Cultural Significance - Blog Posts
Belly Dancing
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The art of belly dancing is a Middle Eastern practice that has, over time, gravitated towards Western white American women. The way American women dance is this is a ‘glamorization’, and more focused on the power of reception, rather than cultivating it and respecting the practice. Originally, belly dancing is based on ancient folk and social dances in North African and Middle Eastern countries, particularly Egypt and Turkey. The dance is characterized by various hip, torso, shoulder, and chest movements. ‘‘The images projected by Westerners in the performance of belly dance and other forms of oriental dance raise the thorny issue of orientalism. The vocabulary of the dance and its position within the framework of the West, especially the United States, as ‘other’ provides an ‘empty’ location, as in ‘not part of my culture’, for the construction of exotic new fantasy identities. At the same time, as a repository of media stereotypes and thus Western fantasies of women, it also provides physical images via the femme fatale which the (generally female) dance emulates in order to play an assertive sexual role in a male-dominated Western society.’’
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Of course, here in the West, its meaning has changed, especially in America when gained popularity over 100 years ago when ‘dancing girls’ from different countries showcased in Chicago’s World Fair. ‘‘Because of the movements of body parts, such as the stomach, that were expected to be tightly constrained during the Victorian era, controversy surrounded these performers, and belly dance became associated with burlesque, stripping and prostitution. Despite perceptions of belly dancing being associated with sex work, the dance has a variety of meanings for participants, like spiritual, communal, and feminine qualities. For most dancers in the United States, the dance is a form of leisure. Leisure is a voluntary activity that people pursue with a positive state of mind during their free time. For many dancers, belly dance is an enjoyable form of recreation, rather than a primary source of income. Women in most large and mid-size cities around the country take belly dance classes at studios, gyms, and recreation centers.’’
NO. 3
Belly dancing is a key icon of the Middle East and is a site for performing and interpreting. It is appealing because it expresses ‘imperial feelings’, or the complexity of psychological and political belonging to an empire that is often unspoken, sometimes subconscious, but always present, the ‘habits of heart and mind’ that infuse and accompany structures of difference and domination. We can call on U.S imperialism as an example, as it rests as a multicultural nationalism. Belly dancing has become a ‘‘site for staging a New Age feminism and liberal Orientalist perspective on Arab and Muslim women, illustrating what Edward Said called, ‘new-Orientalism’ of the present moment. Orientalism continues to be a deeply appealing, binary frame for imagining the ‘West’ in opposition to the ‘Orient’, or to the East—a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient’, through the production of an 'idea that has a history and tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that has given it a reality and presence in and for the West.’’
The protests of Hawaiians before colonization
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In regard to cultural survival and cultural sustainability, many traditional Hawaiian practices like long distance voyaging, paddling, fishing and surfing is very important, as rom the start of the 19th century to 1970, western colonization almost destroyed Hawaiian culture. In ‘The Struggle for Hawaiian Sovereignty’, by Haunani-Kay Trask, she writes, pg.9, ‘’Entering the U.S as a Territory in 1900, our country became a white planter outpost, providing missionary-descended sugar barons in the islands and imperialist Americans on the continent with a military watering hole in the Pacific—By 1970, rural Hawaiian communities were besieged by rapid development. Urbanization brought an influx of rich haole from the American continent, who unlike tourists, wanted to live in Hawai’i. Evictions of Hawaiians lead to increasing protests, especially in communities scheduled for residential and commercial development.’’
Examples of these protests was one that occurred in 1976, by Isaiah Helekunihi Walker with the creation of Hui O He’e Nalu (club of wave sliders) for preservation of control over North Shore Waves. He voiced concern about an endangered Hawaiian space, or ‘ka po’ ina nalu, which translates to the ‘surf zone’. When Captain Cooke arrived in Hawai’i, he believed the Polynesians were skilled navigators and surfers, as they were able to migrate, or sail, against powerful sails and winds from Asia to the pacific islands. Unfortunately, the missionaries that came decades later deduced that surfing was a ‘barbaric activity’, and with the success of the Christians, Hawaiian men and women especially, were discouraged from boxing, wrestling, or surfing, which was regarded as an act of resistance for both men and women.
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The cultural practices of paddling are another tradition that survived against western colonialism. It was made with canoes, and they were mostly made up from trees, coconuts, or kol trees. In ‘The story of Albert Kamilla Choy Ching, Jr.’ it explains the cultural aspect of paddling and what it means to the Native Hawaiians. ‘’Al was a natural for paddling. He had keen eye-hand coordination and excelled as a steersman. He also loved to teach, and his high school coach John Kapua had taught him enough about paddling technique during his sculling year at Kaimuki for Al to want to improve himself and others. ‘I kept coming back [to paddling] because there was a desire to get better. There never was a desire to get to the very top—-it just came. I wanted to get a little better, and then I figured maybe I can beat that guy and then the next guy…. Before you know it, there’s a lot of guys behind you and you never intended to be that way, ‘’ pg. 4. But on pg.9, the meaning of paddling delves deeper as Al explains, ‘’I enjoy watching out people learn, how they came up from nothing. And if any of them win a race in the state championship, that makes me happy, real happy. Just watching them. Because I remember when I won…. All the things that I learnt through canoeing come from my Hawaiian side. How to look at the clouds. How to look at the ripples on the water and to see how the water is running. Even navigating backwards…the canoes did a real lot for me, kept my health, kept my tradition, kept me in touch with Hawai’i.’’
