Feminization of the Orient
Orientalism and the Colonial Production of Subjectivities
Abstract
This paper examines how the bodies of “Oriental women” have been inscribed as sites of symbolic, economic, and political production within the regimes of knowledge and power of Orientalism. Grounded in a feminist and anti-colonial critique, it analyzes how Orientalist representations operate as material and symbolic technologies that racialize, feminize, and commodify otherness. Engaging with the works of Meyda Yeğenoğlu, Lila Abu-Lughod, Minoo Moallem, and Carolina Bracco, the paper offers a critical reading of Orientalism as a structure that produces governable and desirable subjectivities through gendered and affective economies of domination.
References
Abu-Lughod, L. (2001). Orientalism and Middle East feminist studies. Feminist Studies, 27(1), 101–113. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178451
Abu-Lughod, L. (2013). Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bracco, C. (2017). La invención de las bailarinas orientales. Un artefacto colonial. Journal of Feminist, Gender and Women Studies, (6), 55–64. https://doi.org/10.15366/jfgws2017.6.005
Bracco, C. (2023). El cuerpo de la mujer oriental como geografía imaginaria. Anacronismo e Irrupción, 13(24), 42–57. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8116101
Curiel, O. (2014). La nación heterosexual. Análisis del discurso jurídico y el régimen heterosexual desde la antropología de la dominación. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
Fanon, F. (2009). Los condenados de la tierra (trad. A. Ramírez). México: Fondo de Cultura Económica).
Fuentes Arzate, I. (2025). Producción de la conflictividad en Medio Oriente para la geopolítica global. Análisis Plural, (9), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.31391/adphsa02
Lacan, J. (1978). El seminario. Libro 11: Los cuatro conceptos fundamentales del psicoanálisis. Buenos Aires: Paidós.
Lewis, R. (1996). Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity and Representation. Nueva York: Routledge.
Moallem, M. (2018). Persian carpets and the politics of representation: The nation as a transnational commodity. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 38(3), 525–543. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201x-6951201
Mohanty, C. T. (2003). Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Durham: Duke University Press.
Said, E. W. (2008). Orientalismo (trad. M. Vázquez). Barcelona: Debolsillo. (Obra original publicada en 1978)
Segato, R. L. (2003). Las estructuras elementales de la violencia. Revista Brasileira de Ciências Criminais, 11(44), 205–230.
Yeğenoğlu, M. (1998). Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
