Fordham University Press Decadent Orientalisms: The Decay of Colonial Modernity

Product Description Decadent Orientalisms presents a sustained critique of the ways Orientalism and decadence have formed a joint discursive mode of the imperial imagination.Rather than attending to Orientalism as a repertoire of clichés and stereotypes, Fieni reads both Western and Islamic discourses of decadence to show the diffuse, yet coherent network of institutions that have constituted Orientalism's power. Review This study will be appreciated by readers familiar with the work of Edward Said and the literature of postcolonial interpretations of Franco-Algerian relations. Recommended.-- "Choice"David Fieni's Decadent Orientalisms makes several important and timely contributions to the fields of postcolonial, French and Francophone studies, and Middle East studies. Thoroughly researched and written in a vivid, engaging, and accessible style, the book will be of interest to students and scholars working in a range of fields.---Olivia C. Harrison, University of Southern California, Rather than a one-sided account of orientalism or counter-orientalism, Decadent Orientalisms provides a rich model of comparativism. The book will be an important contribution to ongoing debates about comparative and world literature as well as to nineteenth- and twentieth-century Arabic and French literary studies.---Madeleine Dobie, Columbia University, About the Author David Fieni is Assistant Professor of French at the State University of New York, Oneonta. He is the translator of Laurent Dubreuil’s Empire of Language: Toward a Critique of (Post)colonial Expression (Cornell).