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This co-exists with the nature of the fishponds, that ‘’played a spiritual, cultural, and political lives of the people. To the native Hawaiians there is a direct spiritual connection between man, god(s) and nature. As noted by Minerb, the natural environment of the land ‘aina’ and sea ‘kai’ and all things contained within it are perceived to be sentient, divine ancestral forms that have extrasensory perception, and interrelate with people as a family. Thus, to Hawaiians, nature is not only conscience, ke ea o ka ‘aina (life-force of the land) but much of it is divine.’’ pg. 2 of Ancient Hawaiian fishponds.
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Hawaii was a group of islands that used a social hierarchy and status was a sign of great importance. Competition, including that of the fishponds, and cooperation were ideal values, as traditionally the ideal is that of chiefly status who were obliged to care for those in there lineage. The hierarchy goes from chief, warriors, experts and craftspeople, and fishermen. Another cultural tradition is long distance voyaging, where Hawaiians sailed in large canoes and traveled across huge waves to get to the nearest land over long distance and time to discover new lands, which is what Ancient Hawaiians did. An example would be the great Hawaiian surfer Eddie Aikau who sailed long distance, over giant waves during the 70’s. The voyage is highly dangerous, as the ocean is temperamental, but lots of sailors today even, do it to feel closer to their ancestors and to remember their home. The comparison and contrast between all four, long distance voyaging, paddling, fishing, and surfing in regard to issues of sustainability and cultural survival is that by doing these activities, it was seen to the Hawaiian people as an act of resisting the degrading, humiliating andappropriating acts that colonialism brings with it, as they were immersed with the natural world.
Haitian Revolution
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As history points out, the French Revolution sparked things like Freedom, Equality, and Fraternity, into the hearts of oppressed peoples, and birthed the Haitian revolution, where enslaved peoples did not have to stay that way. Thoughts of freedom and a life of their own ran through the hearts of the large population of enslaved and free blacks on the island of Saint—Domingue, where they did not have to answer any longer to the white hierarchy and elite. The one leading man that helped change a revolt into a revolution that paved change to the island, was Toussaint Louverture. But who was Toussaint Louverture? How exactly did one person, who was also enslaved, become the leader of a revolution, and how did it change life?
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The Haitian Revolution is such a widely popular topic to discuss and converse about is because a successful slave revolt against one the leading powers at that time, France, Spain and Britain, but mostly France, has never been done before. That, and it proved black people were not the primitive, lower species that the majority had deeply believed them to be, and Toussaint Louverture proved to be one of the most brilliant army generals to-be-rulers at that time. By scanning the map of the island, he was able to gain allies in the free black militia and the mulatto population, who were tired of being treated second-class. To go back to the quote, the Code Noir (Black Code), at the time legalized the most cruel, abusive and harsh treatment of slaves; if you ran, and you were caught, you would suffer dearly, and so would any slave you came into contact with by two folds. ‘’It forbid slaves from bearing arms, the assembly of slaves, and slaves trading or selling their own goods for a profit. It stated that slaves who struck their master or any free person were to be punished by death. It explicitly defined slaves as personal property.’’ The fact that King Louis XIV of France, put the Code Noir under effect and Louverture was able to defy it, and did it with his own army himself shows that his leadership was effective; and indeed, for in the capital of Haiti, Louverture is considered a hero and liberator for his people.
In American Political Science Review on Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, who was born on a southern plantation who is biased, showing a clear defense of slavery, particularly American slavery, and bases his experience on an economic study of American slaveholders and there sharecrops. He has made use of Southern newspapers and pamphlets, and some source materials, but has not made any effort to research ‘Negro’ sources, from which he claims are ‘dubious details’ anyway. The review last five pages, and explicitly states that the ‘Negro’ as a responsible person has no place in the book, and gives Louverture the term ‘criminal’ to suit his needs, and the needs of others. Half of the book implies historical facts, the treating of Africa and the slave trade and West Indian and American conditions while the other half is a series of essays on aspects of slavery—cotton crop, plantation economy, etc., and the other half is devoted to freedom and crime among slaves and slave codes. ‘The law is the law, and it should stay that way!’
NO. 3
According to Toussaint Louverture: A Black Jacobin in the Age of Revolutions , The man who would in later life be known as Toussaint Louverture himself belonged to the category of ‘creole; His father was Gaou Guinon, an African prince who was captured by slavers and endured the horrors of the Middle Passage across the Atlantic Ocean. As an enslaved child, Toussaint would have been known as Toussaint Breda, named after the plantation on which he was born. The actual details of his birth remain’s uncertain, but from his name he is associated with All Saints Day; his personal life, meaning his early childhood, is also uncertain. As Phillipe Girard comments, ‘retracing the childhood of a slave is an arduous task, not only because of the lack of archival traces, but also because such traces that exist tend to dehumanize the enslaved and deny their individuality.’
Toussaint, after rising to power, did not wish to surrender that power to Paris and ruled Saint Domingue as an autonomous entity. In 1801 he issued a Constitution for the island, which provided for autonomy and established Toussaint as governor for life, where he abolished slavery and aspired to put in place a multiracial society composed of blacks, whites and mulattos. When Napoleon Bonaparte came to power in France, he aimed to return the Caribbean colonies to their earlier profitability as plantation colonies. In 1802 he dispatched an expedition of French soldiers to the island, lead by his brother in law Charles Leclerc, to reestablish French authority and slavery. Leclerc arrested Toussaint and deported him to France where he was imprisoned in Fort de Joux, where he died on April 7, 1803. For a few months, the island lay under Bonaparte’s control, but the French soldiers fell victim to weapons and disease, and surrendered to the indigenous army in November 1803; On July 1, 1804, under Jean-Jaques Dessalines control, Louverture’s general, the colony, the first black republic, became known as Haiti.
