Visual Culture in the Modern Middle East

Description

The power of images in contemporary Islamic societies

This timely book examines the power and role of the image in modern Middle Eastern societies. The essays explore the role and function of image making to highlight the ways in which the images "speak" and what visual languages mean for the construction of Islamic subjectivities, the distribution of power, and the formation of identity and belonging. Visual Culture in the Modern Middle East addresses aspects of the visual in the Islamic world, including the presentation of Islam on television; on the internet and other digital media; in banners, posters, murals, and graffiti; and in the satirical press, cartoons, and children's books.

Introduction
I. "Moving" Images
1. Images of the Prophet Muhammad In and Out of Modernity: The Curious Case of a 2008 Mural in Tehran /Christiane J. Gruber
2. Secular Domesticities, Shiite Modernities: Khomeini's Illustrated Tawzīh al-Masail /Pamela Karimi
3. Memory and Ideology: Images of Saladin in Syria and Iraq /Stefan Heidemann
4. "You Will (Not) Be Able to Take Your Eyes Off It!": Mass-Mediated Images and Politico-Ethical Reform in the Egyptian Islamic Revival /Patricia Kubala
II. Islamist Iconographies
5. The Muslim "Crying Boy" in Turkey: Aestheticization and Politicization of Suffering in Islamic Imagination /Özlem Savaş
6. The New Happy Child in Islamic Picture Books in Turkey /Umut Azak
7. Sadrabiliyya: The Visual Narrative of Muqtada Al-Sadr's Islamist Politics and Insurgency in Iraq /Ibrahim Al-Marashi
8. The Martyr's Fading Body: Propaganda vs. Beautification in the Tehran Cityscape /Ulrich Marzolph
III. Satirical Contestations
9. Pushing Out Islam: Cartoons of the Reform Period in Turkey (1923–1930) /Yasemin Gencer
10. Blasphemy or Critique?: Secularists and Islamists in Turkish Cartoon Images /Pinar Batur and John VanderLippe
11. Naji al-Ali and the Iconography of Arab Secularism /Sune Haugbolle
IV. Authenticity and Reality in Trans-National Broadcasting
12. Arab Television Drama Production and the Islamic Public Sphere /Christa Salamandra
13. Saudi-Islamist Rhetorics about Visual Culture /Marwan Kraidy
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Middle Eastern Studies
• Media Studies
• Islamic Studies
• Social Science
• Religión
• Social sciences
• Middle East
• Cinema
• Religion
• Islam
• Media

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 17 juillet 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253008947
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

Visual Culture in the Modern Middle East
VISUAL CULTURE IN THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST

