1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910820335103321

Autore

Fieni David

Titolo

Decadent Orientalisms : The Decay of Colonial Modernity / / David Fieni

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York, NY : , : Fordham University Press, , [2020]

©2020

ISBN

0-8232-8642-8

Edizione

[First edition.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (233 pages)

Classificazione

IG 4280

Disciplina

303.48/24405

Soggetti

Orientalism - France

Orientalism in literature

Decadence in literature

Decadence (Literary movement) - France

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Introduction. Orientalist decadence -- Chapter 1. French decadence, Arab awakenings: figures of decay in the Nahda -- Chapter 2. Al- shidyaq’s decadent carnival -- Chapter 3. From Dreyfus in the colony to Céline's anti- semitic style -- Chapter 4. Resurrecting colonial decadence in independent Algeria -- Chapter 5. Algerian women and the invention of literary mourning -- Chapter 6. Virtual secularization: Abdelwahab meddeb’s “walking cure” and the immigrant body in France -- Conclusion. Toward a contrapuntal double critique of colonial modernity -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Select bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Decadent Orientalisms presents a sustained critique of the ways Orientalism and decadence have formed a joint discursive mode of the imperial imagination. Attentive to historical and literary configurations of language, race, religion, and power, Fieni shows the importance of understanding Western discourses of Eastern decline and obsolescence together with Arab and Islamic responses in which the language of decadence returns as a characteristic of the West. Taking seriously Edward Said’s claim that Orientalism is a “style of having power,” Fieni works historically through the aesthetic and ideological effects of Orientalist style, showing how it is at once comparative, descriptive,



and performative. Orientalism, the book argues, relies upon decadence as the figure through which its positivist scientific claims become redistributed as speech acts—“truths” that establish dominance. Rather than attending to Orientalism as a repertoire of clichés and stereotypes, Decadent Orientalisms considers the systemic epistemological consequences of the diffuse, yet coherent network of institutions that have constituted Orientalism’s power.