An auto-ethnographic critique of internalized Orientalism
I chose for this paper to be an autoethnographic one because it is
more meaningful to give a critique on Orientalism coming from a
personal experience from someone who is nationally and
culturally categorized as “Oriental”. I can reflect without barriers
on what does it mean to me to be seen as Oriental, and what my
perception of myself is, if not “Oriental”. And yet– by doing so,
one can so easily fall into the same issue that is the centre of
criticism itself. I could write a critique of Orientalism that is
Orientalist. If I am to say that all people from the “Orient”
experience this Western gaze, categorization and autonomous
self-identification in the same way, then I am once more doing
what Orientalism has been precisely doing. Therefore, I could say
that the process of self-research starts from, and includes, the
writing of this paper. I am writing about these issues in relation to
my cultural identity seen in music. I acknowledge this racist and
Orientalist sense of identity and culture with a de-colonial
motivation. However, I am doing so in a postcolonial context; one
that is not so free or far away from the complications of
Colonialism; without a “post” prefixed to it. However, I am
writing my anticolonial paper in a white university, for a white
professor, in an environment dominated by white people. The
source of inspiration was white, the reflection and frame of work
is white, and the feedback will be white. This is not only for mere
geographical circumstances. A European student, on the other
side, doing research in an Arabic-speaking country will manage
to pursue it in a way that corresponds their cultural and political
way of doing research, and any sort of constraint or limitation will
be practical and logistic, but never hegemonic. This one-sided
underlying hegemony is the centre of this critique and
acknowledging it in academia should as well be the centre of an
anticolonial autoethnography. One way this hegemony can find
its way in my paper is through the used language and the approach
in which I can communicate my ideas, the thing that put me into
a dilemma since I started writing this paper. Internalizing group-
hegemony in the case of my academic context will make me
perceive my use of language as accusatory under the gaze of this
group, because how can I write an anticolonial paper without
mentioning the words White, European or Racist. Giving up to
this internalization, knowing it will be read by someone grouped
as “white”, will automatically turn me up writing an either
apologetic or justificatory letter, instead of an actual
autoethnographic and cultural critique. That is an example for
how the intention of counter-hegemony can be pro-hegemonic
within the normal context, if not carefully revised and actively
denounced. Colonial domination feels inescapable in many life situations, in and outside of academia, in interpersonal
relationships and in arts, in impression and expression, as long as
a certain hegemony is persistent and applicable. To avoid that
gaze, I have decided to write this paper for an imaginative
counterhegemonic reader. A reader that is not reduced to a single
cultural or racial identity, but a shared position from hegemony.
With that I wish to overcome the eurocentric conventions of
methodology, choose freely how I see it suitable to explore
relevant topics like Orientalism, reflect on how it is internalized
in the way I see my cultural and aesthetic identity— and even
more, rethink concepts like decoloniality, identity and culture
themselves with full intellectual autonomy.
The Question of Identity
It is important to redefine the concept of identity before moving
on to connect it to any cultural context. I have to say that before
coming to learn how the West thinks, I never needed to identify
myself in a binary geographical way. The idea that the world is
split into two entities seen in the West and the East with the former
being ‘White’ and the latter being ‘Oriental’ has been shaped and
defined by one side of this equation: the West. Whereas in the
non-Eurocentric reality, people of the “Orient” are of multiple
races, ethnicities, cultures and languages, living under, within and
apart from various complex systems of geographical and political
boundaries. The only way they can be seen as one is in relation to
one group that consider itself superior and external to everyone
else. The political and economic superiority of that one group
enhances the cultural one, and as part of its culture; it normalizes
the Orientalist perspective. Therefore, in my counterhegemonic
analysis and critique I must first renounce such identification for
the sake of agency.
