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" Disrupting the Western Gaze: An Arab-Islamic Intervention in Rhetoric and Composition Studies "
Lana A. Oweidat
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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805099
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| Doc. No
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TL49948
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| Call number
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2061082161; 10891743
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| Main Entry
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Mokhtari, Abdelmadjid
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| Title & Author
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Disrupting the Western Gaze: An Arab-Islamic Intervention in Rhetoric and Composition Studies\ Lana A. Oweidat
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| College
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Ohio University
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| Date
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2014
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| field of study
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English (Arts and Sciences)
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| student score
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2014
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| Page No
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199
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| Note
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Committee members: Gradin, Sherrie; Holt, Mara; Negash, Ghirmai; Rouzie, Albert; White, Julie
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| Note
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Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-0-438-09706-3
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| Abstract
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Feminist rhetoricians, such as Wendy S. Hesford and Eileen E. Schell, criticize the field of Rhetoric and Composition for its limiting U.S. perspective and they call on scholars in the field to be more reflective on the American aspect of their works. They argue that many ironies have become evident in the field when taking into account transnational feminist rhetoric and postcoloniality. Answering their call for expanding the field's scope and focus, in this project I examine a series of cross-cultural encounters between the West and the Arab and Muslim worlds in the past and present and their ideological, political, and historical contexts, uncovering traces of discursive colonialist and Orientalist legacies disguised under the umbrella of multiculturalism. My examination reveals the prevalence of Islamophobia in the U.S. political, cultural, and thus academic scenes. I argue that encounters with Arab and Muslim Others are entangled in discourses of reduction, appropriation, Orientalism, and imperialism. Using a blend of rhetorical, postcolonial, and transnational feminist theories as my overarching theoretical lens, I explore the discursive construction of the Arab and Muslim agency through Western eyes, especially in the act of veiling. I examine the Muslim veil as site for the convergence of cross-cultural empathetic identification and the rhetoric of saving, which are both motivated by the imperial binaries of neoliberal feminist rhetoric. Against the backdrop of personal, statistical, anecdotal, and historical accounts of Islamophobia as a working discourse that affects the realities of Muslims and Arabs in the U.S. and around the world, I explore how the figure of the Muslim and Arab Other has been constructed as the West's new racial Other. I argue that little attention has been given to examining Islamophobia as a rhetorical racist discourse within which U.S. students are functioning. Therefore, it has become an ethical imperative for educators who are committed to issues of social justice and anti-racism to chart a new epistemological landscape by utilizing anti-Islamophobia pedagogical practices. I propose pedagogical conceptualizations that uncover the social, structural, and ideological dimensions through which Islamophobia as a racist discourse is constructed and enacted.
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| Subject
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Ethics; Womens studies; Multicultural Education; Rhetoric
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| Descriptor
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Language, literature and linguistics;Philosophy, religion and theology;Social sciences;Education;Islamophobia;Multiculturalism;Muslim veil;Orientalism;Transnational feminist rhetoric
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| Added Entry
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English (Arts and Sciences)Ohio University
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