RHETORIC OF THE IMAGE

EDITED BY CHRISTIANE GRUBER AND SUNE HAUGBOLLE
This book is a publication of Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
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2013 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Visual culture in the modern Middle East : rhetoric of the image / edited by
Christiane Gruber and Sune Haugbolle.
pages cm.
The contributions were first presented at the April 2009 conference Rhetoric of the Image: Visual Culture in Political Islam, held in Magleaas, Denmark -Acknowledgements.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-00884-8 (cloth : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-00888-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-00894-7 (ebook) 1. Art and society-Middle East--Congresses. 2. Visual communication-Middle East-Congresses. 3. Arts, Modern-20th century-Middle East-Congresses. 4. Popular culture-Middle East-Congresses. I. Gruber, Christiane J., [date] II. Haugbolle, Sune, [date]
NX180.S6V475 2013
700.103-dc23
2013016444
1 2 3 4 5 17 16 15 14 13
CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART 1. Moving Images
1 Images of the Prophet Muhammad In and Out of Modernity: The Curious Case of a 2008 Mural in Tehran Christiane Gruber
2 Secular Domesticities, Shiite Modernities: Khomeini s Illustrated Tawzih al-Masail Pamela Karimi
3 Memory and Ideology: Images of Saladin in Syria and Iraq Stefan Heidemann
4 You Will (Not) Be Able to Take Your Eyes Of It! : Mass-Mediated Images and Politico-Ethical Reform in the Egyptian Islamic Revival Patricia Kubala
PART 2. Islamist Iconographies
5 The Muslim Crying Boy in Turkey: Aestheticization and Politicization of Suffering in Islamic Imagination zlem Sava
6 The New Happy Child in Islamic Picture Books in Turkey Umut Azak
7 Sadrabiliyya: The Visual Narrative of Muqtada al-Sadr s Islamist Politics and Insurgency in Iraq Ibrahim Al-Marashi
8 The Martyr s Fading Body: Propaganda vs. Beautification in the Tehran Cityscape Ulrich Marzolph
Part 3. Satirical Contestations
9 Pushing Out Islam: Cartoons of the Reform Period in Turkey (1923-1928) Yasemin Gencer
10 Blasphemy or Critique?: Secularists and Islamists in Turkish Cartoon Images John VanderLippe and P nar Batur
11 Naji al-Ali and the Iconography of Arab Secularism Sune Haugbolle
PART 4. Authenticity and Reality in Trans-National Broadcasting
12 Arab Television Drama Production and the Islamic Public Sphere Christa Salamandra
13 Saudi-Islamist Rhetorics about Visual Culture Marwan Kraidy
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Above all, we would like to thank our contributors, all of whom have worked hard and patiently in the editorial process of this volume. The contributions were first presented at the April 2009 conference Rhetoric of the Image: Visual Culture in Political Islam, held in Magleaas, Denmark, under the auspices of the New Islamic Public Sphere Programme at Copenhagen University. We are grateful for the financial and intellectual support of the program, in particular its director Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, and Charlott Hoffmann Jensen, who was a brilliant organizer of the event. We wish to thank everyone present at the conference for playing their part in the rich discussions and debates that took place, including Ali Atassi, Zakir Hossein Raju, Layal Ftouni, and Vasiliki Neofotistos, whose contributions are regretfully not included here.
For their helpful comments and help, Christiane wishes to thank Peter Chelkowski, Ulrich Marzolph, and Ali Boozari. Many thanks also go to Sune, who led the way with the conference in Copenhagen, and whose sharp intellect, hard work, and patience saw this volume reach completion. Christiane is also indebted-for the fourth time-to Janet Rauscher, who agreed to copyedit the entire volume prior to its submission to Indiana University Press. At the press, our heartfelt thanks go to Robert Sloan for his unwavering and enthusiastic support of this and other projects in Islamic studies, art history, and visual culture. Last but certainly not least, we are grateful to the Freer Fund in the Department of the History of Art at the University of Michigan, which provided a generous publication subvention that made the inclusion of a color-plate insert possible.
For his part, Sune would like to thank Walter Armbrust, Daniella Kuzmanovic, Andreas Bandak, Lucie Ruzova, Samuli Schielke, Roschanack Shaery-Eisenlohr, and Sonja Hegasy for valuable help and theoretical pointers in the writing process. A great many more have influenced my thinking on visual culture, too many to mention here. In Palestine, Nathalie Khankan, Basil Ayish, Kefah Fanni, Adil Samara, Moslih Kanaaneh, Abdul Rahim al-Shaykh, and Vera Tammari all opened their doors to me and offered invaluable help. Thanks to Christiane, without whom this book would surely not have seen the light of day and whose lively wit, exceptional discipline, and good humor make any joint project a pleasure. Most of all, I am grateful to Lindsay Whitfield for her loving support throughout this project, for coping with my absences and frustrations, and for believing in my abilities to see my ideas through.
CHRISTIANE GRUBER SUNE HAUGBOLLE
INTRODUCTION

Visual Culture in the Modern Middle East

CHRISTIANE GRUBER AND SUNE HAUGBOLLE
Expanding the Borders of Visual Culture
From television and computer screens to billboards and magazines, images speak to modern human beings, shaping our social imaginaries and our visual cultures. 1 The term visual culture describes the mechanisms that produce and recycle visual material in various public cultures. Moreover, since the late 1980s it has come to designate a new interdisciplinary field of study, departing from the traditional methods of art historical inquiry to incorporate theoretical insights from literature, anthropology, sociology, cultural theory, gender studies, film, and media studies in order to examine a wider range of visual materials. Largely a disciplinary offshoot of cultural studies, which gained prominence in England from the 1950s onward, 2 the more narrowly defined field of visual culture has not been without its problems and critics. Debates continue to unfold, calling into question, for instance, whether visual culture is indeed an academic discipline with specific methodologies and objects of study, or, conversely, an interdisciplinary movement whose course may be more short-lived than expected. 3
Through the proliferation of visual culture readers, anthologies, studies, and journals, the very least that one can say is that a large scholarly apparatus has emerged, suggesting strongly that visual culture is a field that over the last three decades has engendered rich and textured discussions on the manifold roles of images in the public domain of everyday life. 4 Anchored within such discourses, this volume takes the position that visual culture indeed functions as a productive field of inquiry and is most useful as an interface between the many disciplines that treat visuality-predominantly, though not exclusively, in modern and contemporary cultures.
At the center of this multidisciplinary field of research-propagated largely, to date, by scholars of Euro-American popular materials-are questions about image production and reception, as well as the culturally contingent practices of looking. Without a doubt, the field s scholarship has revolved around television, the internet, and advertising. 5 Additionally, visual phenomena as varied as cinema, painting, photography, cartoon and poster arts, graffiti and street art, videos, and online digital production have been of interest, as all share common traits in that they represent the world through images-still or moving-in turn contributing to the development of collective notions of shared cultural identity and values.
Today, as with the paradox of culture itself, visual culture is both globalizing and localizing-quite often simultaneously. 6 Satellite and internet media especially allow for a complex interconnectedness of global systems in which images are produced and consumed on a wider scale and quicker pace than ever before. In such cases, visual spheres of interaction are determined less by geography than by technology. The prominence of new media within the field s scholarship does not indicate that visual culture is merely a function of new and faster means of communication since the internet revolution, or that the study of visual materials should be simply placed under the fold of media studies. 7 Indeed, humans are not more visual today than they were in the past; they simply function in different scopic regimes, which include multiple modern systems of communication that often combine sound, text, and image in which the visual cannot be hypos