Even after Edward Said, I still can't help dreaming of the Orient: that radiant and mysterious utopia uncompromised by real geographical and historical determinants, which promises a degree of innocence and forgetfulness impossible in a Western world which one knows and is fatefully known by.
It is precisely the possibility of becoming-imperceptible via the donning of a kimono and submission to an alien sensibility which so seduces. The dream, says Barthes, is to undo our reality until everything Occidental in us totters and we can see the world with narrowed eyes.
Prince Philip seemed to understand this when visiting China and speaking to some English students, but thought it was something to warn against.
When the angry activists stole the magical orient from us fantasists in the West, then they were simply adding another brick in the wall of a grey universalism that has accompanied the more subtle imperialism of the latest stage of globalisation.
ReplyDeleteNow, one of the greatest acts of anti-imperialism would be to recover the fantastic against this greyness. To orientalise and to objectify are subtle signs of great respect for what must always be 'other' - another human being from another gender or culture. Such a tactic can give them the distance to be themselves without having the burden of our constant sympathy and ridiculous attempts at empathy.
For unintended perfection in this matter, see the divine Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) in Pacific Rim. The real Rinko is transformed into the very type of Eastern female power in Mako and only fantasy can do this. Otherwise, yes it is true, we are all the same.
Meanwhile, I am happy to grant others the right to occidentalise for their own pleasure and profit ...