SalonAnthro is a repository of blog entries, interesting notes videos and other tidbits, and junior scholarly research on politics of representation, art, and anthropology. My focus is particularly on representation and visual art from an anthropological perspective and located in the Middle East. Other contributors are always welcome; if you have some thoughts about a piece, drop me a line!
Photographer Shadi Ghadirian lives and works in Tehran. Her series of Qajar photographs, mimicking standards of 18th and 19th century Qajar court photography, is framed in "Veil" as a thoughtful and witty retort to ethnographic Orientalist portraits and in "Unveiled" as subversive art worthy of a second look. Responses to her work vary. In an exhibition review, critic Olivia Hampton writes, “Qajar is a recreation of the photographic compositions and styles of the studio portraits that flourished in the Qajar dynasty, who ruled Iran from 1794-1925... But clear intrusions of modernity surface in the work, in the form of ghetto blasters and television sets.” Here we see a European art critic reading the work to be about modernity, and an “intrusion” into an idealized and Orientalized past. In a similar vein, “Unveiled” curator Lisa Farjam writes, “Ghadirian, who is influenced by Qajar traditions in Iranian photohistory, does not bow to the standard image of the darkly-clad Muslim woman; these veils are full of color and life.” Here, Ghadirian is presented as drawing from a traditional and Islamic past while infusing a modernity and vibrance. Farjam frames Ghadirian as breaking stereotypes of “the Muslim woman,” whose form, voice, and sexuality are cloaked and disappear with the veil. To counter these views, fellow artist Jananne Al-Ani intervenes to clarify multiple readings by varied audiences, rather than assuming a homogenous and Western audience. She notes, “For an Iranian audience, the contemporary props are seen as ordinary objects in an extraordinary costume drama, whereas for a Western audience – with no knowledge of the history of Iranian dress – the contemporary props disrupt what appears to be a timeless ethnographic portrait of an Other culture.” Here, Al-Ani broadens the debate and the discussion of the work to include multiple perspectives, rather than presuming the work’s audience(s) will be culturally homogenous. Moore writes that Ghadirian's inclusion of Western electronics "raise pointed questions about the provenance of commodity culture and the different forms of fetishism that impact upon women transnationally.” Moore thus creates a productive channel into discussing how women’s bodies in representation have been historically used across many cultures for varying reasons. This call to a broader audience and shared commonalities reappears in Ghadirian’s more recent work, the “Like EveryDay” series, which highlights the quotidian nature of many women’s lives and the roles they perform. Ghadirian’s gallery labels the series, which was featured in the “Unveiled” exhibition, as “depicting anonymous chador-wrapped figures with kitchen utensils instead of faces. This simple, ominous collision of potent symbols – the veil and domesticity –parodies stereotypical understanding of women of the region and universally.” Most viewers imagine the veiled figures to be human, and Muslim women, given that resemblance to variations of the Islamic veil, but there are no discernible people in these photographs. The immediate association for Western audiences is the equating of women as tools, implements, and as invisible as the household items of daily use; women are reduced to sexual tools in wearing the veil, could be an interpretation. In the photographs, there is no trace of a person visible except for one figure in a gingham flowered veil with a strainer over her face; here, the viewer can see traces of skin, a nose, and the tip of a finger, presumed to be feminine by the veil. Otherwise, the series portrays tools and veils, but not people. Ghadirian works within Iranian political constraints, despite the potentially difficult interpretations of some of her works. According to Iranian law, “All images of women in Iran must be shown in hijab and instead of trying to escape this or seeing it as a constraint, Shadi Ghadirian has made it her theme as she continues to investigate the condition of women in her home country.” Much as Sedira pushes viewers to interpret, hold, and gather multiple viewpoints at once, Ghadirian works within and through her sociopolitical situation to create works that challenge easy assumptions and classification.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o is not a small name in African literature. He and Chinua Achebe famously debated whether it was possible to write in the language of the colonizer: can the formerly colonized (even that is debated, is colonialism every truly over?) write and express themselves in the language of the colonizer? Does that constitute a mental adherence or subjugation to a form of expression, a way of seeing the world, that belongs to the colonizer? Because of this, despite being in exile from his native Kenya, Ngugi wa Thiong'o has written in Gikuyu. He translates his novels himself into English.
My question, after reading the mammoth 776-page Wizard of the Crow, shares that same concern of retaining African voices and expression. Does the magical realism of Wizard detract from the seriousness of the other depictions in the book? If despotism, corruption, and bribery are as despicable as they seem, and so egregious as to endanger so many lives, does the magical realism of the Ruler's illness, of the magical and mysterious disguises of Kamiti and Nyawira, make the reader take the corruption less seriously too? Does that endanger our thinking about Africa, or strengthen it? Open it?
The story is a rich one, tracing the lives of several characters as they grow or diminish in power in the state of Aburiria. I appreciated the irony of Kamiti, who becomes (by accident, largely, but also by fate) the Wizard of the Crow, falling prey to an illness he himself divined in others. The Wizard was also Kamiti, Nyawira was herself also the Wizard, but also the Limping Witch, and assumed many disguises and characters in the book. I took this to be an interesting comment and depiction of the many faces we assume in our daily lives, manipulating others or being manipulated.
