Glued to the Image:
A phenomenology of racialization through works of art
Event co-sponsored with the Centre for Cultural Relations and the Philosophy Subject Area
Speaker
Alia Al-Saji (McGill University)
Date and Time
5th Jul 2017 14:00 - 16:00
Location
CMB Staff Room 6th floor
Abstract
I develop a phenomenological account of racialized encounters with works of art and film, wherein the racialized viewer feels cast as perpetually past, coming “too late” to intervene in the meaning of her own representation. This points to the distinctive role that the stereotyped past plays in mediating and constructing our self-images. I draw on my experience of three exhibitions that take Muslims and/or Arabs as their subject matter and that ostensibly try to subvert racialization, while reproducing some of its tropes. My examples are the recent Benjamin Constant exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2015); the permanent exposition Welten der Muslime at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin; and a sculptural installation at the Leeds City Art Gallery, created in response to the imperial power painting, General Gordon's Last Stand, that is housed there.