Decadent Orientalisms : The Decay of Colonial Modernity.
- 1st ed.
- 1 online resource (233 pages)
Cover -- DECADENT ORIENTALISMS -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- CONTENTS -- Introduction: Orientalist Decadence -- Part I (DIS)INTEGRATING SEMITISM: FRENCH AND ARABIC IN THE TWILIGHT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE -- 1. French Decadence, Arab Awakenings: Figures of Decay in the Nahda -- 2. Al-Shidyaq's Decadent Carnival -- 3. From Dreyfus in the Colony to Céline's Anti-Semitic Style -- Part II WORKING THROUGH POSTCOLONIAL DECADENCE -- 4. Resurrecting Colonial Decadence in Independent Algeria -- 5. Algerian Women and the Invention of Literary Mourning -- 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.
Decadent Orientalisms presents a sustained critique of the ways Orientalism and decadence have formed a joint discursive mode of the imperial imagination. Rather than attending to Orientalism as a repertoire of clichés and stereotypes, Fieni reads both Western and Islamic discourses of decadence to show the diffuse, yet coherent network of institutions that have constituted Orientalism's power.