The readings for this coming week provide a discussion at the intersection of Said and Foucault, with the discourse of sexuality as its epicenter. In a brave critique of Foucault, Stoler makes two primary claims. The first, that the identities created both within colonies and within Europe itself in the nineteenth century cannot be separated from their historical, racialized context - a "circuitous imperial route", if you will - that leads to the production of a problematic sexual discourse. The second, an argument for a more complex, nuanced understanding of the way imperial discourses have been created and how/where they have permeated. The nation-state, "metropole", and colony are not distinct entities with their own histories, and therefore cannot be understood and analyzed as such. Stoler points to the fact that each of these geographic spaces are both intertwined and contain more complex layers within them, discourse of sexual morality defining racialized boundaries of inferiority (Stoler 1995, 7-8).
Alloula reifies Said's concept of the textual archive and the perpetuation of the "other" through the act (and distribution) photography, and the creation of a distinct stylized truth. I found it interesting that Alloula refers to the confinement and imprisonment of women as the "equivalent of sexual frustration", yet describes such frustration in relation to the male rather than female figure. The man in the image is "desperately clutching the bars" to get at his object of sexual desire, rather than the woman, the object confined, trying to break free to fulfill her own. Alloula's explanation places the woman in the inferior (weaker) position, which might be the intention of the postcard, rather than place the woman in the ("unexpected") role of the sexual aggressor. Either interpretation demonstrates the bounds of socially constructed (heteronormative) sexual identities, the delicate line a woman must balance that defines the way in which she is perceived, and an element of the blame often placed on women for a man's behavior (referenced in Stoler 1997, 27).
This piece also provides a visual representation of the concepts addressed in Stoler's piece "Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power", namely simplified representations of colonial authority and sexual control. "Sexual images illustrate iconography of rule, not its pragmatics...they are tropes to depict other centers of power" (Stoler 1997, 15). These readings describe the formation of distinct understandings of morality through sexuality and race that enforced and perpetuated patterns of imperial inferiority, which undoubtedly provide the foundations of the contexts we navigate today.
I had the following questions as I read, which I'd love to address at some point, either in class or through further discussion:
Are sexuality and race implicitly tied in all contexts, since "modernity" is built upon such postcolonial, discursive frameworks which link the two?
In what ways should we understand the difference between gender and sexuality, and the representation and discourses surrounding each?
