Time Behind the Veil
The Media, the Middle Ages, and Orientalism Now
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20046742 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kathleen Davis (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2000 |
| Pages | 105-122 |
| Publication date | 2000-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Postcolonial Middle Ages (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan US (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1057/9780230107342_7 |
| OpenAlex | W2482806259 |
| ISBN | 9780230107342 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
| References cited | 3 |
In the Autumn of 1996, Diane Sawyer journeyed to Afghanistan for an ABC-TV 20/20 story on the treatment of women under Taliban rule. Sawyer's opening voice-over of Behind the Veil—A Report on the Woman of Afghanistan describes this news-gathering venture in terms of travel narrative: "We left New York, heading first to London, then Pakistan, thinking of all we'd heard about the Afghan women, their love of laughter, their fastidious homes, however poor, and their resilience during 18 years of war." This journey from Western métropole to Afghan female domestic space is also figured as time travel (back into the past) as well as dramatic rescue mission of women forced to a return, as the program's tide indicates, "behind the veil "The Taliban, Sawyer's voice-over explains, has swept across the country and into the capital with a "fundamentalist iron fist, in effect returning women to the middle ages, while the women of Afghanistan cry out for other women to come help. So we have a plane from the United Nations and it's going to take us about an hour and a halfback into the mountains, and from what we've been reading, that's several hundred years in time."1 Anyone familiar with common tropes of Orientalism and colonial representation will be unsurprised by this image of a modern, technologically efficient Western reporter sweeping across space and back in time to rescue suffering, domesticated. Eastern women (by lifting their veils) from repres- sive, "third world," reactionary men. Medievalists will be unsurprised by this commonplace, apparently perfunctory association of the Middle Ages with anything labelled inhumane
Afghan · Ancient history · Art · Literature · Narrative · Orientalism · Political science · Sociology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philippine History and Culture
Introduction
Contrapuntal Histories
“Look, but don’t touch
Race-ing the dragon
Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale and the Post‐9/11 Crusade Mentality
Our deeper past
Postcolonialism and the Study of the Middle Ages
Disorienting Orientalism
On firm Carthaginian ground
The Erasure of the Middle Ages from Anthropology's Intellectual Genealogy
| Unique citing works | 10 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.43 |
| Citation span | 2003 - 2026 (24) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |