The Invisible Counterpoint

Randa Jarrar said this: I’ve written about  the Boston bomber ; about the U.S. government’s  attempts to deport my brother , which kept him in jail for weeks; and about Israel detaining me – a U.S. citizen –  and denying me entry in March 2012 , but the essay of mine that has sparked the most impassioned responses is one about … Belly dancing . [ … ] There were amazing, supportive, beautiful emails from Arab-American sister writers. There were also violently angry emails and tweets that, in a typically sexist and fatphobic way, criticized my appearance and my size. I have been called a fat camel and a hairy ape and a dirty terrorist ever since I moved to the U.S. at the age of 13, so – I’m used to it. But call some people out for wearing genie pants and makeup, which are supposed to make them look Arab, and they go nuts. In my essay, I historicized the appropriation of belly dancing, but I naively thought people knew about the British empire, about U.S. imp...

Comment on Randa Jarrar's "Why I can't stand white belly dancers," at Salon.com: Patrick McEvoy-Halston One thing you noticed about this article on appropriation, is that the author claims to herself what the West is (ostensibly) barren in  -- beautiful female to female eroticism; something more playful, more erotic, than woman to man. Another poster here defines pre-literature cultures -- what the West, originator of the nation state, has always been hostile to -- as weaves rather than linear, as organic rather than blunt and enforced, as connective, and feminine. The West has distanced itself from something deeper and more profound, and is the worse for it.   And jealous , it wants to wretch what it has removed itself from but also at the same time tame it. Some object, and would have them try and find contentment in the spare, antiseptic path they've chosen. "You can't have what we have not just because you'll ruin it but because it was  ...

In the comment sections of Randa Jarrar's essay, "Why I can't stand white belly dancers," commenter listtowardslight said: listtowardslight As a world musician, I'm going to register my deep disapproval of this article.  If someone studies an art form deeply, gives credit where due, and gives it a thorough and deep treatment, they become a part of it.  They're communicating in ways greater than words.  It's nigh well a responsibility to continue the transmission.
 How many videos of any Middle Eastern instrument played can you find without some argument breaking out in the comments - this is Persian!  No!  They ripped it off from the Kurds!  No!  The Armenians invented everything!  These jokers want to place national ownership on an instrument or a type of music.  Are they the ones playing, singing and dancing?  Hardly ever. Does the author want to see if any Chinese are angry that the Japanese koto, the Korean gayageum, the Vietn...

Patrick McEvoy-Halston Arab women are not vessels for white women to pour themselves and lose themselves in; we are not bangles or eyeliner or tiny bells on hips. We are human beings. (Randa Jarrar, "Why I can't stand white belly dancers, Salon.com) I've heard at least one person describe her interest in belly dancing as having to do with good exercise, mostly, and a chance to spend some time with the girls -- a tea party, I guess, but one that shapes you up; numerous others have said they do it out of respect for the art form, wanting to participate in it, its traditions, its beauty. I haven't heard anyone admit that they do what this author argues most white people belly dance for --  to enter into  the brown body Postcolonialists will point out that Europeans ascribed the East as home to dangerous luxury: it had deadly powers of allurement. Pictured as one scene, it would be the brothel, the orgy -- or a market place that would undue you with fabrics,...

Randa Jarrar wrote: Google the term “belly dance” and the first images the search engine offers are of white women in flowing, diaphanous skirts, playing at brownness. How did this become acceptable? The term “belly dance” itself is a Western one. In Arabic, this kind of dance is called Raqs Sharqi, or Eastern dance. Belly dance, as it is known and practiced in the West, has its roots in, and a long history of, white appropriation of Eastern dance.  […] Growing up in the Middle East, I saw women in my community do Raqs Sharqi at weddings and parties. Women often danced with other women, in private spaces, so that this dance was for each other. When they danced at house parties with men in attendance, the dynamic shifted. When women danced for women alone, there was a different kind of eroticism, perhaps more powerful, definitely more playful, or maybe that’s how it felt to me, as a child and teenager, wary of men’s intentions. At weddings the dancing was celebratory and ...