Exoticism

This special issue of the Material Culture Review is concerned with things being used in a context other than the one in which they originated. Delocalization and relocalization of material culture happen on different scales—not only between different continents, but also within the same country or inside a single apartment. This perspective allows to study the migration of objects from one territory to another.

How can designers depict a national identity when the national identity itself is in question? It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that the Arab world seems to be dealing with an ‘optional’ identity; one that churns and morphs to the whim of the moment. But what is Arab identity? Shaped by Orientalism, moulded by colonialism and impacted by globalism, a unified Arab identity does not exist. As this paper traces the evolution of Self-Orientalism across a variety of communication channels, a prism of individual distorted representations emerge, squeezed by ‘othering’ into a collective dynamic, which Arab designers themselves, seemingly unaware, are nurturing.

The research focuses on the designer’s role and responsibility in depicting a cultural identity, in a world where Hyper-Nationalism is finding new roots in politics and media. Visual communicators have played an extensive role in the identity portrayal of the Arab world, that mirrors in many ways what Orientalists previously did in literature, cinema and academia. The paper highlights problematic design approaches visualizing the Arab world as an exotic place of mystery, erotica and stereotypes. Productions as such are leading a self-Orientalist reductionist wave in design and altering contextual realities.

Excerpt: While buying a cup of coffee at a local café one morning, I was transported to an exotic far-off land. Immersed in the aroma of coffee brewing and surrounded by pictures of farmers picking coffee and their children smiling, I could imagine who had grown the coffee in my mug. Marketing materials littered the countertop, thanking me for buying fair trade certified coffee and telling me that I was making a difference and that fair trade works. My single cup of coffee was said to help poor farmers. One of the posters declared, “every purchase matters,” and another said I was helping end poverty “one cup at a time.” The promotional materials explained that my purchase brought me into a direct and intimate relationship with farmers as if the handle of my coffee mug was a farmer’s hand I was shaking to congratulate him or her on a job well done.
          Fair trade marketing and advocacy rely on the idea that fair trade increases connectedness between Global South producers and Global North consumers. While fair trade does reduce the number of intermediaries in the supply chain as compared to the free trade system for most commodities (Raynolds 2002; Nicholls and Opal 2005; Adams and Raisborough 2008, 1169), it also serves to reinforce racist and colonial distinctions between the poor Global South farmer and the benevolent Global North consumer. Fair trade may channel slightly more income into agricultural communities, but it fails to address the colonial and capitalist structures that produce the impoverishment of farmers on an ongoing basis.

Questa breve opera deriva da un piccolo ciclo di lezioni sull'estetica contemporanea che ho tenuto all'università di Tor Vergata nell'anno 2012-2013. In questo caso, poiché il testo non si rivolge a un pubblico specializzato, userò un linguaggio divulgativo, colloquiale, informale e ricco di esempi, ma non per questo si vuole rinunciare a un'impostazione metodologica e critica che eviti i cliché delle pubblicazioni che trattano questi argomenti in maniera amatoriale, in modo che possa essere un'introduzione valida anche per gli studenti universitari. Trattandosi di un argomento vastissimo, nelle poche pagine in cui mi è stato chiesto di contenere l'argomento, mi limiterò solo a offrire degli spunti. Infatti, il mio intento non è quello di riassumere un lista di nozioni, come fanno i divulgatori di professione, e di volgarizzarli in un linguaggio chiaro e accessibile elencato per punti in modo didascalico e didattico. Questo tipo di lavoro presuppone delle certezze, ovvero un discorso già deciso e codificato dagli esperti, di cui si accettano le verità in modo indiscusso e si procede pertanto solo alla loro trasformazione in parole povere o in riassuntini. Questo non è quello che sarà fatto qui. Non vi saranno presentati dei piatti pronti alla portata di tutti, in stile fast food, ma sarete portati, anche se solo per una rapida occhiata, nelle cucine. Se dobbiamo scegliere tra

L'histoire des ménageries médiévales a été jusqu'à aujourd'hui relativement peu étudiée ; trop peu d'études ont notamment été consacrées à la présence des animaux exotiques dans les ménageries. L'article présenté ici ne prétend pas aborder tous les thèmes possibles sur ce sujet ; nous avons choisi d'étudier la composition des ménageries (quelles espèces exotiques sont les plus fréquemment gardées en captivité ?), la quête de nouveauté et d'exotisme, et l'usage des bêtes exotiques dans la mise en scène du pouvoir et du faste des princes médiévaux.

