Abstract

This thesis, The Arab as Spectacle, is about representation. It is about the limits and the contradictions of representation. It is about the burden and the violence of representation. It is about the persistence of Orientalism and how the hierarchies of race and gender intersect with discourses on sexuality to inform and inflect the representation of Arabs in contemporary literary and media spheres of Australian popular culture. This thesis comprises two sections. Part One is a research dissertation that explores the strategies, devices and parameters of the representation of Arabic culture and identities through close readings of specific texts. This theoretical project inaugurates the second part of my study which takes up the question of the contradictions of representation through a collection of ficto-critical writings. Through these satirical narratives, I seek to expose and disrupt the hegemony of Orientalist representations that proliferate in English language literature and news media by bringing into focus the inherent paradox of representation, working within and against Orientalist representational traditions. In so doing, it is not my aim to 'correct' the Orientalist logic and imagery that I theorise in the first part of this thesis, but rather to undermine the spurious truth-value of Orientalist representations by deploying the literary weapons of satire, parody and irony. In this way, my fiction works to engage creatively and critically with the very tropes that I theorise in my research dissertation