I was born in Northern Africa, a national of the state of Egypt. I
have spent my childhood years in a very vibrant and diverse
region between rural communities and urban cities. People had
different lifestyles, ways of socialization and spoken dialects. I
was for the most part adaptive, not concerned and flexible. Later
I moved to another state in Western Asia that was a hub for
immigrants from all over the Arabic and non-Arabic world. In a
much more ethnically diverse environment, the only thing I
shared with some of the people around me, was the Arabic
language. Despite that, people spoke different dialects of Arabic,
that some even consider separate languages. In my daily social
life, I could hear at least five or six different dialects of the same
language, such as Egyptian, Syrian, Sudanese, Algerian, Yemeni
and Khaleeji variants of Arabic. Non-Arabic immigrants spoke
Urdu, Hindi, Persian and English among the ones I could
recognized. This diversity heterogenized the social normativity to
a great extent. The case was not similar in Egypt where most
people connected through a national identity and a less lingual
contrast. There my cultural fusion began, and in the absence of
social homogeneity; my image of my own identity was not very
vivid. Cultural life was at times confusing. I was less adaptive this
time, given the larger scale, and rather reflective. I cannot say
there was no hegemony; the religious hegemony in particular was
very strong. Domination existed, especially in gender and class,
but the cultural manifestation of such hegemony was arbitrary and dependent. People would adopt patriarchal, religious, and
oppressive norms and views as a projection of political and
economic powerlessness and a reaction to Western globalized
power and hegemony. Organic culture of people, however,
remained dynamic, authentic and, arguably, independent from
international power relations. Acknowledging these patterns
made the way towards personal liberation easier to find, but put
my identity under further examination. I internalized the wide and
complex cultural exposure and the ways people around me
represented those cultures, varying from moderate and reserved
to extreme and tyrannous. I disagreed with many shapes of
discrimination and I had feelings of oppression and social
alienation, but all of the experience was explicit and assessable.
Nothing about my identity formation was essentially “Oriental”.
Although many shared the same feelings of cultural repression
and sought liberation as I did, those can never be reduced or
attributed to a single explanation. In fact, many people of the
“Orient” have a very clear idea about their identity and cultural
affiliation, even among those who live in diverse climate, and
even among those who migrate to the West. The identities of
people of the “Orient” are too complex for Orientalists to reduce,
or for Postcolonialists to generalize!
It was in this ethnic and cultural boiling pot, where my fondness and connection to music emerged. In my native origin, the music culture was quite big and hard to fully categorize even by locals. Music existed in every form possible and had a long history of evolution and change. Music was connected to every identity, ideology, ethnicity, religion and class, all in their own way. Music had a distinguishable character in the rural and the urban, the popular and the elite, the local and the global, the traditional and the modern. And I am not even quite sure about the accuracy of those binaries. Music clashed with politics on every occasion. People sang for the nationvi when in war and against the nationvii amid political manoeuvres. When people attached their lives with religious values, the religious identity influenced music and people sang for God and holy figures and placesviii. When religious teachings forbid some people the use of instruments, those people invented forms of music that don’t use instrumentsix. People could not stop singing under any circumstance and any identity. When colonialism brought foreign forms of music, the local artists used it and made it part of their own musicx. Reactions and opinions varied; Modernists found it revolutionary and progressive, Traditionalists preferred original forms and rejected it. The result was a complex blend of diverse forms and art movements. In modern day, political situations did not seize affecting the shape of music. There is revolution music, propaganda musicxi, apolitical music, neo-folklore musicxii, commercial advertisement music and modern hip-hop music. Those genres are all arguable.
Music precedes labels in an unstoppable process. One can barely catch up with theories and discourse about the identity of music. This is the situation for one part of one country. I can only imagine a similar complexity in other countries and cultures of the “Orient”. The cultural exposure in the Arabic-speaking diaspora changed my perception and consumption habits of music. In the diaspora, one can only interact with a thin slice of many different music coming together from all over the world, including my own. I was no longer surrounded by music from my own country. I did not have a fully formed aesthetic identity, it was still under configuration. The cultural fusion was part of this genesis. I was raised in a patriotic local environment, followed by a capitalistic pan-religious one, in a lingual-intellectual family, socializing with pop culture and internet-influenced peers. Where did the lines intersect and where did they diverge so that the result is the aesthetic identity I have now, is a question of a lifetime research. What I can answer is that assuming a single-layered “Oriental” identity is ludicrous. Now when I refer to myself as an ‘Arab’ or an ‘Egyptian’ and reflect on ‘Arabic Music’, I hope to have created some sort of ambiguity about what these labels could possibly mean. As it is my role in my narrative to define them the way I think they are relevant to my experience. Before any personal perception of “Arabic music” there was an existing perception of only “music”. Music becomes “Arabic” only in relation to something not Arabic, as it becomes “Western” only in relation to something not Western, or “Classical” in relation to something not classical.