Morocco as an Exotic and Oriental space in European and American Writings

                                   
Rachid Agliz
Faculty of Letters, Sultan Moulay Slimane University
Beni Mellal, Morocco


Abstract:
The engagement of western writers with Morocco is part and parcel of a wider long running encounter with exotic cultures. The exotic world and its chanting appeals stimulated the interest of a host of travel writers and anthropologists around the globe. The exoticist and orientalist appeals associated with North Africa prompted many American and European travel writers to venture to Morocco to embrace a new cultural otherness. This geographical space seems to be totally different from the old and new worlds respectively. This, in fact, is due to the opportunities it offers. After all, both American and European travel writers and novelists headed to this location to look for exoticism and for stories of oriental decadence and splendor.The paper is mainly intended to explore western writers involvement and assessment of the Moroccan cultural difference.
Keywords: cultural otherness. exoticism, orientalism, the exotic

This paper analyses Salman Rushdie's novel THE MOOR'S LAST SIGH (1995) as a postmodernist text emphasising the role of narrative voice and of intertextuality within the intepretive act, and their implications for the study of intercultural understanding, the postmodern treatment of the exotic, of truth, and of the constructedness of the subject. Intertextuality becomes a central literary strategy whose function is to accomodate a multiplicity of cultural discourses and to articulate a postcolonial perspective on exoticism. In THE MOOR'S LAST SIGH, Rushdie acknowledges the cultural and historical positioning of the reading and writing of narrative fiction, and reflects on the nature of the limits between the visual and verbal text as well as the more general one between fiction and history, and uses his individual historical locus (the aftermath of the Rushdie affair) in order to play with the generic frames activated in reading different kinds of texts.

My paper about the geography of emperorship depiction is critical of the work done pre-viously by sinologists (David Farquhar, Harold Kahn and Wu Hung) and tibetologists (Anne Chayet). They found in these portraits justifications for their preconceptions on the function of Buddhism at the Qing court. I argue instead that ritual portrayal of ambiva-lence was an efficient technique for the construction of the spectacle of domination and submission that Qianlong wanted to perform. The terms of my analysis of the “Qianlong as Manjusri” ambiguity are geographical, and its focus is on the “as” of the equation that allowed identification, reincarnation, filiation and eventually engagement in the silent discussion that opposed Qianlong/Manjusri to Vimalakirti.

The tradition of European “classical music” has long evoked the exotic, and two of the most prominent exotic referents in that tradition are the Middle East, first and foremost the Turk, and the Hungarian Gypsy, raising the questions of how these “exotic” traditions are related, and what their comparison might tell us about the idea of musical exoticism more broadly. In this essay, I briefly survey the “Turkish style” and its use in Classical-period opera; discuss its replacement by Hungar- ian-Gypsy style in the nineteenth century; and finally examine the interesting juxta- position of Turkish and Hungarian-Gypsy topics in two fin-de-siècle Central Euro- pean operettas, Der Zigeunerbaron by the Austrian Johann Strauss Jr. and Gül baba by the Hungarian Jenõ Huszka. An examination of these works and their reception reveals fissures between the Viennese and Budapest versions of operettas featuring “exotic” topics and characters, and between the operetta industries in the two cities. These details offer a fascinating look at the dividing line between exoticism and auto-exoticism and at the significance of references to Turkish and Hungar- ian-Gypsy topics in the Central European cultural climate of this period – in short, a reconsideration of what it means to be Hungarian, and for whom.

This chapter deals with the ambiguity that political authorities feel toward culture and history when they are pressed to enlarge and modernize urban infrastructures (Caldeira Cabral et al, 1999, and Yusuf et al, 1997). I will discuss the strategy followed by the Harbour Works Department of Macau as the city sought to reposition itself as an international trade centre. I examine Macau’s spatial transformations between 1910, when a progressive regime came to power in Lisbon, and 1930, when the first extension phase of the Porto Exterior facilities was completed. I review the tactics used to promote a new image of the Portuguese colony, and seek explanations for the contradictions found in the official discourse on the changing environment. I rely mostly on the comparison of the visual narratives provided by the tourist guidebooks published during the period (Ho, 1994, and Pittis et al, 1997). Paying attention to the omissions, repetitions and silences found in the descriptions of this unique historical landscape allows me to test the limits set by culture to the globalization processes that are transforming the southern coast of China (Cartier, 2001).

