Tag Archives: Jean Leon Gerome

royal etiquette: eye of the Sultan

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Dave

His Majesty’s seamy service.Throne Room Without and Within. Modern Turkish history contains much to be proud of, but it was preceded by a long and unbroken seamy past of plots hatched and destinies decided within the walls of the Grand … Continue reading →

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vintage violence

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Dave

Janissaries were uneducated except in violence and were fanatically conservative. In 1763, when Lord Baltimore passed through Constantinople, he observed that the Corps was still carrying bows and arrows, sabers and lances, having never got used to firearms. Sultan Selim … Continue reading →

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seraglio: methodical despotism

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Dave

The Grand Seraglio. The search for absolute bliss backed up by absolute power with all the variations of sex, death, and violence could muster. The price to pay for approaching utopian conditions in a sort of Islamic version of the … Continue reading →

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diogene: shining a light

Posted on April 21, 2012 by Dave

At Corinth, in Greece, there lived a wise man whose name was Diogenes. Men came from all parts of the land to see him and hear him talk. But wise as he was, he had some very queer ways.He slept … Continue reading →

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dual core

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Dave

The paintings and art of the Orientalists, including photography, fostered tourism and a fascination with the Orient that shaped and reinforced the Western image of the Orient that is subjectively under the sway of still existing colonial motivations, religious intolerance … Continue reading →

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full circle

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Dave

Sometimes things become intertwined in a full circle that initially escapes us since the assumed understanding is based on enlightenment principles guided by the linear progression of science and technology where evolution is rational and explainable. In Donald Kuspit’s The … Continue reading →

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damascus road diversion

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Dave

We know that Bashar Assad has a professorial verbal style, has a tendency to become defensive and stubborn, and is dull, tedious and violent. And we know that regime change is in the air, if not exactly planned, then not … Continue reading →

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Orientalism repackaged

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Dave

The Shafia trial is by any extent, a far more complex process in which the social and larger contexts seemed to outweigh the actual criminal allegations which were never definitively proven, albeit the construction of circumstantial evidence, in sum, was … Continue reading →

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shafia: pet rats in a skinner box touch his lever

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Dave

and so it is. Like Freud’s Totem and Taboo, we have an ape man living in groups dominated by an all powerful father who kept all women for his own exclusive sexual use and abuse. Unlimited, buffet style access to … Continue reading →

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running of the bulls of babylon

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Dave

When extremes support each other. Fundamentally hypocritical bourgeois values? Or, are talking about two fundamentally different approaches to reinforcing the continuity of patriarchy and misogyny that defies rational classicism arisen from the Enlightenment or the irrational attributes of human nature, … Continue reading →

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