From Orientalism to Diaspora: The Migrant, the Refugee, and the Contemporary Image
Das Seminar untersucht, wie orientalistische Darstellungsweisen durch zeitgenössische Figuren der Migration und Diaspora transformiert, verschoben und neu artikuliert werden. Wenn – wie Edward Said argumentierte – der Orientalismus „den Osten“ als Objekt von Wissen, Fantasie und Herrschaftsausübung hervorbringt: Wie lassen sich dessen Wirkungsweisen in der zeitgenössischen Figur des Migranten oder Geflüchteten nachverfolgen? Das koloniale „Orientalische“ verschwindet nicht einfach mit der Dekolonisierung; vielmehr ordnen sich seine Logiken der Darstellung um Figuren wie den Geflüchteten, die Frau aus einer Minderheit, den Terroristen, den Grenzgänger, den Staatenlosen und den Arbeiter ohne Papiere neu. Die Figur des Migranten oder Geflüchteten erscheint hier nicht bloß als neues „orientalisches“ Subjekt, sondern als Ort, an dem ältere koloniale Unterscheidungen – zwischen Zivilisation und Barbarei, Mobilität und Immobilität, Zugehörigkeit und Fremdheit, Sichtbarkeit und Unsichtbarkeit – neu formuliert werden.
Unter Rückgriff auf Autor*innen wie Ella Shohat, Ghassan Kanafani, Edward Said, Stuart Hall, Ariella Azoulay, Hito Steyerl, Rey Chow, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Anne Anlin Cheng, Edouard Glissant, Nicholas Mirzoeff und andere, die sich mit der Politik des Blickens, der Repräsentation, der Rassialisierung, Gender und dem Archiv befassen, untersucht das Seminar, wie Bilder durch wiederkehrende visuelle Tropen – Verwundbarkeit, Exotisierung, Gefahr, Opferstatus, Illegalität und kulturelle Differenz – Subjekte in prekären Lagen lesbar machen.
Besonderes Augenmerk gilt dabei der Fotografie, dem Journalismus, dem Film, der humanitären Bildsprache, der Dokumentation von Grenzräumen sowie der zeitgenössischen Kunst. Anstatt Repräsentation lediglich als Frage positiver oder negativer Sichtbarkeit zu behandeln, fragt das Seminar danach, welche Machtverhältnisse durch die Forderung entstehen, Migranten und Geflüchtete überhaupt erst sichtbar und erkennbar zu machen. Wie werden Vertreibung, Leid, Identität und Zugehörigkeit in Bilder übersetzt? Und welche künstlerischen Strategien könnten diese überlieferten Sehweisen unterbrechen, verkomplizieren oder verweigern? Wie wird der zeitgenössische Migrant zum Bild – und was könnte es bedeuten, anders zu blicken?
From Orientalism to Diaspora: The Migrant, the Refugee, and the Contemporary Image The seminar examines how Orientalist modes of representation are transformed, displaced, and rearticulated through contemporary figures of migration and diaspora. If, as Edward Said argued, Orientalism produces “the East” as an object of knowledge, fantasy, and governance, how might its operations be traced in the contemporary figure of the migrant or refugee? The colonial “Oriental” does not simply disappear with decolonization; rather, its representational logics are reorganized around figures such as the refugee, the minority woman, the terrorist, the border crosser, the stateless person, and the undocumented worker. The figure of the migrant or refugee emerges here not simply as a new “Oriental” subject, but as a site where older colonial distinctions between civilization and barbarism, mobility and immobility, belonging and foreignness, visibility and invisibility are reformulated. Drawing on Ella Shohat, Ghassan Kanafani, Edward Said, Stuart Hall, Ariella Azoulay, Hito Steyerl, Rey Chow, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Anne Anlin Cheng, Edouard Glissant, Nicholas Mirzoeff, and other writers concerned with the politics of looking, representation, racialization, gender, and the archive, the seminar considers how images make displaced subjects legible through recurring visual tropes: vulnerability, exoticism, danger, victimhood, illegality, and cultural difference. Particular attention will be given to photography, journalism, film, humanitarian imagery, border documentation, and contemporary art. Rather than treating representation simply as a question of positive or negative visibility, the seminar asks what forms of power are produced through the demand to make migrants and refugees visible and recognizable in the first place. How are displacement, suffering, identity, and belonging transformed into images? And what artistic strategies might interrupt, complicate, or refuse these inherited ways of seeing? How does the contemporary migrant becomes an image—and what it might mean to look otherwise?
From Orientalism to Diaspora: The Migrant, the Refugee, and the Contemporary Image The seminar examines how Orientalist modes of representation are transformed, displaced, and rearticulated through contemporary figures of migration and diaspora. If, as Edward Said argued, Orientalism produces “the East” as an object of knowledge, fantasy, and governance, how might its operations be traced in the contemporary figure of the migrant or refugee? The colonial “Oriental” does not simply disappear with decolonization; rather, its representational logics are reorganized around figures such as the refugee, the minority woman, the terrorist, the border crosser, the stateless person, and the undocumented worker. The figure of the migrant or refugee emerges here not simply as a new “Oriental” subject, but as a site where older colonial distinctions between civilization and barbarism, mobility and immobility, belonging and foreignness, visibility and invisibility are reformulated. Drawing on Ella Shohat, Ghassan Kanafani, Edward Said, Stuart Hall, Ariella Azoulay, Hito Steyerl, Rey Chow, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Anne Anlin Cheng, Edouard Glissant, Nicholas Mirzoeff, and other writers concerned with the politics of looking, representation, racialization, gender, and the archive, the seminar considers how images make displaced subjects legible through recurring visual tropes: vulnerability, exoticism, danger, victimhood, illegality, and cultural difference. Particular attention will be given to photography, journalism, film, humanitarian imagery, border documentation, and contemporary art. Rather than treating representation simply as a question of positive or negative visibility, the seminar asks what forms of power are produced through the demand to make migrants and refugees visible and recognizable in the first place. How are displacement, suffering, identity, and belonging transformed into images? And what artistic strategies might interrupt, complicate, or refuse these inherited ways of seeing? How does the contemporary migrant becomes an image—and what it might mean to look otherwise?
- Teacher: Noit