Il terzo numero di Cinergie -Il cinema e le altre arti può essere ormai considerato un appuntamento normale. Normale nel senso di puntuale, presente e continuativo. Sappiamo bene quanto, nel passato, le riviste accademiche abbiano rischiato di apparire intempestive e discontinue, con lentezze procedurali e pigrizie inveterate a rallentare le pubblicazioni. Il web, in questo senso, non perdona, e le riviste scientifiche come la nostra devono dunque lavorare molto per farsi trovare online ogni sei mesi, anzi lavorare il doppio di prima vista l'orgogliosa adozione -e non finiremo mai di rimarcarlo -del sistema peer review.

Imperial gardens have formed a particularly rich medium for the geographical analysis of interactions of culture and place. Imperial gardens are elite gardens that often were designed according to a political strategy that aims at inspiring the deference, admiration and obedience of an audience of peers and vassals. Functionally speaking, the imperial gardens of the eighteenth-century courts were conceived to fulfill the monarchs' agendas as they attempted to impress their subjects. This paper is intended as a contribution to the understanding of the limits of making a homology between all imperial gardens across eighteenth-century Eurasia, the comparability of which is assumed to be valid from a functional viewpoint. To analyse the relationship between imperial garden design and the political spectacle displayed by the Qing court, the ways in which visual depictions of gardens as cultural constructions have contributed to the representation of the environment as perceived by the Qing are examined. In the application of the methodology developed by recent scholarship for the study of garden history, I try to make use of contributions in landscape studies, cultural geography and cartography to reveal the Qing ideology of garden representation. I discuss the function of gardens in the expansion of the Qing Empire and use as a case study the gardens of Chengde.

"Based on ethnographic interviews, this paper examines how Japanese hip-hop DJs distinguish themselves in the global marketplace in ways that reflect on Japan’s two self-images: its impenetrable uniqueness and its adeptness at assimilating other cultures (cf. Ivy, Iwabuchi). Following the autoexoticist strategies of Takemitsu and Akiyoshi, DJ Krush and Shing02 draw on Japanese uniqueness by integrating Japanese instruments (e.g. shakuhachi, shamisen, taiko), genres (biwa narrative), and aesthetics (ma, imperfection) into their works; Evis Beats takes a more parodic approach. At the DMC World Championships, Japanese DJs including DJ Kentarō have competed on the basis of eclecticism and originality in assimilating multiple sound sources. While countering the stereotype of the Japanese as imitators, this emphasis on originality may place some contestants too far from prevailing trends, putting them at a disadvantage. Both strategies imply that Japanese artists experience anxieties regarding their authenticity, necessitating strategies to differentiate themselves."

Sur la base d'une étude consacrée à la littérature coloniale et exotique belge de langue française et à l'aide d'exemples empruntés à d'autres littératures, la communication a pour but de proposer une typologie définitoire du paysage exotique et du paysage colonial. Cette typologie doit permettre une redéfinition théorique du concept d'exotisme, en relation avec le concept d’antexotisme. Elle constitue aussi une contribution à l'étude du paysage, à la fois comme concept et comme réalisation historique. Elle précise au passage les notions d’« exotisme critique » et d’« exotisme colonial ». Enfin, à propos de celui-ci, elle envisage doublement la dimension spirituelle du paysage, à la fois comme eschatologie anticipée et comme arrêt contemplatif, ouvert sur l’altérité.

Cultural representation of the non-Western Other lies at the core of Western colonial and neocolonial discourses. A critical political analysis of the Western imagination of the Other involves a recognition at two levels—the practices of essentializing and stereotyping that provide the backbone as well as various strategies (such as infantilization, eroticization, debasement, idealization, and self-affirmation) that put flesh to the imagined Other. The strategies are not fixed ahistorically but nevertheless remain stable over a period of time. In this article, I identify significant rhetorical strategies that characterize Western representations of the (non-Western) Other, focusing mainly on
Western colonial representations, and substantiate it through the empirical study of Exotica Tibet (a shorthand for exoticized Western representations of Tibet).

“A Taste of the ‘Spicy Subcontinent’: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices”, Teresa de Ataíde Malafaia et al. (orgs.), Do Brasil a Macau: Narrativas de Viagens e Espaços de Diáspora/From Brazil to Macao: Travel Writing and Diasporic Spaces. Lisboa: CEAUL/ULICES, 549-560.

