Showing papers on "Orientalism published in 2020"

What is an ‘oriental’ carpet? Reimagining, remaking, repossessing the patterned pile carpets of South, Central and West Asia since 1840

Abstract: This thesis excavates what lies beneath commonly accepted judgements of the patterned pile carpets of South, Central and West Asia, widely known as ‘oriental’ carpets, in order to open new areas of investigation into these artifacts. Beginning with a critique of the dominant European and North American connoisseurial and scholarly position on these artifacts, the thesis analyses the role they play in materializing ideas of the Other, the subaltern and the colonized. It investigates their participation in complex global networks of materials, technology, skills, and ideology. It interrogates important concepts underlying not only European and North American ideas about the patterned pile carpets of South, Central and West Asia, but about crafts more broadly. Contested concepts such as tradition, authenticity, authorship, originals and copies, handmade and machine-made are explored, and the binaries implied by them are challenged. Chapter one interrogates the assumptions underlying European and North American writing and thinking on these artifacts since around 1840. It argues that rather than articulating stable and enduring evaluations of aesthetic and cultural value, these assumptions express certain psychological, political, social and economic ideas in which Europeans and North Americans invested from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. The chapter examines the circumstances which brought into being this dominant reading, a reading I describe as the European and North American orthodoxy; deconstructing the work of its foundational thinkers, and the practice which enacts and polices it. Chapters two, three and four investigate the orthodoxy at work, both materializing its values in carpets it reinvents as iconic and excluding carpets it regards as transgressive of its values. I use three examples to argue my case. The first is the reimagining of the canonical sixteenth century Persian Ardabil carpet in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, as the preeminent example of the values of the orthodoxy, from its arrival in the museum in 1892 to the present day. The second two examples are of carpets that transgress the European and North American orthodoxy’s values and are consequently defined by it as of low aesthetic, cultural and commercial value. They are machine-made versions of these artifacts woven at the Templeton Carpet Manufacturing Company in Glasgow from 1840, and handmade carpets produced for a global export market in colonial Punjab from 1860, and independent Pakistan from 1947. The thesis takes an approach which is at once political, rooted in the framework of orientalism, postcolonialism and decoloniality; historical, setting out to write a history of objects and history through objects; material, focused on technology, making, dyes and fibres; and experiential, drawing on haptic and psychoanalytical thought. From these perspectives, the thesis argues for an opening up of the conversation about these artifacts, beyond the frequently used constraints of connoisseurship and provenance. It sets out to readmit excluded weavers and their carpets to the story of these artifacts; and to reposition these carpets in the discussion about creativity, how things are made, and how that making changes across time and space, a conversation where their role has commonly been restricted to that of exemplars of the traditional and the Other.

Between Islamic Learning and Philological Nationalism: Mullah Mahmûdê Bayazîdî’s Auto-ethnography of the Kurds

Abstract: This article deals with the ethnographic and philological works of the nineteenth-century Kurdish scholar Mullah Mahmude Bayazidi, which mark a crucial stage in the history of vernacular Kurdish-language learning. It turns out that Bayazidi, although working in the service of the then Russian consul, Auguste Jaba, cannot be called either a “native informant” nor an “orientalist scholar”. After providing some historical background, I discuss Bayazidi’s main writings and their significance. I then discuss his conceptions of language, literature, local tradition or culture, and history, concluding that none of these bears any traces of modern Western philology or romantic nationalism. Hence, his work cannot be qualified as “internalized orientalism”, but, as it is written in a vernacular language, neither can it be wholly assimilated to classical Islamic learning.

The ‘new Orientalism’: education policy borrowing and representations of East Asia

Abstract: This article explores the discourses concerning, and actors promoting, the recent ‘rise’ of East Asia in the global trend of education policy borrowing. It focuses on the ways in which English poli...

After Eat, Pray, Love: Tourism, Orientalism, and cartographies of salvation:

Abstract: This article examines certain kinds of travel and tourism as extensions of colonial and examples of neocolonial forms of Orientalist engagement between the global North and global South. Focusing o...