Thiong'o ends with an optimistic note: the discovery that Arigaigai Gathere (A.G.) had saved the Wizard's life in the fatal shootout scene towards the end of the novel. A.G., as a policeman, had throughout the story believed in the Wizard's power, but was an agent of the state. In the end, he seemed to be the only character who escaped a fate of either government agent (powerful at some times, and taken from power viciously by enemies at others) or citizen fighting the government. In the end, A.G. is the only one who wrote his own fate. Haki ya mungu.
originally posted on the delighted observationist, 1/6/2011.
I recently discovered LinkTV on my tv, which is amazing. It is also noteworthy in that Link carries Al Jazeera English here in America. What people don't seem to realize is that AJE is actually a great news source and not a terrorist organization...but that's a sidebar, albeit related, to the discussion of political geographies that I'm concerned with this evening.
Link also replayed the above video of Parag Khanna speaking at TED in 2009. He discusses the Middle East, mentioning that these countries are often "uncomfortable" in the borders left them by colonial realities. I didn't hear Khanna reference Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, but I'd be highly surprised if the articulate Khanna has not read this incredible and (rightly) influential tome.
In Anderson's revised edition (1991), Anderson added a chapter on "Census, Map, Museum." He writes about how these elements are crucial in providing information to buttress, describe, divide? the imagined community of the nation. Anderson writes that these "three institutions of power which, although invented before the mid nineteenth century, changed their form and function as the colonized zones entered the age of mechanical reproduction. These three institutions were the census, the map, and the museum" (163). Anderson points out that maps essentially create imaginary boundaries, and that the word country connotes "bounded territorial space" (173). To this end, Khanna points out that Africa's map is covered with "suspiciously straight lines." The lines show how unnatural, how inorganic, these national boundaries are.
Khanna ends by noting that "Geopolitics is constantly morphing - we are always searching for equilibrium, we fear changes on the map...but the inertia of our current borders is far worse. We focus on the lines that cross borders, the infrastructures lines, we'll end up with the world we want: a borderless one."
I question, do we truly want a borderless world? Khanna opened with a note about 90% of the world's population living outside of the 40 biggest population centers in the world. Are borders meant to give those within them a sense of belonging, or to keep others out? They do in fact provide definitions we rely on, especially in this country (ie, American, Mexican). Khanna is right, borders denote power and money and the flows of both. Are we - here, in the US, in particular - willing to give up some of our privilege to really truly begin to stabilize the world? Power, wealth, and privilege cannot continue to be located in such small loci as the world's population expands and demands their fair share of these privileges.
As I write this, I watch images of the protests in Egypt as its people attempt to redefine their country, their rights as citizens, their image and place in the world. (Meanwhile, Egyptian state tv, according to reports, continues to show soap operas & cooking shows instead of international news.) Commentary runs on about how these protests, and those in Tunisia and in Yemen, can destabilize Israel or the entire Arab world, even though the US claims to support burgeoning democracy. Interestingly enough, this political struggle reflects Khanna's point about internal lines: the news I get on Facebook and via Twitter, from those I went to school for Middle Eastern studies with, and my other Syrian connections, is faster, and more...honest (in my view) than what I see a day later on the international news. There are no borders, in a sense, in the age of information (despite Mubarak's attempt to shut down all internet communication services). But how far gone are the very real borders and mentally calcified divisions that have seemingly evaporated in the digital world?
originally posted on the delighted observationist, 2/2/2011
To counter these views, fellow artist Jananne Al-Ani intervenes to clarify multiple readings by varied audiences, rather than assuming a homogenous and Western audience. She notes, “For an Iranian audience, the contemporary props are seen as ordinary objects in an extraordinary costume drama, whereas for a Western audience – with no knowledge of the history of Iranian dress – the contemporary props disrupt what appears to be a timeless ethnographic portrait of an Other culture.” Here, Al-Ani broadens the debate and the discussion of the work to include multiple perspectives, rather than presuming the work’s audience(s) will be culturally homogenous. Moore writes that Ghadirian's inclusion of Western electronics "raise pointed questions about the provenance of commodity culture and the different forms of fetishism that impact upon women transnationally.” Moore thus creates a productive channel into discussing how women’s bodies in representation have been historically used across many cultures for varying reasons. 
This call to a broader audience and shared commonalities reappears in Ghadirian’s more recent work, the “Like EveryDay” series, which highlights the quotidian nature of many women’s lives and the roles they perform. Ghadirian’s gallery labels the series, which was featured in the “Unveiled” exhibition, as “depicting anonymous chador-wrapped figures with kitchen utensils instead of faces. This simple, ominous collision of potent symbols – the veil and domesticity –parodies stereotypical understanding of women of the region and universally.” Most viewers imagine the veiled figures to be human, and Muslim women, given that resemblance to variations of the Islamic veil, but there are no discernible people in these photographs. 
The immediate association for Western audiences is the equating of women as tools, implements, and as invisible as the household items of daily use; women are reduced to sexual tools in wearing the veil, could be an interpretation. In the photographs, there is no trace of a person visible except for one figure in a gingham flowered veil with a strainer over her face; here, the viewer can see traces of skin, a nose, and the tip of a finger, presumed to be feminine by the veil. Otherwise, the series portrays tools and veils, but not people. 
Ghadirian works within Iranian political constraints, despite the potentially difficult interpretations of some of her works. According to Iranian law, “All images of women in Iran must be shown in hijab and instead of trying to escape this or seeing it as a constraint, Shadi Ghadirian has made it her theme as she continues to investigate the condition of women in her home country.” Much as Sedira pushes viewers to interpret, hold, and gather multiple viewpoints at once, Ghadirian works within and through her sociopolitical situation to create works that challenge easy assumptions and classification.