L’introduction du jazz en France est souvent assimilée à celle d’un nouvel exotisme, compris au sens large de rapport fasciné à l’Autre.
Ainsi utilisée, cette catégorie tend à masquer la diversité bien réelle, et remarquable pour l’époque, de la réception du jazz dans la musique française de l’entre-deux-guerres.
Afin de mettre en évidence cette diversité, un corpus représentatif d’œuvres de Darius Milhaud, de Jean Wiéner, de Georges Auric et de Pierre-Octave Ferroud fera l’objet d’une analyse qui, dans la lignée des travaux récents sur la notion d’exotisme (Bellman [1998], Locke [2009]), prendra en compte la nature des sources musicales utilisées par ces compositeurs, ainsi que les connotations extra-musicales qu’elles véhiculent.
Une fois reconsidéré, le prisme de l’exotisme permet de proposer, au sein des œuvres savantes empruntant au jazz, une distinction entre celles empruntant à des rythmes de danses syncopées et celles qui relèvent de ce qu’on définira comme un « exotisme nègre ».

Whiteness, that invisible and unnamed center from which all others are marked with the category of race, can be best characterized as a space of abundance. From an unmarked position of whiteness flows the private accumulation of unearned and often unacknowledged privileges. As Peggy McIntosh so aptly observes, white privilege is like an -invisible knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.‖ 1 Indeed, whiteness can produce a surplus of material and cultural capital, including the ability to navigate the world with ease, discernment, ethos, confidence, and relative comfort without the constraint of skin color. 2 Yet, in a globalized world where transnationalism and multicultural identities are celebrated as the new progressive features of a cosmopolitan marketplace, the invisible center of whiteness can seem like a cultural-less void, a bland dish desperately in need of seasoning. 3 Richard Dyer suggests that this white identity crisis is less attributable to the material demise of white hegemony (whose homogenizing cultural forms he suggests are actually still in ascendance) than to the mistaken perception that the imperatives of multiculturalism and globalization have displaced white supremacy. Dyer writes, -postmodern multiculturalism may have genuinely opened up space for the voices of the other, challenging the authority of the white West . . . but it may also simultaneously function as a side-show for white people who look on with delight at all the differences that surround them.‖ 4 In other words, the challenges of multicultural diversity and transnational identity to white hegemony are quite often diffused by commodifying difference into a surplus, or by absorbing racial Others into a system of white abundance. Through appropriation and consumption, bell hooks observes, -ethnicity be-DRAFT Bizarre Foods comes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture.‖ 5 The threat of Otherness is converted into both desire and opportunity: (1) to assimilate the authentic experience of culture and color into the mundaneness of white identity without fundamentally challenging white Eurocentric privilege; 6 (2) to assuage the collective guilt of our racial history with narratives of progress and transcendence; 7 (3) govern culture and identity by the logics of a Western capitalist marketplace; 8 and (4), above all, to show Others how enlightened white Westerners have become by putting their appreciation and tolerance for foreign cultures on public display. This chapter contributes to a growing number of studies concerned with the consumption of Otherness as a strategy for disavowing whiteness and its attendant histories of racism and colonialism; it takes the metaphor of consumption quite literally by examining the practice of culinary adventurism and its representation in contemporary media culture. Culinary adventurism is, in hook's words, the practice of -eating the Other‖: vicariously experiencing cultures other than one's own through the consumption of food indigenous to a particular locale or people. 10 While the practice revels in an exhilarating and open-armed celebration of difference, culinary adventurism reveals the ambivalence that is at the heart of contemporary whiteness: an identity that is at once the assumed norm, the generic template for humanity, and yet remains a lack, an absence, a meaningless void. Among many other practices of cultural appropriation, -eating the other‖ manages this crisis of white ambivalence by giving white Westerners the illusion of experiencing authentic Otherness through a practice that is both intimate and universal. Whites can retain the privilege of being unmarked while experiencing, and ultimately domesticating, the exhilaration of the exotic. Laura Lindenfeld suggests that when the experience is mediated, and therefore vicarious, culinary adventurism allows white Westerners to consume the Other -without ever coming into contact with actual, potentially fear-invoking racialized bodies.‖ 11 Moreover, culinary adventurism offers white audiences a pleasant and celebratory image of the globe, one in which race, geographic location, nationality, class, and gender are no longer barriers to global upward mobility. Instead, exotic cultures and their bizarre edibles seem poised to compete in the global cosmopolitan marketplace, forged by the imperatives of neoliberal globalization and sustained by the insatiable demands of a Western consumer economy. 12 Elspeth Probyn adds that it is this -hearty enthusiasm for ‗foreign food' that is supposed to hide the taste of racism.‖ 13 Thus, examining culinary adventurism, its representational and rhetorical dynamics, offers a profile of how consumption (a market metaphor, bodily function, and audience viewing practice) helps stabilize whiteness that is at once under siege by multiculturalism but delighted by its potential abundance. [2.1] DRAFT Bizarre Foods [2.2] [2.12]

