Characterizing Colonial Fear of Dancers
Dancing Fear and Desire: Race, Sexuality, and Imperial Politics in Middle Eastern Dance by Stavros Stavrou Karayanni serves almost as a reclamation of the narrative of Middle Eastern dance that was and continues to be tainted by the Western world. This book explores the complex feelings associated with belly dance from fascination to disgust and topics such as “national identity, sexuality, and dance performance” through an analysis of travel narratives (Karayanni, 4).
I focus my analysis on chapter 2 of the book called “Dismissal Veiling Desire Kuchuk Hanem and Imperial Masculinity". The focus of this chapter is on the travel narratives of Gustave Flaubert and George W. Curtis and their encounter with a famous dancer named Kuchuk Hanem. Karayanni begins by describing one encounter of Flaubert with Kuchuk Hanem through a private performance where Flaubert uses language like “brutal” to describe her dance (Karayanni, 40). Unlike Flaubert, Curtis focuses a bit more on the dance of Kuchuk Hanem which allows for some extrapolation to early Gawazee movement. Between the two, Flaubert’s narrative received more attention for its more provocative descriptions. Karayanni asserts that some of Flaubert’s focus on Kuchuk Hanem’s body could come from the contrast of Hanem's celebration of her body with rigid European norms. Flaubert’s time in Egypt comes from a desire to escape these Europeans norms and engage with the “spectacle of the East” ( Karayanni, 48). When it comes to how Flaubert sees Kuchuk Hanem, Karayani asserts a paradox of the divine and the mortal. In his description is information about a bad tooth and this is meant to reduce her divinity and ground her in mortality. However, Flaubert’s own weakness is confirmed by his inability to control his reaction towards her despite the “decay” present within her. After one particular encounter, Flaubert lies awake anxiously, while she sleeps peacefully. In this moment, his “imperial subjectivity” that has served him all of his life is “incapable of securing him a safe arrival at the site he yearns for” and that is Kuchuk Hanem (Karayanni, 51). Furthermore, Flaubert is uncomfortable knowing that he isn’t the only man that’s been with her and that he will soon be forgotten. Hanem does not need Flaubert. She and the East existed before him and will continue to do so, something Flaubert has trouble grasping. Flaubert is suspended in his physical desire for her body and his mental desire to possess her mind and have power over her. After his encounter with Hanem, Flaubert tries to downplay his reaction to her and her dance. He writes “the oriental woman is no more than a machine: she makes no distinction between one man and another” (Karayanni, 55). His ego cannot allow him to admit his visceral reaction to Hanem and thus he tries to reduce her personhood and give her a one-track mind.
This information will be extremely useful for my project and characterizing colonial fear. I believe that Flaubert’s travel narrative indicates that Flaubert is fearful over the power Kuchuk Hanem holds over him. His European subjectivity had always given him power and when Kuchuk Hanem doesn’t react to that; Flaubert is at a loss. He tries to downplay his fear by relying on tropes and stereotypes of the Orient as a defense mechanism. In reality, Flaubert was captivated by something that didn’t need him to function or have a purpose. This fact kept him anxiously awake at night and aids in his despair of not being important to her. The French colonizers of Algeria and English colonizers of Britain had this same fear and insecurity and like Flaubert they reduced the personhood of these dancers as a defense mechanism through their use of colonial postcards (French) and creation of dance schools (Devadasis).
Citation: Karayanni, S. S. Dancing Fear and Desire: Race, Sexuality, and Imperial Politics in Middle Eastern Dance. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2004.
Link: https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Books/D/Dancing-Fear-and-Desire2