Course Overview: French Orientalism

Aaron Freundschuh

Course Overview: French Orientalism

Course Information

Etienne Balibar observed that all nations have colonial origins, and modern France is no exception. France’s repeated turns toward the East suggest a complicated relationship not only between the nation’s political revolutions and the cultural production inspired by its overseas conquests, but also between ideas of French identity and representations of what was called the Orient: the Napoleonic incursion into the Islamic Ottoman Empire in the 1790s gave rise to the modern field of Egyptology; on the eve of the 1830 Revolution in Paris, King Charles X tried to shore up his regime by invading Algeria, where France would remain until 1962; and among the most revered of contemporary French writers and artists—men such as Flaubert and Delacroix—the Orient was a bottomless source of inspiration. Using evidence drawn from art, literature and politics, we will in this course make arguments about what the “Orient” has meant to the French, investigating how the Oriental imagination shaped France’s encounters with people from North Africa to Indochina.

While this is a history course, we will train our focus on written inquiry and argumentation. To begin, students will write about Bonaparte’s conquest of Egypt, making arguments about the spreading of French-revolutionary principles through military force in the Islamic world. Next, in an exploration of the visual culture of French imperialism we will distill and, through historical analysis of selected French painters, critique and refine Edward Saïd’s Orientalism, which traces western European views of the “Orient” in recent centuries. Finally, students will write a research paper on a topic related to French imperial or postcolonial history.

OVERVIEW OF ASSIGNMENTS

• Paper #1: Analysis of primary sources (3-4pp.)

Assignment 1: Using French revolutionary sources as a basis for your understanding of revolutionary principles, analyze al-Jabarti’s account of the French invasion of Egypt with attention to the dialogue between the French and the Egyptians, and make an argument about how the principles of the French Revolution traveled east.

Goals of the Essay:

• Formulate a feasible and arguable thesis.

• Structure the essay “organically,” avoiding chronological summary, on the one hand, and the five-paragraph essay, on the other.

• Orient your reader (as it were). You should address your essay to readers who have possibly heard of the Napoleonic foray into Egypt, but who do not know of it in depth. You will need to orient them with important reminders, always making sure those explanations serve a purpose in your essay as a whole (not just summary for its own sake).

• Analyze the evidence. Never assume that your readers will read a passage in the same way that you do or that they’ll draw the same conclusions. Your analysis of the evidence should persuade your readers of the validity of your claims.

• Document sources using the Chicago-style citation method.

Readings:

Al-Jabarti, Napoleon in Egypt: Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle of the French Occupation, 1798
The Declaration of the Rights of Man

The Civil Constitution of the Clergy

Jasanoff, “Invading Egypt,” from Jasanoff, Edge of Empire

PAPER #1 ASSIGNMENT SEQUENCE

Pre-Draft assignment (1): Shared Keywords, Ideas and Concepts (one paragraph)

In order to link sources analytically, authors first find common ground among them—such as shared keywords, concepts, priorities, or themes. Herein lies the essay’s motivating question. Your assignment for this Pre-draft, which you should bring to class with you in hard copy, is to identify and define the most important keywords and ideas that appear in the primary sources.

Draft

The draft you hand in should not be a “rough” one (i.e., the first thing you tap into your computer). Rather, it should be your best possible effort at getting your ideas on paper and shaping those ideas into a coherent and readable whole. The better your draft, the more useful will be the feedback on it.

Essay #1 Draft Cover Letter

Each time you hand in a draft, you’ll hand in a cover letter along with it. For the draft of Essay #1, please write a letter, addressed to your readers, in which you answer the following questions and present any other concerns that you have. Think of the letter as an opportunity to ask for the kind of feedback you think you particularly need. Your cover letter should be about a page long.

• Thesis. What do you see as your main idea or point?

• What are the biggest problems you’re having at this point in the writing process?

•What idea or point do you feel you’ve made most successfully? Least successfully?

•If you were going to start revising today, what three things would you focus on?

• Paper #2: Distillation of a Theoretical Critique (1-2pp.)

Assignment 2: In this short paper assignment, you will write a critical summary of selected pages from Edward Saïd’s Orientalism. Your task is to locate Saïd’s key claims, explore their implications and reveal the assumptions underpinning them. As you approach this assignment bear in mind that you will use and critique his insights in your own analysis of sources in your next essay.

Goals of the Essay:

• Provide your reader with a clear sense of a complicated theoretical critique. This text is dense and difficult; it makes assumptions about readers’ prior knowledge that you, in distilling it, are implicitly questioning. Think about what your reader might “already know,” what they need to know, and try to convey the essence of Saïd’s critique.

• Use active verbs and limit your use of “to be” verbs. “To be” verbs include is, are, was, were, be, to be, been, and being. This simple exercise will invigorate your prose, and has its best effect if you remain aware of it as you draft and write, rather than translating sentences out of “to be” mode once the draft is done.

• Structure. Write an essay that is pushed forward by analytical claims that build upon each other.

Reading:

Saïd, Orientalism (Introduction, Chs. 1-2).