Pentru orice crestin pierderea Patriarhului Teoctist e o mare durere, o lipsa care nu poate fi asa usor inlocuita. Nici nu s-a "racit" insa Prea Fericitul ca lupta pentru putere a si inceput. De fapt incepuse din 1990, dar longevitatea intaistatatorului Bisericii Ortodoxe Romane strica planurile oricui.

This article examines the role leading twentieth-century Brazilian popular culture figure, Carmen Miranda, had in shaping modern ideas of brasilidade/Brazilianness. I show that she became a popular film and radio star in 1930s Brazil not only because she was an adept performer, but also because she crafted a public image inspired by Hollywood glamour. Unlike the World War II-era Latin American caricature she became in the United States, from 1929 to 1939 Carmen Miranda was a culturally influential and modern star in Brazil. Inspired by the Hollywood styles that she observed in imported films and that were featured in domestic magazines, Carmen Miranda became one of Brazil’s first film stars, the nation’s international ‘Ambassador of Samba’ and an important influence on modern understandings of brasilidade.

By historical reasons, public policies related to native and exotic fauna management in Brazil have been responsible for several processes of biological invasion by promoting incentives to exoticism in expressing opposition to the benefits of the Convention on Biodiversity Diversity (CBD), which Brazil is one of the main protagonists during the Eco-92 Conference (Rio de Janeiro, 1992). I describe what Brazilian government has made since then for natural resources management, especially on sustainable uses from wildlife to avoid and restrict the commercial exotic animal production. I use specific cases of invasive exotic fauna, including the feral hog and wild boar (Sus scrofa) invasions at national scale, to evaluate the Brazilian government's commitments and responsibilities in relation to the demands from society related to the management and use of fauna, especially from the socio-economic and environmental point of view. I discuss the causes, consequences and challenges to the public managers for wildlife use and conservation, and its particular socio-economic and environmental conflicts that are disastrous and compromising the biological megadiversity in Brazil. Considering the national and regional scenarios presented, I also deal with ecological issues concerning the distribution and occupation of invasive wild boar in Mato Grosso do Sul state, starting with the occurrence survey and the mapping of the conflicts related to the presence of wild boar (javali/javaporco) and also of the feral hog (porco-monteiro) in the Pantanal plain in recent years. I present the spatiotemporal evolution of the process of invasion of feral pigs, especially regarding the most recent cycle of invasion involving wild boars and their hybrids (javalis/javaporcos). I identify some factors that have influenced this dynamic, showing the localities where the encounter between these populations and the oldest population of the feral hog (porco-monteiro) in the Pantanal has been taking places. It is also estimated the frequency of detection and occupation of the feral pigs in the state, as well as the percentage of the area invaded by wild boars/hybrids (javalis/javaporcos) in the state and their local relative abundance. The detection and occupation (invasion area) of feral pigs are tested between both, and also in relation to the effect of socioeconomic and environmental variables that could be associated to the occurrences of feral pigs as habitat types detected in the landscape and land uses identified in the state. In addition, I present feral pig population estimative all over the MS state, considering the current frequency and also population size predictions, if the abundance reaches their thresholds of environmental saturation, modeling the feral pigs distribution and occupation. Finally, the relative frequency of detection between the three species of suiforms, Sus scrofa and the two native species, Tayassu pecari and Pecari tajacu, is presented and discussed, as well as the possible relationships among them and the implications for the conservation of native biodiversity. These aspects were related to the management policies of invasive feral pigs and the conservation of regional biodiversity, in the light of what has already been discussed in all chapters. At the end, I critized the current model of extremely protectionist management of wildlife by the Brazilian State, which repels investments in research and development, and propose a new management model for fauna based on scientific and technological knowledge and supported by free market initiatives.

