Ways of Reading- Orientalism in Flaubert PDF

Preview

Summary

Applying Orientalism to Gustave Flaubert's letter (set text)...

Description

Lecture notes: Gustave Flaubert and Postcolonialism -

Non-fiction

-

Gustave Flaubert (1821-80)

>Visited Egypt which had been part of the French Colony, however, at the time, it was considered very well part of the ‘Orient’ (nowadays referred to as the Middle East)

¿ Why might Gustave Flaubert’s description of Egypt be called Orientalist?

1. Presenting the Orient as lost/stuck in the past, unchanging and undeveloped There is a tendency to position the East as lost in the past, somewhat underdeveloped, placing the East as inferior to the West which is displayed as modern and developed. It allows for the East to be seen as primitive, usually leads to the colonial narrative of ‘we are here to improve the Colony (other)’. 1. ‘… So here we are in Egypt, ‘land of the Pharaohs, land of the Ptolemies, land of Cleopatra’ (as sublime stylists put it).’ Gustave Flaubert, Letter to Dr Jules Cloquet, 15 January 1850, in Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour, ed. and trans. by Francis Steegmuller (London: Penguin, 1996), p. 79.  Positions Egypt as stuck in a distant past, alluding to the history of Egypt, not its

current reality. Loose and imprecise representation of the East 2. The dances that we have had performed for us are of too hieratic a character not to have come from the dances of the old Orient, which is always young because nothing changes. Here the Bible is a picture of life today. Flaubert, Letter to Cloquet, p. 81.  Flaubert implies that the Orient is unchanging, alluding to Biblical imagery. It is

exoticized. It is almost magical in sense, however, never really captures a un biased account of the east, instead is using comparison (East v West) and could be tones of judgement, looking down and belittling Egypt. 3. As for the Arab populace, it has no interest in knowing to whom it will belong. Under different names it will always remain the same and will gain nothing because it has nothing to lose. Flaubert, p. 82. - Its suggestive that Egypt has nothing of worth

-

Link between the epistemological and ontological differences of the East and West [see first notes on Orientalism]

-

Epistemology: theory of knowledge Ontology: theory of being

2. Flaubert's description of the people he sees in Egypt 4. The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences. Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 1995), p. 1.  Exoticism as a way to differentiate between Europeans and Egyptians (Arabs)  Performative state of the Egyptians, they are there to perform to a western visitor. The orient is merely a spectacle, lacks narrative control or power.

3. The West speaks of the East 1. The most celebrated moments in Flaubert’s Oriental travel have to do with Kuchuk Hanem, a famous Egyptian dancer and courtesan he encountered in Wadi Halfa. […] What he especially liked about her was that she seemed to place no demands on him, while the ‘nauseating odor’ of her bedbugs mingled enchantingly with ‘the scent of her skin, which was dripping with sandalwood’. After his voyage, he had written Louise Colet reassuringly that ‘the oriental woman is no more than a machine: she makes no distinction between one man and another man’. Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 1995), pp. 186-87. - The meaning of Kachuck Hanem is 'Little Lady' and is not even a name  Flaubert speaks for the woman: he is a foreign, male and wealthy man which are historical indicators of power and dominance  Flaubert's situation of strength in relation to Kachuck Hanem is not an isolated incident and actually mirrors a larger narrative of dominance over the east (whilst echoing other levels of domination through class, gender and ethnicity)  Reinforces the pattern of relative strength between the East and West and the discourse about the Orient it enables 3. [T]he harsh Semitic syllables crack in the air like whiplashes. Gustave Flaubert, Letter to Dr Jules Cloquet, 15 January 1850, in Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour, ed. and trans. by Francis Steegmuller (London: Penguin, 1996), p. 80.  A language reduced to sound The orient is passive, reduced to a spectacle and something to be observed.

4. Strange ambivalence of the letter 

On the one hand it is a celebration of the Orient but ends on an anxious and critical note





Said notes that this ambivalence is very notable in Orientalism and perpetuates the notion of the Orient as something attractive and alluring but equally as threatening and unknown (foreign) Western way of depicting the East- Orientalism as a system that connects all literary depictions of the east

4. Every writer on the Orient (and this is true even of Homer) assumes some Oriental precedent, some previous knowledge of the Orient, to which he refers and on which he relies. Additionally, each work on the Orient affiliates itself with other works, with audiences, with institutions, with the Orient itself. Said, Orientalism, p. 20. 



Orientalism has been developed and sustained, in part, by literary representations. Literature therefore is not apolitical and instead works with the dynamics of power and dominance. Representations matter

5. The capacity to represent, portray, characterize, and depict is not easily available to just any member of just any society […]. We have become very aware in recent years of the constraints upon the cultural representation of women, and the pressures that go into the created representations of inferior classes and races. In all these areas – gender, class, and race – criticism has correctly focussed upon the institutional forces in modern Western societies that shape and set limits on the representation of what are considered essentially subordinate beings; thus, representation itself has been characterized as keeping the subordinate, subordinate, the inferior, inferior. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Vintage, 1994), p. 95

...