digital garden

Two cultures based on showing little emotion. Still, I am the product of a typical western upbringing, I am what my parents always wanted to be: free. But they forgot to show me who they are. And how this is important to me. And why my appearance might make people think differently of me if I am in the Netherlands for example. Will they find me exotic and in that the historically ridden spectacle of the western man? Or will they question my worth and ability to succeed?
There are many other ways I discover my position including queerness, female status, age, European status, and more. For the sake of the context of the readings, I focus on the topic of my heritage, which becomes a link to Orientalism and the decolonizing of my own environment. Another topic of the 'sterilization' of the West is also relevant in relation to my cultural background. It, unfortunately, was a method used by my immediate family to increase my educational and professional successes in life, but goes hand in hand with the contemporaries of colonialism and imperialism.

my dad's cypriot heritage

Am I making art as a means of communicating? I was never taught to say how I feel, so now I found my own way? In humor, I find it easier to say a lot without tension.
I have a hereditary connection to the topic of Orientalism and it intrigues me. I am not entirely sure I project this into my world nowadays. A few past projects (including the Persian princess Anis Al-Doleh and an essay on Imperialism and fashion). I've added images and links below for reference.

Diana Al Halabi's Quote:

"We are not abandoning our fathers, we are just putting [them] in context"

literary analysis & connection

Decolonizing the University

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Penguin Classics, 2003.

Bhambra, Gurminder K., Dalia Gebrial, and Kerem Nişancıoğlu. Decolonising the university. Pluto Press, 2018.

NOTES on Decolonizing the University

✦ Rhodes Must Fall (Oxford's Statue): 2015 - 2016. Rhodes was a British Imperial Prime Minister of the Cape Colony in South Africa.

✦ "THE STATUE DEBATE FORCED MANY TO THINK ABOUT THEIR VIEWS ON THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE PAST & THE PRESENT - AND WHAT, IF ANY, ACTION SHOULD BE SUPPORTED IN THE PRESENT" – William Beinart, Rhodes Must Fall: The Uses Of Historical Evidence In The Statute Debate In Oxford 2015-6.

✦ Decolonization is given two broad steps in this book: One, is to change the intention of empirical study & education, the second was to provide an alternative method.

✦ "Campus mobilisations, the formation of student societies, and the publications of student papers knitted higher education and anti-colonialism into a rich tapestry of radical activism the colonial metropole." – This quote is a question about how decolonizing takes place. It can happen internally through the questioning of student participants and groups of minorities. What is more, there are many different types of structures to break down because there is a grand spectrum of historical imperial rule. Naturally, this brings about a range of varying implications and environments that require decolonization. The "shared historical trajectories of forms of colonialism" are still embedded in our educational, governmental, jurisdictional, social, and economic systems.

Boycott
Divest
Sanctions

NOTES on Orientalism (Chapter III, Oriental Residence and Scholarship: The requirements of Lexicography and Imagination)
**As a note to this reference, I would like to say that this book, alongside the studies and talks of Edward Said, makes me so sad. Not only because, as my heritage entails, I am learning of the tampered history of myself, but also because Said speaks for so many cultures whose spiritual innocence and hereditary customs have been refuted and poisoned. These cultures will never be the same.

✦ A text by Renan inserted in this chapter is as follows: "One sees that in all things the Sematic race appears to us to be an incomplete race, by virtue of its simplicity... the Semitic nations experienced their fullest flowering in their first ages and have never been able to achieve true maturity."

Renan is one of Said's main examples of influential authors of the Orient. Although these texts were written in 1861, Said suggests they are "still considered reliable monuments of scholarship". This links with the aggressive dismissal of the mass of individuals deemed as invisible in 1940s in "Protesting settler colonialism in the neoliberal university by Iman Ganji" (see right).

Often the saddest effect of imperialism is that people are unaware that their historical colonizers are still in charge.

✦ Sanbar uses the term "other(ness)" one that formulates most of E.Said's studies and theories. In this case, it is explained that Sanbar concluded an otherness is established by creating a phantom community. Ignoring the existence of a group of individuals that suffered the 1948 Nakba Day.

✦ Interesting terminology: "settler-colonialist"

✦ There are so many terms for the progress/ process of decolonisation that have to do with just scratching the surface! It seems we are only at the stage of acceptance. Here are some of the quotes that fall under this category of imperial acknowledgement:

"announcements" "labelled" "regime of visibility" "invisible & unintelligible"
"to make the invisible visible is if nothing else, the political dimension of aesthetics par excellence"

NOTES on Protesting settler colonialism in the neoliberal university by Iman Ganji

click picture above to read this thesis

Uses Of The Erotic: The Erotic as Power (Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider, pp 53 – 59)

ALL MAJOR QUOTES
✦ "But that strength is illusory, for it is fashioned within the context of male models of power."
✦ "...which values this depth of feeling enough to keep women around in order to exercise it in the service of men"
✦ "physically milked"
✦ "Of course, women so empowered are dangerous."
✦ "eros... born of Chaos"
✦ "... a world of the ascetic who aspires to feel nothing."
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ (Link the Sex of The Situationist International"
✦ "And use without consent of the used is abused."
✦ "...women-identified women"