This dissertation will investigate in the ways in which contemporary non-European art is perceived in the ‘Western’-dominated international art world and how this leads to a certain portrayal and behaviour of non-European artists as according to limited definitions and confined boundaries. The effect this has is apparent in the area of artistic production and circulation as well as the reception of artwork. It is looked at ‘exoticism’ and ‘self-exoticism’ that are generated and upheld by outdated and mostly inapplicable disciplinary fields of enquiry, involving the demand for a ‘consumable exotic’, not only apparent in the areas of fine art but similarly within aesthetic products of popular culture, transgressing the often supposed boundaries between. The politics involved in (re)producing ‘Otherness’ within the aesthetic and the insights that Postcolonial Theory has to offer are core concerns of the work. The TV-series Game of Thrones as well as the art of Nadín Ospina and Hassan Musa will be analysed. The artists’ work and experience are taken as examples of combining many different cultural elements and signifies the transgression and challenge of notions of authenticity, originality, ethnicity and identity.

"A mirror is being broken and in each shattered piece different faces are reflected. No longer can you view your image in a single mirror. And a shattered mirror cannot be resembled." 1 It is difficult to talk about contemporary cultures, their traditions and heritage while living in the age of post-globalization. Every culture has in one way or the other adopted different aspects of other cultures, and by slightly transforming them, made them part of their own heritage. Each culture used to have their unique individual face which could be seen as a mirror, but by adopting different aspects of other civilizations they broke that mirror which now reflects different adaptations, so we cannot see the original face of that culture anymore. Japan is one of the best examples for such a phenomenon, since this country already has ages worth of history of adopting cultural elements from other Asian countries and the west, transforming foreign ideas and making them part of their own unique heritage. At the same time, because of their unique philosophy of life and approach to culture, Japan fell under the scope of the western exoticism and orientalism. Orientalism could be described as a western intention to dominate over Asian cultures. Exoticism is a false representation of foreign culture, the creation of stereotypes and seeing a different civilization as the other. These two aspects encourage the popularity of Japanese culture and simultaneously the misrepresentation of their values result in misconceptions and myths created over the years.

A fascinating early example of a sacred opera—greatly indebted to traditions of Jesuit spoken theater and of the non-religious danced and sung intermedi—is Giovanni Kapsberger’s Apotheosis sive Consecratio SS. Ignatii et Francisci.  The work was composed for and first performed at the Jesuit College in Rome in 1622, on the occasion of the elaborate ceremonies that surrounded the raising to sainthood of Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier (founders of the Jesuit missionary order).
This important work is discussed in some detail—and from sharply different points of view as regards the ethical status of Jesuit missionary work—by T. Frank Kennedy and by Victor Coelho.  More remains to be said, though, about how the work represents (portrays, etc.) the various nations or peoples that it puts on stage, especially “Palestine,” “India,” “Japan,” and “China.”  The musical means employed are not those of later exotic works (e.g., Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail or Puccini’s Madama Butterfly), because the concept of characterizing a distant people by an “exotic musical style” was not yet widely practiced at the time (see Olivia Bloechl, 2009).  Nonetheless, Kapsberger’s music assists the text, costumes, movement, and dancing in creating distinctive characterizations of these exotic peoples, the places in which they dwell, and their society and culture (e.g., limited technological development).  A little-known series of etchings of the original 1622 production, by Johann Friedrich Greuter, is here reproduced in its entirety, showing the costumes employed and some stage movement. Since my article is being published online, the reader can examine Greuter’s illustrations closely, enlarging certain details--e.g., seeing the birds (real, but presumably stuffed) attached to the helmets of the archers from India.

“Exoticism” is often used as a passe-partout concept in order to describe music referring to geographic Others. But it becomes especially problematic when applied to Ravel’s music, in which the Other is frequently evoked (whether as a geographical, chronological or stylistic other). Therefore Ravel’s positions and compositional choices should be considered on a case-by-case basis when interpreting his music. By adhering to issues raised by Ralph Locke regarding exoticism and reflecting on how musical topics might be perceived, this essay proposes a reading of Chansons madécasses that goes beyond their exoticism. Ravel’s decisions suggest a reading that accentuates modernist and expressive (and especially erotic) parameters more than exotic ones.

