Week 2 Sunday

I found the Women's Prisons text to be quite interesting and engaging, specifically in Alloula's analysis of the relationship between the studio and the model as a "double movement of appropriation." To add to Alloula, both the model and the studio are both perpetrating a property through an imagined/exaggerated portrayal of the Algerian women; the model is the substitute for the Algerian woman and the studio creating the space of the harem/prison. I think the exaggeration springs from the fact that these Harems are not accessible to the photographers, therefore the studio/the photographer lacks knowledge of such space and its inhabitants, hence the portrayal of Algerian women as "inaccessible"/sexually frustrated. In the analysis, there is an emphasis on the colonial gaze or the male gaze, which I believe objectifies these women in the eye of the colonizer or perpetrator of the Harem through "the voyeurism of the camera operator." The portrayal of these women as exotic in the poses as well as the mise-en-scene of the colonial postcard, insinuates "violence." The "violence" comes from possibly many places. One might be the studio presence in that space and the colonial objectification of local women, as well as being subjects of the male gaze. Nevertheless, it could be the sexual frustration and tension that Alloula suggest that is violent upon these women.

While women in these images might have been portrayed as objects of voyeurism, Ann Stoler presents yet another scenario that presents women as objects during colonialism in Asia and Africa. European men cohabiting with native women and conceiving children with them due to it being economically convenient for the white power operating in these colonies. What strikes as most interesting though is the shift in laws in only allowing Euro men to marry Euro women as a way of preserving whiteness and white privilege and standards as well as to reduce 'degeneracy'. The women though played a strong role in intensifying the division and racial distinction between native and euro, which resulted in a significance drop in the number of concubines in the colonies. Nevertheless, Euro women were still marginalized or were subjected to male dominance and misogyny hence their inability to have much control. The women's duty was to maintain their men from degenerating. However, in questioning that, how are these women supposed to perform such a task if they lack the freedom that men have? While Stoler provided some historical answers to how women were expected to do that, I presume men were still able to engage in non-European behavior outside the sight of the woman and society. Hence, perhaps this presents a weak link in colonial thinking.

Regardless of that, another idea that struck me the most was how after the authorities or european control over 'eugenics,' as well the homogenization of the colonial man and woman, individuals became productive economic machines whose sole purpose is to reproduce, preserve whiteness and maintain superiority over natives.

To end, after reading this article, I was astounded by the parallelism that it has with the world today.