Nezih Erdogan

Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture
Bilkent University
nezih@bilkent.edu.tr

 

Meyda Yegenoglu, Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism.London and New York: Cambridge UP, 1998.

 

When feminist studies, as it developed in the Anglo-American world, turned to Third World countries, it produced a discourse which put an emphasis on the situation of women oppressed in male-dominant societies marked by backwardness. This discourse regarded women of the less democratic, less learned, unstable, and poverty-stricken societies as deprived of the possibilities and channels of power which are elsewhere accessible to Western women. This “backwardness,” which became a recurrent theme, is of course sustained by a silently conducted comparison between underdeveloped or developing countries and industrialized ones. Such a comparison betrays a difference which remains central to the discourse disseminated by mainstream feminist practices: it re-introduces the “West and the rest” opposition, thus constructing the sovereign Western female subject endowed with all the privileges and powers reserved solely for her.¹ This opposition also brings us back to the problems posed by postcolonial theory in its analysis of how “Orientalism orientalizes the Orient.”

 

Postcolonial theory, which has offered a most productive critique of Orientalism and colonial discourse, nonetheless seems to have overlooked the fact that any careful study of the colonial subject as constituted by colonial discourse needs to insert the terms of sexual difference into its field of investigation. For example, although the work of Edward Said has established the still influential paradigm of postcolonial studies, it has its limitations in demonstrating how sexual difference operates in the production of Orientalist discourse. It is important to see that the power of colonial discourse stems from how it positions woman.

 

As Paul Feyerabend suggests in another context, controversial movements and fields of knowledge may serve as medicine to one another. One may say that feminist studies, especially overseas, is in need of a medicine that could be provided by postcolonial theory, and postcolonial theory could in turn benefit from feminist studies. At this point, Meyda Yegenoglu’s Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism comes as a most rewarding read. Its virtue does not only lie in the ways in which it exemplifies interdisciplinary study (which it impeccably does), but also in the way it draws a framework which makes possible a previously unavailable discussion.

 

From the onset, Yegenoglu develops a dialogue with other writers of postcolonial theory ranging from Edward Said to Homi Bhabha, from Partha Chatterjee to Gayatri Spivak, and with feminist writers including Elisabeth Grosz, Judith Butler, and Vicky Kirby. Aiming to “map the field,” she opens with a discussion of the conceptual tools at hand. Thus, in the first chapter, she gives a lucid depiction of the post-structuralist scene–a difficult and demanding job. Yegenoglu clearly demonstrates the limitations of the pertinent theoretical works and the extent to which she will utilize them. Then she moves on to define a field of investigation for the specific purposes of her project: the problem of the Third World woman.

 

Can one feel at ease with this identification of such an object of study? Just as the infamous question of Freud, “What does woman want?”, causes the woman to disappear (that is, for example, all the possibilities of her self-expression) and brings about a construction of her as produced by man (hence, the woman as symptom of man), any inquisition of the Third World woman entails a double erasure: first in terms of sexual difference and second in terms of colonial othering. Thus Yegenoglu resists the temptation of speaking of this “not yet discovered” object, and instead sets out to delineate the conditions of its objecthood. She repeatedly warns the reader against the double illusion that we can know the woman and that we can know the Third World woman. The illusion is in reality the effect of the colonial discourse which serves to conceal the impossibility of its very object.

 

Take, for instance, her brilliant analysis of Lady Montague’s letters on the Turkish women of the Ottoman Empire. The harem has served for the Orientalist as a fantasy stage and the Muslim woman as the anchor which structured this space, enabling colonial discourse to operate on a number of levels. In the past three centuries, the “enslaved woman” was perceived as a sign of the backwardness of Muslim society, in contrast with the situation of the Western woman, who was then heading for emancipation. As Yegenoglu shows later on in the book, the woman also represents the space that is to be colonized. However, Lady Montague’s portrayal of the Turkish woman runs counter to the well-established image promoted by Orientalism: the harem is actually a space of self-fulfillment for the Turkish woman, who is way ahead of the Western woman. She is learned, knowledgeable, and has access to the means of power. Lady Montague’s letters may give us an idea about the accuracy and the tendency of the Orientalist narratives in circulation at that time. Her benevolence for the Turkish woman is in conflict with what a great majority of Orientalists have produced in the name of objective truth. But is benevolence not an inverted form of malevolence? Isn’t Lady Montague, by negating the reiterated (mis-)conceptions pertaining to Muslim society, actually re-asserting the terms of Orientalism? Yegenoglu eloquently shows how Lady Montague’s text, although it contradicts a great number of contemporary colonialist narratives, nonetheless reproduces colonial discourse in exemplifying the “unity in diversity” of Orientalism. One may even argue that such contradictions are the strength of colonial discourse. The power of looking at others benevolently requires the power of voicing the truth on behalf of others. This is what Yegenoglu refers to as the “regime of truth” of Orientalism. The truth of the Turkish woman does not come from herself but from the Western woman; it is she who holds the power of articulating, disseminating, and controlling the conditions of (her) truth.