Third-Stream Orientalism: J. N. Farquhar, the Indian YMCA's Literature Department, and the Representation of South Asian Cultures and Religions (ca. 1910–1940)

Abstract: This article reconstructs the history of the Indian YMCA's Orientalist knowledge production in an attempt to capture a significant, if forgotten, transitional moment in the production and dissemination of scholarship on the religions and cultures of the Indian subcontinent. The YMCA's three Orientalist book series examined here flourished from the 1910s to the 1930s and represent a kind of third-stream approach to the study of South Asia. Inspired by the Christian fulfillment theory, “Y Orientalism” was at pains to differentiate itself from older polemical missionary writings. It also distanced itself from the popular “spiritual Orientalism” advocated by the Theosophical Society and from the philologically inclined “academic Orientalism” pursued in the Sanskrit departments of Western universities. The interest of the series’ authors in the region's present and the multifarious facets of its “little traditions,” living languages, arts, and cultures, as well as their privileging of knowledge that was generated “in the field” rather than in distant Western libraries, was unusual. Arguably, it anticipated important elements of the “area studies” approach to the Indian subcontinent that became dominant in Anglophone academia after the Second World War.

Different Types of Orientalism and Corresponding Views of Jews and Judaism : A Historical Overview of Shifting Perceptions and Stereotypes

Abstract: The goal of this article is to examine the various forms of Orientalism generated by the East-West distinction in European thought and the complexity of corresponding perceptions of Judaism and Jews that emerged as a consequence. What have been the major shifts in European self-perception and in European perceptions of Jews and Judaism if one traces Europe’s orientation in terms of East and West? My starting point is not in Jewish history, but in Europe’s worldview and self-perception. The East-West parameter both predates and postdates the historical stages of Orientalism. The article offers two typologies of Orientalism: a historical typology that distinguishes between religious, philosophical, imperialist, and artistic forms of Orientalism; and, an intercultural communication typology of the Oriental Other based on two scales ranging from foreign to familiar and from threatening to interesting. Both typologies demonstrate that Orientalism is a complex phenomenon that cannot be reduced to a single form. Moreover, when applied to current definitions and expressions of antisemitism the second typology shows how these definitions and expressions vary considerably depending on different forms of interaction between the Self and the Other. Neither Orientalism nor antisemitism are monolithic.

Sexuality, nationalism and the other: the Arabic literary canon between orientalism and the Nahḍa discourse at the Fin de Siècle

Abstract: This article examines the dual and paradoxical conception of the Arabic literary canon in Orientalist and Nahḍa discourses in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—an era of great change and...

From chop suey to chop-socky: the construction of Chineseness in British television adverts

Abstract: Edward Said’s theory of orientalism proposes that Western European culture has overwhelmingly tended to (mis)represent non-European cultures, societies, regions, and ethnic groups via mythic, romantic, simplistic and simplifying sets of binaries. This article asks whether orientalism remains present or active within contemporary media, by analysing the representation of ‘Chineseness’ in British television adverts between 1955 and 2018. It argues that a predictable, recurring, limited set of aural, visual and narrative cliches and stereotypes have functioned – and continue to function – as the principal resources to evoke ‘Chineseness’ in British television adverts. The analysis suggests that caricatures, cliches and stereotypes of China, Chinese people, locations, artifacts and phenomena are so common that there can be said to be a glaring seam of unacknowledged, uninterrogated orientalism functioning to maintain a kind of ‘invisible’ racism in British advertising.

"Can East Asian Students Think?": Orientalism, Critical Thinking, and the Decolonial Project.

Abstract: Amidst the increasing calls for the decolonisation of universities, this article interrogates the representation of East Asian students in Western academia. It is argued that East Asian students are often imagined in Orientalist ways, as can be evidenced by evaluating the depiction of East Asian students in academic publications. More specifically, it is suggested that common perceptions of East Asian students as lacking in critical thinking may unwittingly reinforce stereotypes that are rooted in historic narratives which depict East Asians as inferior to (white) Westerners. This article also explores the way in which East Asian academics and students may also subscribe to these Orientalist perceptions. Finally, this article offers a refutation of the stereotype that East Asian students struggle with critical thinking and it suggests that being more reflexive about the way that we imagine ethnic minority students should be a key component of our efforts to decolonise the university.

