scholar, especially Chapter 3, ‘Veiling Over Desire: Close-Ups of the Woman’, pp. 44–75.

19. Benthall, Jonathan, The Body as a Medium of Expression (New York: Dutton, 1975), p. 71.Google Scholar

20. Zizek, Slovoj, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan Through Popular Culture (Cambridge, MA: October Books, 1991), p. 21Google Scholar. For contradictions in Islam over the position and treatment of women, see Bouhdiba, Abdelwahab, Sexuality in Islam (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), pp. 213–15Google Scholar. On shifts in the Muslim attitude toward sexuality in general, pp. 231–3, and on the influence of the West's ‘ethical void’ in sexuality, pp. 244–5. Bouhdiba discusses shifts in the Muslim discourse on sexuality as a function of colonization, and in deference to Christian practices: ‘The open sexuality, practised in joy with a view to the fulfilment of being, gradually gave way to a closed, morose, repressed sexuality … Furtive, secretive, hypocritical behaviour assumed an ever more exorbitant place’ (p. 231). In Bouhdiba's analysis, the violation of the colonizer entered and seized the environment, institutions and language which had been developed to organize male-female sexuality. Malek Alloula identifies veiling, specifically in Algiers, as a technique of resistance against French colonization which spread from the urban to rural environs in the 1920s (coinciding with the Egyptian women's liberation from the veil). See also Shaarawi, Huda, Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist 1879–1924, edited and translated by Badran, Margot (New York: The Feminist Press 1986)Google Scholar, for text and photographs detailing the use of western dress by Egyptian women, and also the overlap of Turkish, English, and Egyptian dress practices.

21. See Alloula, Marek, The Colonial Harem (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for discussions of the appropriation of the image of the Oriental woman as sensual and of the body as well as the stagings of that sensuality.

22. For pictorial documentation of Egyptian dancing in Egypt but for Western patrons, see Roberts, David, ‘Egypt's Old Kingdom’, National Geographic, (01 1995), p. 38Google Scholar, (photograph by Kenneth Garrett).

23. Buonaventura, , pp. 149, 157Google Scholar. For another example of East staging East for Western gaze, see Slyomovics, Susan, ‘Cross-Cultural Dress and Tourist Performance in Egypt’, Performing Arts Journal, 11.3–12.1 (1989), pp. 139–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24. Alloula, Malek, The Colonial Harem (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986) p. xv.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. Said, , Orientalism, p. 243.Google Scholar

26. Clifford, James, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature and Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 259.Google Scholar

27. Kristeva, Julia, ‘Gesture: Practice or Communication?’ in Polhemus, Ted, ed., The Body Reader: Social Aspects of the Human Body (New York: uPantheon Books), p. 268.Google Scholar

28. Quotes are taken from discussions with dancers over a period of two years. Gratefully acknowledged are Christina Ouma (‘Shadia’), Peg Blader (‘Maja’), Kathy McCurdy (‘Naima’), Nezrine Kayoum, Gulgun Kayim, Cassandra Shore and students of the Cassandra School in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

29. Turner, Victor, ‘Body, Brain and Culture’, Performing Arts Journal, 10.2 (1986), p. 29.Google Scholar

30. Cassandra Shore, The Cassandra School, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Personal interview, 7 July 1995.

31. Much of this philosophy of dancing and performance can be traced to the mid-1970s. See, for example, Mishkin, Julie Russo and Schill, Marta, The Compleat Belly Dancer: For Everyone Who Wants to be Healthy and Slim and Have Fun Getting There (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1973)Google Scholar which includes instructions to ‘be demure, be haughty … be inviting’ (p. 135), as well as the statement: ‘a woman having a good time within her body, sharing her delight in motor expression, cannot be exploited’ (p. 17). See also two films which depict belly dancing as an historical art form and consider the contradictions between the personal or spiritual dimension of the dance and the dancer's professional life, The Ancient Art of Belly Dancing (The Belly Dance Co-op, Phoenix, Arizona, 1977) and Gameel Gamal: Oh, Beautiful Dancer (Phoenix Films, 1976).

32. For descriptions of Turkish wedding practices, including dancing, see among others Melek-Hanum, , Thirty Years in the Harem: The Autobiography of Melek-Hanum, Wife of H. H. Kibrizli-Mehemet-Pasha, (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1872), pp. 86–90Google Scholar; Garnett, Lucy M. J., Home Life in Turkey (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1909), pp. 237–48Google Scholar. For Egypt, see Shaarawi, Huda, Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist 1879–1924, edited and translated by Badran, Margot (New York: The Feminist Press 1986), pp. 54–8.Google Scholar

33. Bhabha, Homi, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 242.Google Scholar

34. Tadashi, Suzuki, ‘Culture is the Body’, Performing Arts Journal, 8.2 (1984), pp. 28–35 (29).Google Scholar