Jacob Rama Berman
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814789506
- eISBN:
- 9780814789513
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814789506.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter explores the representation of Arabs, Islam, and Arabo-Islamic culture in early twentieth-century black uplift discourses. These representations are hardly consistent and often speak ...
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This chapter explores the representation of Arabs, Islam, and Arabo-Islamic culture in early twentieth-century black uplift discourses. These representations are hardly consistent and often speak directly to differences in theories on self-representation, as well as to the aesthetic divides that these differences engender. The most prominent figure of black engagement with Arab and Islamic culture is the Moor. Indeed, the figure of the Moor was mobilized for both spiritual and secular discourses on black identity. Tracking its uses in the first decades of the twentieth century reveals how intraethnic class and religious reconciliation were often sacrificed in black uplift discourses to intraethnic racial reconciliation. The chapter also discusses the term barbaresque, which describes black intellectuals' aesthetic engagement with North Africa, as well as with the narratives of African American empowerment these engagements produced.Less
This chapter explores the representation of Arabs, Islam, and Arabo-Islamic culture in early twentieth-century black uplift discourses. These representations are hardly consistent and often speak directly to differences in theories on self-representation, as well as to the aesthetic divides that these differences engender. The most prominent figure of black engagement with Arab and Islamic culture is the Moor. Indeed, the figure of the Moor was mobilized for both spiritual and secular discourses on black identity. Tracking its uses in the first decades of the twentieth century reveals how intraethnic class and religious reconciliation were often sacrificed in black uplift discourses to intraethnic racial reconciliation. The chapter also discusses the term barbaresque, which describes black intellectuals' aesthetic engagement with North Africa, as well as with the narratives of African American empowerment these engagements produced.
Jacob Rama Berman
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814789506
- eISBN:
- 9780814789513
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814789506.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter examines the translation of the image of the Arab into a “unique” expression of American romanticism, particularly in Edgar Allan Poe's oeuvre. In Poe, the figure of the Arab facilitates ...
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This chapter examines the translation of the image of the Arab into a “unique” expression of American romanticism, particularly in Edgar Allan Poe's oeuvre. In Poe, the figure of the Arab facilitates the experience of difference as sameness, the foreign as familiar, and the alien as domestic. In a sense, Poe cultivates the anxieties that are latent in the contact narrative's use of the image of the Arab to establish American national, cultural, and racial difference. Indeed, tracking the arabesque's movement from Arab cultural reference to uniquely American aesthetic demonstrates the role of translation in Poe's romanticism. Retranslating Poe's arabesque back into Arabo-Islamic cultural discourse, in turn, reveals resonance between Arab and American romanticism.Less
This chapter examines the translation of the image of the Arab into a “unique” expression of American romanticism, particularly in Edgar Allan Poe's oeuvre. In Poe, the figure of the Arab facilitates the experience of difference as sameness, the foreign as familiar, and the alien as domestic. In a sense, Poe cultivates the anxieties that are latent in the contact narrative's use of the image of the Arab to establish American national, cultural, and racial difference. Indeed, tracking the arabesque's movement from Arab cultural reference to uniquely American aesthetic demonstrates the role of translation in Poe's romanticism. Retranslating Poe's arabesque back into Arabo-Islamic cultural discourse, in turn, reveals resonance between Arab and American romanticism.
Jacob Rama Berman
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814789506
- eISBN:
- 9780814789513
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814789506.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This afterword describes the main house of the Longwood Plantation, where the owner's wife planned on holding balls and social events. Described by its owner as an “oriental remembrance of times ...
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This afterword describes the main house of the Longwood Plantation, where the owner's wife planned on holding balls and social events. Described by its owner as an “oriental remembrance of times past,” the octagonal structure stands six stories high and is capped by a large onion dome. By translating the exotic into the familiar geography of the antebellum American South, the owner co-opted an Arabo-Islamic cultural referent as a sign of his wealth, power, and influence. However, although the architect and his men had erected the exterior structure of Longwood by 1861, the interior was never completed. Ultimately, the house is an odd Oriental ruin of antebellum America's obsession with Arabo-Islamic forms, as well as a reminder of the role those forms played in conjuring transcendental and transhistorical fantasies of American identity.Less
This afterword describes the main house of the Longwood Plantation, where the owner's wife planned on holding balls and social events. Described by its owner as an “oriental remembrance of times past,” the octagonal structure stands six stories high and is capped by a large onion dome. By translating the exotic into the familiar geography of the antebellum American South, the owner co-opted an Arabo-Islamic cultural referent as a sign of his wealth, power, and influence. However, although the architect and his men had erected the exterior structure of Longwood by 1861, the interior was never completed. Ultimately, the house is an odd Oriental ruin of antebellum America's obsession with Arabo-Islamic forms, as well as a reminder of the role those forms played in conjuring transcendental and transhistorical fantasies of American identity.
Fedwa Malti-Douglas
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520215931
- eISBN:
- 9780520924673
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520215931.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Islam
In this volume, the autobiographical writings of three leading women in today's Islamic revival movement reveal dramatic stories of religious transformation. As interpreted by this book, the ...
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In this volume, the autobiographical writings of three leading women in today's Islamic revival movement reveal dramatic stories of religious transformation. As interpreted by this book, the autobiographies provide a powerful, groundbreaking portrayal of gender, religion, and discourses of the body in Arabo-Islamic culture. At the center of each story is a lively female Islamic spirituality that questions secular hierarchies while reaffirming patriarchal ones.Less
In this volume, the autobiographical writings of three leading women in today's Islamic revival movement reveal dramatic stories of religious transformation. As interpreted by this book, the autobiographies provide a powerful, groundbreaking portrayal of gender, religion, and discourses of the body in Arabo-Islamic culture. At the center of each story is a lively female Islamic spirituality that questions secular hierarchies while reaffirming patriarchal ones.