Orientalism, Gender, and Nation Defied by an Iranian Woman: Feminist Orientalism and National Identity in Satrapi’s Persepolis and Persepolis 2

Abstract: Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novels Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (2003) and Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return (2004) —focused on her youth and early adulthood in Iran and Austria— reveal in many ways the conflicting coexistence between the West —Europe and North America— and the Middle East. This article explores feminist Orientalism and national identity in both Satrapi’s works, with the purpose of demonstrating the manners that these comics complicate and challenge binary divisions commonly related to the tensions amid the Occident and the Orient, such as East-West, Self-Other, civilized-barbarian and feminism-antifeminism. In the first part of the analysis, feminist Orientalism —a concept based on the works of Edward Said and Roksana Bahramitash, which is defined in the paper as any form of domination from the West on the East, validated by women’s rights and/or Western feminism— is applied on the two comics of Satrapi, in order to explain how they break some stereotypes linked to women from the East, like their passive and subjugated role in a patriarchal and religious society. Through the study of feminist Orientalism on both graphic novels, it can also be observed the various ways in which the protagonist disputes the notion of the West as the best place for women to live, unlike the “uncivilized” Orient. The second part of the analysis exposes the complex national identity of the main character. On the one hand, she opposes the nationalism that the Iranian fundamentalist regime wants to impose, and, on the other hand, she is attached to her family and Iranian culture. Moreover, the article delves into the ambivalent national identity of the protagonist during her experience as a migrant in Vienna, where she defies misunderstandings and Orientalized visions, but also suffers because of the tensions and differences between the Occident and the Orient.

El orientalismo en la producción cerámica de William de Morgan (1839-1917): las corrientes persa, iznik y andalusí

Abstract: A key period for the study of the history of contemporary design was the second half of the 19th century, when the Arts & Crafts movement was developed in Great Britain, promoted by William Morris. Interestingly, one of his closest collaborators, the potter William de Morgan (1839-1917), has not received much attention from researchers. Through this paper, we contribute with new visions of its pottery inspired by the Islamic tradition, contextualizing the creation of its pieces at a time of boom in Orientalism. It was precisely then that several British public and private collections were enriched with precious ceramic objects from ancient Persia, the Ottoman Empire or Spain. The existing publications on William de Morgan do not analyze how these influences determined his production, a question that we address in the present study. In order to achieve this goal, we have used documents as his discourse on lustre ware ceramics presented to the Royal Society of Arts in 1892, as well as many of his designs hoarded in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (V&A). In this way we have been able to delve into the impact of Orientalism on nineteenth-century ceramics, highlighting the relevance that ancient Persian, Ottoman and Andalusian designs had when it came to renovating European decorative arts.

A postcolonial perspective of a voyage to egypt in the travelogue under the african sun by milorad rajčević

Abstract: Milorad Rajcevic (1890–1964), a famous Serbian traveller, adventurer, and travelogue writer, also went to Egypt in 1921 as part of his world travels. Impressions and experiences from his travels were published consecutively in Belgrade magazine Little Journal and in the form of monographs Under the African Sun (1924 and 1925) and In the Far East (1930). These writings provide us with an important insight into the Serbian bourgeois class image of both ancient Egypt and Egypt in the time Rajcevic made his journey. His impressions and experiences from Egypt were transmitted through his travelogue Under the African Sun and were shaped by colonial discourse of a European traveller. It provides us with an insight into the attitudes towards ancient and modern Egypt before academic interest in studying ancient Egyptian past in Serbia. The travelogue contains numerous Orientalist ideas about Arabic population of Egypt. From the point of view of history of archaeology, particularly important are his comments on progress and modernisation. In that context, his comparisons of European with Ancient Egyptian cultural and technical achievements play a significant role. This paper analyses the content of the travelogue Under the African Sun from a postcolonial perspective and argues that although certain ideas inherent to colonial episteme of his time can be recognized, it is not possible to pinpoint the exact sources Rajcevic used.

Neo-Orientalism or Neo-Imperialism? Islamism in a Globalized World: Prayers for the Assassin as a Case Study of Contemporary American Novel

Abstract: This paper deals with some aspects of neo-orientalism in the modern American novel highlighted in much conventional political and literary studies and conceptualized both as a composite of cultural studies and a western ideology. When applied to the post 9/11 American novel analysis, neo-orientalism uses terrorism as a significant aspect of a much broader reaction to Islamists' threats living in the United States and Europe. It is common in neo-orientalist discourse about extremism to refer to Islamism as a threat to nations and therefore, it is important to find how the American novel represents the Muslims and how vigorously acts with the state in its fight against terror. This paper focuses on contemporary issues on Arabs represented in Robert Ferrigno's Prayers for the Assassin (2006), such as extremism, women's rights, hostility, and identity, common themes in post 9/11 novel on the Muslims. Moreover, this study attempts to answer two questions: Has there been a change in the representation of Muslims in the American novel after nineteen years from 9/11, and has American media coverage affected the representation of the Muslims in the novel? In the analysis of Prayers for the Assassin, Muslim characters are victimers and victimized at the same time; they live out the contradiction of being victims of post 9/11 anti-Muslim representations and being arrogant and aggressive towards the non-Muslims.

