Conference: Translating Orientalism. Towards new epistemological approaches to processes of identity building
Date: June 28-29, 2012
Location: Austrian Cultural Forum Istanbul, June 28th-29th, 2012.
Organiser: A co-operation of Don Juan Archiv Wien (www.donjuanarchiv.at) & Institute of Culture Studies and Theatre History, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna (http://www.oeaw.ac.at/ikt/index_e.html)
Contact: Federico Italiano, ÖAW (federico.italiano(at)oeaw.ac(dot)at), Michael Hüttler, DJA (michael.huettler(at)donjuanarchiv(dot)at)
Concept: Johannes Feichtinger, Johann Heiss, Michael Hüttler, Federico Italiano
Orientalism is a means of the self to localize the Other in space and time in order to define, devaluate, and dominate it. „Imaginative geographies and history“, as Edward Said argues in Orientalism (1978), „help the mind to intensify its own sense of itself by dramatizing the distance and difference between what is close to it and what is far away.“ Given that this Orientalist point of view continues to shape the sense of the self, one might nonetheless ask what new theoretical approaches might lend more nuance to processes of collective identity building. The concept of translatio/n understood as an unlimited processual negotiation of differences across identity constructions would enable us to de-essentialize „Orient“ and „Occident“ and to generate new „imaginative geographies“ without ascribing values to proximity and distance.
Translation perceived as a process of de-territorialisation extends the framework of interaction by disrupting boundaries between fixed spatial and temporal entities. Thereby boundaries are not neglected, but seriously questioned. From the translational perspective, power/knowledge are taken into account. The question is: Who sets the boundaries, when, and why?
- How are Orientalist images and concepts translated across historical epochs, and how does this process illuminate the ideological, political and cultural purpose underlying the transmission?
- Under what circumstances are stereotypes of Occident and Orient preserved, revived or discarded?
- What images of Occident and Orient are transmitted and translated? In which discourses, contexts, and texts are they deployed, and for what reason? And which wait to be resuscitated by scholars?
- Is it possible to use the dichotomy Orientalism vs. Occidentalism epistemologically without reification and at the same time to preserve the transnational/pluricultural dimension?
- Could „translating Orientalism“ not also imply a new epistemological approach to alternative forms and modes of identity building? Can we understand ourselves better without a devaluation of the Other?
- Orientalism in theatre and music: approaches and strategies from the 17th to the 21st century
Participants:
Anil Bhatti, Antonio Baldassarre, Herman Blume, Johannes Feichtinger, Maximilian Hartmuth, Matthew Head, Johann Heiss, Bent Holm, Michael Hüttler, Federico Italiano, Tatjana Markovic, Cesare Molinari, Otto Pfersmann, Michael Roessner