PAPER #2 ASSIGNMENT SEQUENCE

Pre-Draft (1): Identify complex or difficult passages

In order to distill a theory, we must first make an earnest attempt to grasp its meaning(s). Complex passages in a theoretical give us pause for a variety of reasons: the terminology might be abstract or obscure, or there are perhaps there are references or examples that are unfamiliar; otherwise, we may simply find ourselves re-reading a dense constellation of ideas. For this pre-draft, come to class with 2-3 passages that have caused you to slow down in your reading. Identify them in order of importance.

In-class Pre-Draft (2): Paraphrasing and deciphering (handout: on paraphrasing)

In small groups, share your annotations. Are there any in common? If so, take some time individually to unpack—that is, to put them into your own words by use of paraphrase. This may mean producing longer or shorter passages, which is fine. As you write, think about what terms or turns of phrase are irreplaceable and should be placed between quotation marks. Exchange and compare your work and discuss any disparities in meaning.

Essay #2 Draft Cover Letter

• What aspect of Orientalism have you focused on and why?

• What is your motive, and how have you tried to set it up? How well do you feel that your thesis offers a response to the motivating question?

• What would you like feedback on for this draft?

• Paper #3: Critique and refine Orientalism using primary sources (5pp.)

Assignment 3: Your assignment is to use your readings of selected orientalist paintings, by Ingres, Delacroix, and G. Boulanger, in order to enter into a conversation with Saïd’s Orientalism. Your reading of the paintings will lead you make an argument that critiques, refines, and/or extends the theoretical claims in that book. Your should borrow some of Saïd’s terms and premises (from paper 2) even as you advance your argument about how French orientalist painters imagined the East visually.

Goals of the Essay:

• Use theoretical and technical concepts in order to ground your readings of the paintings.

• Analyze evidence that you select from the paintings in order to engageSaïd’s Orientalism, thereby entering into a conversation with that theoretical critique.

• Write art into its historical context. Your argument will derive rhetorical power from its leavening of technical readings with relevant historical evidence.

• An “arguable”thesis. Make an argument that usesOrientalismbut that also, in some way, emerges from its shadow.

Readings and Paintings:

MacKenzie, Orientalism: History, Theory, and the Arts(selections)

Benjamin, Orientalist Aesthetics: Art, Colonialism, and French North Africa (selections)

Taylor, Learning to Look (selections)

Paintings by Ingres, Delacroix, and G. Boulanger: The Turkish Bath; The Harem; Women of Algiers; Grande Odalisque; The Natchez; Saada; The Massacre at Chios.

PAPER #3 ASSIGNMENT SEQUENCE

In-class Pre-Draft (1): Looking at art with the aim of writing about it

Reading: Taylor, “An Analysis of the Work of Art,” from Learning to Look.

Assemble your notes on Taylor and implement his insights in a “first reading” of a painting that we analyze collectively. Try specifically to mobilize Taylor’s conceptual and technical vocabulary in your interpretations.

Pre-Draft (2): Contextualizing the paintings

Reading: MacKenzie, Orientalism: History, Theory, and the Arts. In this Pre-Draft, you will take a step back from your primary-source observations and begin to situate them in a historical context. This means, among other things, asking about the situation in which the paintings were produced and received, and attempting to discern how they spoke to or acted upon their social, political, cultural words. A good contextualization should argue for a “relationship” between the artifact and its context.

Pre-Draft (3): Returning to the Theoretical Text

Now it is time to make explicit the common ground between your work on the paintings and the claims you’ve highlighted in Orientalism. Write up a shortlist of conceptual or thematic links between the two, suggesting how you position your argument with respect to Orientalism. This will likely involve review of your annotations and perhaps even a re-reading of Orientalism.

Essay #3 Draft Cover Letter

• How have you used Orientalism, and how do you depart from it in some way? What, in sum, is your stance with respect to Said’s ideas?

• What has been the most difficult aspect of this draft?

• Evidence. What kinds of evidence have you found in the artwork, and what portion of your analysis deals with formal qualities? And with historical context?

• Paper #4: Research Paper on a topic related to French orientalism (5-6pp.)

Assignment 4: In this project you will face a new set of challenges, such as selecting a feasible and interesting research topic. You’ll choose a specific case, theme, idea or debate, and develop an argument about its relationship to historical context. Your treatment of the topic should bring some order to its various representations (narrative forms or media) while making a distinct contribution to the scholarly “conversation” you choose to engage.

Goals of the Essay:

• Develop and expand your knowledge of scholarly research tools so that you become more efficient at finding and using source materials.

• Ask a “big” analytical question. Develop a research topic that allows you analytical space enough to write something interesting.

• Find a research project that is “feasible.”

• Pitch your research in a lucid proposal.

PAPER #4 ASSIGNMENT SEQUENCE

Pre-Draft (1): Identifying a Topic and a Motivating Problem

Locate and carefully examine some sources for your paper, then discuss it/them in a few pages, making sure to focus on some problematic aspect—a question, a contradiction, something curious that remains unanswered or unaddressed. Include a list (or the start of a list) of sources that you think will help you situate and/or address this problem, along with brief summaries of their arguments, sources used, and descriptions of how they relate to each other.

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