The Exposition Universelle of 1878 has been partially eclipsed in the historiography due to the great public success reached by others exhibitions that took place in Paris before and after that year. However, the 1878 exposition was really important. We make in this article a general revision of the contents of this exposition and we study in a more detailed way three special and outstanding contexts: the “Street of the Nations”, the colonial section and the Archaeology and Anthropology expositions.

The concert hall, as much as the operatic stage, is a theatre – a place
for viewing, and the observation of narratives. Music can be and often
is read as the latter, whether overtly programmatic or not, and though abstracted through the intermediation of instruments, the orchestral and operatic literatures of Western art music enact and present narratives and struggles of power. Classical music has been dominated since its inception by men, working in a historically white European context, with the result of an almost total exclusion of the first-person perspectives of women
and non-white ethnic and cultural identities. This fact, coupled with an intense historical fixation with the Orient within Western classical music, transforms the concert hall and operatic stages into extra-artistic theatres where the material presented can be read as representative of Western societal trends, attitudes and prejudices.

This research draws connections between colonialist and patriarchal thought and musical representations of the ethnic and/or female ‘Other’
in the Western canon, and traces the use of certain musical topoi in conjunction with female and ethnic tropes. I examine these with reference to works ranging from Rameau, Saint-Saëns, and Strauss, among others, with a particular emphasis on the operatic and orchestral works of Rimsky- Korsakov, inquiring into the possibility of subverting Orientalist and misogynist elements within such musical works from a socially critical perspective.

I will argue that classical music, rather than existing as a purely sonic artefact, becomes representational, on the stages of the concert hall or operatic theatre, of power struggles and of imbalances of power between men and women, and between white and non-white ethnic and cultural identities. I will do so in an attempt at communicating a vital understanding of classical music as a cultural object that ties into lived socio-political realities.

“Spain as She Really Is Today: las exposiciones internacionales como espacios de negociación de las imágenes nacionales, 1888-1914”
La proliferación de exposiciones internacionales supuso un escenario privilegiado para mostrar, definir y vender la diferencia cultural de cada nación. No solamente se competía por exponer la particularidad, la esencia, de cada una sino que las exposiciones se convertirían en espacios de negociación de significados entre países con diferentes grados de desarrollo. En ellos se desplegó un dialogo asimétrico en que algunos países que se encontraban en los márgenes de la modernidad renegociaron su posición en una jerarquía que, bajo una retórica de progreso y  desarrollo humanos, clasificaba a las naciones de acuerdo a su estatus económico y militar. Ante la dificultad de estudiar en detalle las gigantescas exposiciones internacionales se propone concentrarse en las exposiciones binacionales del Londres eduardiano con especial atención al caso español.

ABSTRACT
According to Umberto Eco, we expect a translation to say in the best possible fashion what the original writes. A translation would thus be a pretence of reading the original aloud. Jules Verne writes in French what his Chinese characters are supposed to say in Chinese. Is it deliberate cheating? Are all translations lies? Or only those that pretend to be originals? Or the originals that pretend to be translations? Are all these lies equally sinful? What truth can they teach? The answer is: we are lying, or we live in delusion every time we believe we are not translating a translation when reading an ‘original’.

This work is a comparative analysis of the image of the black-African in the novels Der Neger Jupiter raubt Europa of Claire Goll and Batouala of René Maran. It tries to bring answers to questions such as how the two novels present the black-African, how the identity and the cultural position of the authors influence the way the presented images are chosen and interpreted, how the novels put in scene the reaction of the black characters to the discourses which describe, fix and marginalize them. Using concepts and categories from the postcolonial discourse such as Edward Said’s orientalism and Homi K. Bhabha’s mimicry, I’ve come to the conclusion that the two novels portray the black-African under almost the same aspects, namely as primitive, superstitious, barbarian and savage.  However, he appears in Claire Goll’s novel also as the Noble Savage, in difference to René Maran. Hence while René Maran’s novel defends the principle of colonialism as a humanistic mission though denouncing the degrading practices of the colonizers in the colonies, Der Neger Jupiter raubt Europa can be read as Goll’s critic at the French (and in general the European) society of the 1920s which is characterized through its fascination for the black plastic and visual art as well as for the black music, while disdaining and scorning the black-African himself.
The two novels diverge also in the way they put in scene the reactions of the black characters to the colonial and racist discourses. Accordingly, the black characters in Maran’s novel subvert the authority of the colonial master by displaying the so-called “authorized version of otherness” (Bhabha) only in his presence. They appear therefore as partial and false copy of the white man. In Goll’s novel, we have to do with a character who interiorizes the racist discourses which marginalize him and tries to become like the white man, in order to be accepted as ‘normal’ man. However, he also becomes a false and partial copy of the white man, since all his attempts to be assimilated fail.
In conclusion, the two novels give us to acknowledge that identity is everything but fixed, natural and original. On the contrary, it experiences perpetual changes. Thus the encounter with the Other engages always a negotiation process which questions the essentialist conception of identity, as well as the binary opposition of Self and Other.

