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| Armytage Open Lecture |
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1. The act of naming is an act of power
from Rasheed Araeen, 'How I discovered my Oriental soul in the wilderness of the West' in G. Jordan and Chris Weedon, Cultural Politics: Class, Gender, Race and the Postmodern World, Oxford: Blackwell, 1995, pp. 439-40.
I was born in India, when India was under the British Raj. As a teenager I grew up, spent my early youth and was educated in Pakistan. At the age of 29, " inspired by the West's achievement in art in the 20th century, and to fulfil my own aspirations to be a modern artist, I left my country to live in Europe. I have now lived and worked in London for 27 years.
In the summer of 1970 we had a grand party, to which hundreds of people from the art world were invited ... As I was having drinking and chatting with my friends in my studio, an elderly well-dressed gentleman moved towards us ... 'I like your work very much' he said as we began to talk. I thanked him and we moved around together in the studio. As we were looking at various works something suddenly occurred to me, and I asked him. 'How did you know that this was my work?' 'Aren't you an Arab?' he replied looking at my face. 'No, I'm from Pakistan,' I said, becoming rather puzzled by all this: 'Oh, it's all the same. You are Muslim.' 'Yes,' I said reluctantly. 'You see, this kind of work could have been conceived only by a Muslim. I cannot imagine a European doing this work,' he began to explain politely. Nextday somebody told me that the person I had met was the Professor of Fine Art at the Slade School of Art, and that he was an important member of the art establishment... It was the first time that I became aware that my work had something to do with Islamic tradition. It was a disturbing discovery, because I have never made any connection between my work and my being a Muslim. They were two different things. Moreover I was never interested in Islamic art, or concerned with the expression of my cultural identity. My interest was in modernism.
2. Essentialist vs Non-essentialist By essentialist we mean the idea that identity is fixed in an originating moment, that there is a 'true', authentic, unchanging set of characteristics that belong to, say, Asians, and an equally authentic, fixed set of characteristics that can be attributed to Europeans. An essentialist perspective would maintain that these characteristics do not change across time and are shared by all Asians and all Europeans. An essentialist perspective would maintain that there is something intrinsically 'Asian' or 'British' or ,'Japanese' that transcends history or is inherent in the person.
3. Race is not an objective term of categorazation but 'a dangerous trope'
H.L. Jr Gates, 'Race', Writing and Difference. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1986. p.4.
Race, as a meaningful criterion within the biological sciences, has long been recognized to be a fiction. When we speak of 'the white race' or 'the black race,' 'the Jewish race' or 'the Aryan race,' we speak in biological misnomers and, more generally, in metaphors ... The sense of difference defined in popular usages of the term 'race' has both described and inscribed differences of language, belief system, artistic tradition, and gene pool as well as all sorts of supposedly natural attributes such as rhythm, athletic ability, cerebration, usury, fidelity, and so forth. The relation between 'racial character' and these sorts of characteristics has been inscribed through tropes of race, lending the sanction of God, biology, or the natural order to even presumably unbiased descriptions of cultural tendencies and differences ... In 1973 I was amazed to hear a member of the House of Lords describe the differences between Irish Protestants and Catholics in terms of their distinct and clearly definable differences of race.' 'You mean to say that you can tell them apart?' I asked incredulously. 'Of course,' responded the Lord. 'Any Englishman can.' |
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Related
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Related
Keyword
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Race
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1. The act of naming is an act of power
from Rasheed Araeen, 'How I discovered my Oriental soul in the wilderness of the West' in G. Jordan and Chris Weedon, Cultural Politics: Class, Gender, Race and the Postmodern World, Oxford: Blackwell, 1995, pp. 439-40.
I was born in India, when India was under the British Raj. As a teenager I grew up, spent my early youth and was educated in Pakistan. At the age of 29, " inspired by the West's achievement in art in the 20th century, and to fulfil my own aspirations to be a modern artist, I left my country to live in Europe. I have now lived and worked in London for 27 years.
In the summer of 1970 we had a grand party, to which hundreds of people from the art world were invited ... As I was having drinking and chatting with my friends in my studio, an elderly well-dressed gentleman moved towards us ... 'I like your work very much' he said as we began to talk. I thanked him and we moved around together in the studio. As we were looking at various works something suddenly occurred to me, and I asked him. 'How did you know that this was my work?' 'Aren't you an Arab?' he replied looking at my face. 'No, I'm from Pakistan,' I said, becoming rather puzzled by all this: 'Oh, it's all the same. You are Muslim.' 'Yes,' I said reluctantly. 'You see, this kind of work could have been conceived only by a Muslim. I cannot imagine a European doing this work,' he began to explain politely. Nextday somebody told me that the person I had met was the Professor of Fine Art at the Slade School of Art, and that he was an important member of the art establishment... It was the first time that I became aware that my work had something to do with Islamic tradition. It was a disturbing discovery, because I have never made any connection between my work and my being a Muslim. They were two different things. Moreover I was never interested in Islamic art, or concerned with the expression of my cultural identity. My interest was in modernism.
2. Essentialist vs Non-essentialist By essentialist we mean the idea that identity is fixed in an originating moment, that there is a 'true', authentic, unchanging set of characteristics that belong to, say, Asians, and an equally authentic, fixed set of characteristics that can be attributed to Europeans. An essentialist perspective would maintain that these characteristics do not change across time and are shared by all Asians and all Europeans. An essentialist perspective would maintain that there is something intrinsically 'Asian' or 'British' or ,'Japanese' that transcends history or is inherent in the person.
3. Race is not an objective term of categorazation but 'a dangerous trope'
H.L. Jr Gates, 'Race', Writing and Difference. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1986. p.4.
Race, as a meaningful criterion within the biological sciences, has long been recognized to be a fiction. When we speak of 'the white race' or 'the black race,' 'the Jewish race' or 'the Aryan race,' we speak in biological misnomers and, more generally, in metaphors ... The sense of difference defined in popular usages of the term 'race' has both described and inscribed differences of language, belief system, artistic tradition, and gene pool as well as all sorts of supposedly natural attributes such as rhythm, athletic ability, cerebration, usury, fidelity, and so forth. The relation between 'racial character' and these sorts of characteristics has been inscribed through tropes of race, lending the sanction of God, biology, or the natural order to even presumably unbiased descriptions of cultural tendencies and differences ... In 1973 I was amazed to hear a member of the House of Lords describe the differences between Irish Protestants and Catholics in terms of their distinct and clearly definable differences of race.' 'You mean to say that you can tell them apart?' I asked incredulously. 'Of course,' responded the Lord. 'Any Englishman can.'
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Related
Links
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Related
Keyword
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Race
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