Notes on Russian Orientalism as a Phenomenon of Cultural Transfers

Abstract: Russian Orientalism as a phenomenon of cultural transfer based on the material of the Russian literature of the 19th century is considered in this article. The author offers to look at the processes of invention the East in Russia not only as a complex of various transformations of European ideas, texts, ideologies, and symbolic structures planted to the Russian soil, but also as an important process of convergence and mixing of Russian, American, and European methodology for studying the Eastern “Otherness”.

Cultural Authenticity, the Family, and East Asian American Romance Novels

Abstract: Although romance novels are overwhelmingly white where romantic protagonists and their communities are concerned (even if these societies are culturally diverse in reality), romance writers and readers of different ethnicities have challenged this white norm. Black American romance is a flourishing subgenre, albeit with its own problems of market limitations, and Hispanic romance publishing is a growing phenomenon. However, romance novels with East Asian protagonists are few and far between. This essay outlines briefly the rise of romance novels featuring East Asian protagonists (that is, protagonists mainly of Chinese, Japanese, or Korean background), and then explores how these novels constitute “Asianness.” Drawing on Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism and Stanley Fish’s configuration of strong and weak multiculturalism, I will consider how references to history, culture, and, above all, a certain notion of the oppressive Asian family are used to create a sense of authentic Asianness in historical romances set in China, as well as in contemporary romances that also employ tropes about identity formation and identity crisis often found in Asian-American Young Adult novels. About the Author: Associate Professor Hsu-Ming Teo is the Head of the Department of English at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, where she teaches historical fiction, popular fiction, and creative writing. Her academic publications include Desert Passions: Orientalism and Romance Novels (2012) and the edited collections The Popular Culture of Romantic Love in Australia (2017) and Cultural History in Australia (2003). She has published a range of articles and book chapters on the history of Orientalism, travel, British imperialism, romance fiction, and popular culture. She is an associate editor of the Journal of Popular Romance Studies and an editorial board member of the Journal of Australian Studies . Her literary novels include the award-winning Love and Vertigo (2000) and Behind the Moon (2005).

Peoples’ internationalism: Central Asian modernisers, Soviet Oriental studies and cultural revolution in the East (1936-1977)

Abstract: This thesis analyses the way Soviet orientalists wrote the history of Central Asia, and in particular of the Tajik SSR, one of the region’s constituent Republics. Focusing on the post-war period, it supports the argument that Soviet orientalists reimagined the Central Asian past as part of a wider, global history. Highlighting continuities with the pre-Revolutionary tradition of academic Orientology, it discloses how the orientalist approach of history centred on a vision of human development that contradicted historical materialism in essential ways. While Stalinism imagined history as driven by socio-economic laws of development, Soviet orientalists granted culture a relatively autonomous and progressive force in history too. Illuminating a distinct “Asian” voice in the heritage of Soviet Oriental studies, this thesis foregrounds the intellectual biography of Central Asian Bobodzhan Gafurovich Gafurov, director of the academic Institute for Oriental studies in Moscow from 1956 until his death in 1977. Crucially, Gafurov’s approach to history resisted the contention shared in capitalist and socialist modes of thinking that ethno-centric nationalism was a necessary by-product of the universal path towards modernity. Gafurov’s activities in UNESCO indicate that anti-colonial activists and pacifists across the Euro-Asian terrain joined forces to try and decolonize world history and civilization while rejecting an exclusively nation-centred historiography. Drawing inspiration from interwar visions of internationalism, these activists highlighted transnational, non-territorial solidarities between peoples too, emphasizing their historically productive, revolutionary potential. It is their attempt to reveal an anti-colonial “peoples’ internationalism” through the prism of Central Asian history that this thesis maps out.

Orientalism and Russian speaking minority regions in Europe: representing Narva

Abstract: This paper uses the concept of orientalism to propose a framework for understanding the relationship between international news media and individual representations of minority groups in Europe. Ev...

