Fascination and disidentification
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As described from Said, Orientalism can mean different things but it all has to do with the fascination of the Westerners. Whether it is a strong academic interest, hunger for domination or the exoticism of the “unknown”, the “other” (Said, p.3), Europeans have been reifying the “Orient” as an object of desire and curiosity. Westerners have also been using Orientalism to uplift their culture and identity by placing themselves in contrast to “the Orient” (Said, p.3) and to assert their superiority, for example in terms of affective normativity compared to the “excessive emotions” of the Latinx people (Muñoz).
Bald’s story of the Bengali Peddlers demonstrates this form of fascination for East Indians (Bald, p.50). They were seen as selling “wisdom” and bringing “magic”. Bald uses different adjectives from the tales lexical such as “fathomless eyes”, “air of oriental mysticism” which illustrates the curiosity and fantasies that Americans and tourists felt towards them. It led some African American to want to “pass” for East Indians, as they seemed to be treated better, to some extent. Although, there was a broad regime of racial appartheid in the US South at the time, Black people have been able to use this fascination of the “whites” to sell them goods such as “silk, rugs and curios” (ibid) and mock them by performing Indianness.
To the question, can Brown people use Orientalism to their advantage?
I don’t think it will ever benefit them in these terms as orientalism is a form of racism. However, in a process of disidentification (Muñoz), that is without assimilation or rejection, they can try to use the orientalist stereotypes and the fascination to make whiteness seem impoverished while showing their rich culture. Still, as we can see in the music video/collage of the “Sweatshop Boys”, the Western oriental fantasies are far from the challenges Brown people face in the West and these realities need to be put forward and understood by them instead of the anchored “exotic” depictions. -
I like how this whole analysis is permeated by Muñoz’s theory.