The final shot of German director F. W. Murnau’s 1931 masterpiece, Tabu: A Story of the South Seas, is an especially suitable coda to this silent-era filmmaker’s career – one that, despite its epic heights and lasting influence, was often shrouded in mystery and coloured by misfortune. The four-letter word ‘TABU’ materializes like a spectral apparition over dark and ominous swells, appearing as an esoteric warning against forbidden transgressions (Figure 1). Before one’s eyes the word transforms from mere text into a veritable icon, a cinematic image of impending doom and inescapable destiny. The portentous icon immediately follows the film’s dramatic finale, one that film critic Lotte Eisner called ‘the apogee of the art of silent film’ (Eisner 1973: 203). In this scene, the young protagonist, the native South Islander Matahi, swims after a ship bearing his forbidden love. Just as Matahi finally reaches the boat, Hitu, the priest, cuts the rope dangling from its deck. Ultimately overwhelmed by a dark and hostile sea, Matahi sinks silently beneath its waves as the ship’s white sail can be seen darting off into the distance...

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Discussions of how musical genres have evoked the exotic have largely omitted the many Baroque-era serious operas that feature non-European characters. The present article studies an opera seria libretto whose plot occurs on the Indian Subcontinent — Metastasio’s Alessandro nell’Indie (1730) — and two operas (both from the year 1731) that were based on that libretto: Handel’s Poro re dell’Indie and Hasse’s Cleofide.
    Understanding how exoticism is manifest in serious Baroque opera is impossible using a narrowly stylistic approach (here called the “Exotic
Style Only” Paradigm). Much richer is a broader approach (the “All the Music in Full Context” Paradigm) that also considers sung text, staging, and cultural stereotypes. Metastasio’s libretto contains previously undiscussed references to India, its customs, and the (supposed) tendencies and behaviors of its leaders (male and female) and common people.
    Handel and Hasse enlisted various normative musical means of the day — e.g., musical devices that were considered appropriate to an angry character or to a weak-willed one — to intensify the various “foreign” characterizations in the libretto. The comic element in a scene for the two main Indian characters (Poro and Cleofide) contrasts sharply
with the dignified treatment that is consistently granted to Alexander the Great (Alessandro). And a scene involving the secondary Indian couple (Erissena and Gandarte) shows how characters supposedly living “over there” could be used to comment on European customs.
[Versions of this paper were also published in Italian and in German. Both lack the musical examples and the illustration. The Italian lacks the section on the "marriage quarrel" duet between Poro and Cleofide. The German lacks that section and another: on a comic scene between Erissena and Gandarte.

You are a child growing up in Greece in the nineties. There is a high likelihood that one of your distant relatives, or even your aunt, your uncle, your grandfather, or your mother or father may be haunted by the memory of a few years in their life from whence no bedtime stories will ever arise. “Exile,” “dictatorship,” “civil war”: these strange words ring about, yet remain lost behind the veil of the untold. Silent grandparents with lingering gazes, voters-for-life of a party that would repeatedly betray them over the course of a lifetime too far along to change its course. These were times past, hidden by the thick screen onto which the capitalist spectacle projected itself. By the mid-2000s, the spectacle had grown to Olympic proportions. The Games were here: development fever, a certain euphoria mixed with longing, the longing to become “Western,” to finally “make it.” For a brief moment in time it actually seemed to happen for some.

Between the 1860’s and 1890’s, starting with realist Orientalism and moving to post-modernism and symbolism, the reoccurring trend of exoticism is repeatedly depicted. The Public Prayer in the Mosque of Amr and La Orana Maria are two works of exoticism that portray a distortion of reality, skewed and biased with non-Western subject matter being seen through the European mindsets. The following essay will look at the works of Gérôme and Gauguin, distinguishing their similarities in subject matter, material, and process, and differences in style, color and technique.