Abstracts for Lettre Internationale, Denmark 12 (2006)

Edward W. Said
Orientalism

Orientalism (1978) raises important questions about the relationship between knowledge and power and how the West chooses to describe other parts of the world. We bring you an abstract from the book.

Samir Kassir
To be Arab

These days a strong feeling of powerlessness is the most characteristic feature of being Arab.

Galit Eilat
Art must disturb

When the rhetoric of war rages, the artist must offer alternative spaces where opportunities for development, different from those of war, can be heard.

Walid Sadek
This well-behaved and insolent glance

How much, and what exactly do we see, when we see? Lebanese critic Walid Sadek tries to pin down a “poetics of the eye” where European reflections on the essence of vision is compared to a Lebanese tradition where the eye is a recurrent icon and theme in art.

Hanna Ziadeh
Covered to death

The Middle East is covered day and night by the media. But the stories told are always the same.

Liv Egholm & Jakob Feldt
Arab public opinion

During the last ten years, new media have arrived in the Middle East. But what interests are involved, and what do they signify for the region?

Lila Abu-Lughod
The powerful image and the danger of pity

In the West, we are presented to alarmingly few different pictures of Muslim women. One of the most dangerous consequences of this is the notion that Muslim women are in need of rescue, either by ourselves or our governments.

Slavoj Zizek
The dignity of atheism

“A blood-dimmed tide is loosed”: The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek on the Mohammed caricatures and the contradictions inherent in the reason of tolerance.

Lasse Ellegaard
A writer in war

An excellent reporter, a revolutionary, a choleric person: Jan Stage was a complex character. His friend and colleague Lasse Ellegaard portrays the most legendary Danish reporter.

Jan Stage
Chronicles from Cuba, with Aldous and George in Castro country

Real experience mixed into a fictitious construct allows the writer to travel with his heroes George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Together they will close in on the strange essence of Cuba.

Janne Teller, Kresten Schultz Jørgensen & Lotte Folke Kaarsholm
What we owe the dead and other people

A conversation about multiculture in a monocultural country.

Jens-Martin Eriksen
Charita’s anger and patience

In Europe, the discussion about multiculturalism evolves from a moral platform, the actual circumstances are not considered. Writer Jens-Martin Eriksen has been to Malaysia, where the foundation of experience is somewhat different.

Partha Chatterjee
The Empire Revisited

Colonialism is still an active force. In the age of globalization, the Great Powers control their colonies through subtle economic arrangements and international institutions. Partha Chatterjee compares the Bandung Conference on colonialism in 1955 with contemporary and more implicit Empires.

William Dalrymple
The city of the emperor

Dalrymple tells the story of a city that once was, a story which takes place in India in the sixteenth century. The Emperor encouraged an atmosphere of cultural diversity and acceptance among the different religious groups.

Rune Harritshøj
The two Argentinas

The national bankruptcy in 2001 placed Argentina in a state of desperation. The situation has changed, Argentina has recently experienced massive economic growth. But not everyone witnesses the progress.