Whenever the word music is used in a transcultural context, and by the use of it, “Western music” is meant, this is a case of hegemony. Similarly on the other side, whenever the term “Oriental Music” is used and “Egyptian”, “Indian”, “Japanese” or “Turkish” music is meant, this is a case for Orientalism.
Diaspora and Internalized Orientalism
I migrated to Europe after 19 years of a life where Europe was just a part of the world. What I did not foresee was the systematic challenging of my own divergent identity. Cultural hegemony exists in Capitalist Europe and indirectly targets people who are disadvantaged by political structure. I, as an “Oriental” and “Third World” national, am one of those. Western Europe is home to many of the Arab diaspora, and an exile for the ones who left their homelands because of political and economic repression. Modern-day colonialist states have left none of their former colonies liveable for the majority of their inhabitants. Global capitalism forces many to migrate to the states where capitalism is functional. The amount of autonomy the people of the Orient have over the choice of migration to the First World is highly questionable. Therefore, acknowledging and fighting hegemony is a legitimate right of any person who has suffered the impacts of colonialism and capitalism, even in places to which they ethnically do not belong. European culture is popularized as equal, democratic, righteous and developed. What is not reflected upon, is that it is also centric, exploitative, superior and preferential. When I arrived at Germany, my identity was as complex as I just demonstrated. Germany was both my new home and my exile. Here I was introduced to new names for my identity. I learned what does it mean that the world is divided into East and West or Global North and Global South. Here I saw a line between White and Oriental.
Here systematic oppression and discriminatory structure are the norm, unlike in direct dictatorships where tyranny is constantly condemned by the same people.
If the part of the world dominated by the White has become the only place the world has made possible for non-White to survive, one must conform, integrate and cope. Here comes the role of cultural hegemony. For people of the “Orient” under the influence of Western cultural hegemony, integration means internalization. Internalized racism is a coping mechanism for many people to live among their oppressors. For “Orientals” that means internalizing Orientalism. I only felt the pressure to identify myself when I lived in Europe. My identity is represented by a legal document, and however this document is referring to me, becomes me. My living conditions is determined through this new identity that was given to me in a way that I can describe as intrusive. This new perspective was never part of my experience. Now the only way I can justify it to myself is if I believe it. Being a national of a certain state has never meant something to me, but in Western Europe, it must. The process of systematic discrimination has an unspoken effects on the self-perception of an individual. My natural and organic process of forming an identity has forcibly stopped. In the diaspora you start from the endpoint. You are given an identity that others perceive you in, and you start to find your way through it. There is no room for divergence, flexibility or interpretation. There is only “White” and “Foreign”, and your objective is to embrace your “foreignness” and transcend to “Whiteness”.
The music of the east can share similarities but can never become identical. It is complicated enough to refer to the music of one country, let alone a whole region or a continent. The eurocentric perception has yet grouped all non-western music as one and popularized such definition through its hegemony. I searched for “Oriental music” on YouTube, these words were in the titles of the first page of results: [Arabia, Guzheng, Asian, Anatolia, Japanese, Reggaeton, Hindi, Tibetan, Middle Eastern]. This shows how obscure and racist the word “Oriental” is. Arab, Japanese, Turkish and Tibetan are the same thing to Orientalists, they are not European, White or Western.
The development of my aesthetic identity has had an interesting shift after my migration to Europe. Since I was no longer in a place of equal mixed identities, I internalized the hegemonic perception of the Oriental. I, too, saw myself and others as Oriental. All the diverse forms of culture, art and music I have reduced to one. And I could not stop seeing it from the perspective of the “White”. I valued the music that I connected with. I appreciated the language and the expression that found the way to my aesthetic identity. Nothing changed about the authentic experience of connection with art. But the socialization and perception differed. I could not communicate what I feel about Arabic and Egyptian Music with others.
I could not connect through music with the rest of my society. A big part of my identity was taken away from my expression by my internalized sense of racism and othering. The pattern of internalized Orientalism in my inner dialogue is the following: 1. I like Egyptian Music. 2. Egyptian music is Oriental. 3. If I expressed my love for Egyptian music people will perceive me as Oriental. 4. Oriental means less, inferior and other. 5. I should not express my aesthetic identity.
If anything, this is colonial thinking.