 

Lady Montague describes a scene of intimacy in the harem and expresses her wish that a certain English gentleman were there with her, seeing, without being seen, what she was allowed to see. This is one of the crucial moments of Colonial Fantasies: it offers an instance of how sexual difference and colonial discourse are mapped onto each other. Here, Yegenoglu does not only show that Lady Montague’s text is in effect patriarchal–that she assumes the desire of the masculine, the desire to see the (truth of) woman–but she also links masculine desire with the Orientalist’s desire to know what is hidden from him. The sight of woman is thus symptomatic on a wider scale in Orientalism, since scopophilia–which lends colonial discourse its dynamic–involves the “knowing” and “unveiling” of the “East” and “woman,” which are mutually constitutive in the eyes of the Western subject. Colonial Fantasies places special focus on the veil, which structures the very colonial fantasy around which it revolves. The veil serves in this book as the emblematic case for the textual and administrative operations of colonialism, which can be primarily observed in the demand to know the Orient. Interestingly, as the Biblical expression has it, “to know” means a sexual penetration whose resonance can be traced in military invasions, Orientalist studies, scientific expeditions, and even artistic productions. Yegenoglu examines the struggle between the Algerian woman and French colonialism over the veil in this connection. The Frenchman would not feel content until he lifted the veil that stood for the land that had already been taken over; only then would he be able to see it as a space where he could exercise power–the veil stands in the way of the colonizer who is at pains to turn land into flesh and flesh into land.² One witnesses the same logic at work in a variety of practices today: in soft-porn films that recurrently set their scenes in Eastern countries where the European male character seduces the native woman wearing the chador, or in the situation of female students in France and Turkey who are not allowed into classrooms with their headscarves. The Oriental is feminized and the land (read: truth) is sexualized. Here, one is tempted to look to the possibilities offered by the verb “reveal.” It means both “to make known, disclose,” and “to re-veil.” Every unveiling is a re-veiling; knowing the truth of woman, lifting her veil, is a re-inscription of a prescribed knowledge, i.e., the knowledge of the Western sovereign subject, on her body. Yegenoglu does not suggest that beyond the conflicts over veilings and unveilings there lies a naked truth of the woman/the Oriental; on the contrary, she makes clear that there is no such truth, that such a goal would lead us astray, and leave untouched the crucial question of how the truth of the other is inscribed and represented and by whom.

 

Departing from Said’s assertion that Orientalism is a joint venture, in the final chapter of her Colonial Fantasies, Yegenoglu explores the ways in which colonial discourse is co-produced by the colonizer and the colonized. Yegenoglu seeks to show how certain movements in Muslim societies that emerged as antitheses to colonial discourse eventually reproduced its effects. Yegenoglu cites the adventures of nationalism in Turkey and Algeria, which have developed contrasting attitudes towards the question of the veil. At this stage of her analysis, she not only provides a historically and culturally specific context for the relationship of resistance and mimicry, she also draws our attention once again to the central role the woman plays against this backdrop. Nationalism emerged as a resistance against the hegemony of the West, and it propagated the virtues of a national(ist) identity as opposed to the identities imposed by the West. When it comes to constructing a national identity, it was thought necessary to embrace the values of the West (e.g., modernization, secularism) and produce a resistance to it at the same time. In the Turkish case, Islam was seen as an obstacle on the way to the “level of the contemporary civilizations” (read Western civilization); therefore Ataturk silently (and less silently) maintained a distance between religion and the reforms he aimed to institute. In the Algerian case, however, Islam was seen as a means of constructing a nationalist identity and resisting the colonialism of the French, who saw the native’s religion as something to be thrown out in order to operate efficiently in this country. The veil as the symbol of backwardness, as an obstacle brought in by religion, was to be lifted in Turkey, whereas it was defended desperately as the symbol of resistance against the French in Algeria. What is important to understand, warns Yegenoglu, is that both attitudes derive from the same sexual economy. And what is more important, she continues, is to understand that although they may appear to present alternative responses to Western colonialism, they both reproduce the same discursive effects. This is one of the strongest points of Colonial Fantasies: it provides an insight into the deep structures as well as the psychic mechanisms of Orientalism’s capacity for generating diverse, even contradictory images.

 

Western civilization has been remarkably effective in effacing the traces of its operations; culture is what enables this effacement. Culture is a process of neutralization, naturalization, and universalization; it is the place where things seem natural precisely as opposed to cultural; where they seem as they should be. Culture thus masks its own ideological force. It has been the chief task of cultural studies to provide insight into these functions of culture. However, due to the slippery ground of difference, any critical approach to culture runs the risk of reproducing its terms rather than coming to terms with them.

 

Colonial Fantasies vigilantly points out such dangers awaiting the practitioners of postcolonial/feminist studies. Yegenoglu refuses to assume and thereby legitimize any fixed positions in the discourse. If she were to speak from the point of view of the Third World woman, then she would tacitly address a reader in search of a native informant. If she were to take up the position of the mainstream feminist of the Anglo-American world, then she would re-affirm the sovereign female subject of the West. Both positions seem to be available in Yegenoglu’s text; yet neither are sites of identification for the reader. In effect, there are here no stable sites of identification; rather, Yegenoglu moves from one position to another only in order to deconstruct their oppositionality. Fittingly, in her final chapter, Yegenoglu provides a powerful account of how she herself refuses to be the native informant, delivering the truth of women in Muslim society. Thus Yegenoglu demonstrates that it is possible to read the mind of Orientalism without perpetuating its signs.

 

Notes

 

1. See, for instance, Vicky Kirby’s critique of feminists’ approach to genital mutilation of African females in “Kopma Noktasinda Feminizm ve Klitoris Sunneti” in Oryantalizm, Hegemonya ve Kulturel Fark, Fuat Keyman, Mahmut Mutman, and Meyda Yegenoglu, eds. (Istanbul: Iletisim, 1996) 183-233.

 

2. In this context, see Mahmut Mutman’s excellent analysis of how the media veiled Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War: “Pictures from Afar: Shooting the Middle East,” Inscriptions 6 (1992): 1-44.