The Politics of Travel: The Travel Memoirs of Mirza Sheikh I’tesamuddin and Sake Dean Mahomed

Abstract: Representation of the East in 18 th century western travel narratives was an outcome of a European aesthetic sensibility that thrived on imperial jingoism. The 18 th century Indian travel writings proved that East could not be discredited as “exotic” and “orientalist” or its history be judged as a “discourse of curiosity”. The West had its share of mystery that had to be unravelled for the curious visitor from the East. Dean Mahomed’s The Travels of Dean Mahomed is a fascinating travelogue cum autobiography of an Indian immigrant as an insider and outsider in India, Ireland and England. I’tesamuddin’s The Wonders of Vilayet is a travel-memoir that addresses the politics of representation. These 18 th century travelographies demystify “vilayet” in more ways than one. They analyse the West from a variety of tropes from gender, to religion and racism to otherness and identity. This paper attempts a comparative analyses of the two texts from the point of view of 18 th century travel writing and representations through the idea of journey. It seeks to highlight the concept of “orientalism in reverse” and show how memoirs can be read as counterbalancing textual responses to counteract dominant western voices.

The Mediterranean World and the ‘Turk’ in Shakespeare’s Representation of the British Empire

Abstract: This research explores Shakespeare’s representation of the so-called British Empire in its contact with other jostling empires, most notably the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean. To this end, four of Shakespeare’s Mediterranean plays Othello, the Moor of Venice (1603), The Merchant of Venice (1596), The Tempest (1611), and Cymbeline (1611) are taken understudy. By considering the Postcolonial historicist approach developed by literary scholars such as Stephen Greenblatt and Edward Said, the research argues that the issues of imperial relationships in Shakespeare are not solely centered on the transatlantic colony of Virginia, but it was also extended to the Mediterranean basin. The latter, during Tudor England and, later, Stuart Britain had much more trade and diplomatic activity than on the Atlantic seaboard. This economic activity created a cosmopolitan zone of contact wherein people of the Orient elbowed people from the West. This encounter gave rise to a pre-modern form of Orientalism, which is reflected in Shakespeare’s celebration of marital-cum-political endogamous relationships in his four plays mentioned earlier.

In Postcolonial Lens: Analysis of Philippine Archaeology’s History and Direction

Abstract: The historical context of archaeology in the Philippines was shaped by colonial influences, and it can be seen through various foreign archaeologists who initially worked and contributed to the archipelago. The study uses the framework of Edward Said’s Orientalism to carefully extract the colonial features of Philippine archaeology through an overview of the discipline’s history from the late nineteenth century up to the present. The study finds that the practice of Philippine archaeology became a hybrid of its western origin and nationalistic view—showcasing a unique blend of indigenous knowledge, scientific advancements, and antiquarian perspective. The discipline also moved away from its western roots as it leans more on actual fieldwork and public archaeological efforts rather than pursue theoretical discourses. The study reveals the importance of nationalism in archaeological practice in postcolonial states in Southeast Asia such as the Philippines as it was used to promote common heritage and unity to its multicultural landscape. Lastly, the paper also presents current developments in the discipline and its influence on future archaeological research.

Gendered Eyewitness in Narration: Imagining Morocco in British Women Travel-Inspired Narratives in Late Nineteenth Century

Abstract: The nineteenth century gave unprecedented travel opportunities to Europeans to visit and write about the “Orient”. The growing imperial expansion and subsequent imperial consciousness among British travelers found ample justification in various literary forms and discursive manifestations that enhanced a zealous desire towards empire building and the construction of a British identity that grappled with its otherness in “highly asymmetrical relations of subordination.” This offered many Victorian women travelers the chance to travel beyond borders while subverting the conventional image of domesticity associated with them, just as it enabled them to embrace freedom from the compelling institutions of patriarchy at home. Studying Victorian female travel narratives to the “Orient” provides inexhaustible grounds to rethink the intricate relationship between travel, overt nationalism, gendered constructions of identity and Orientalist ideology. This paper is concerned with the traveling experiences of Amelia Perrier through her A Winter in Morocco (1873), and Frances Macnab’s A Ride in Morocco among Traders and Believers (1902). With a postcolonially-inflected consciousness, it attempts to investigate how these travel narratives reproduce the strategies characteristic of Orientalist discourse in its inscription of self and Other power relations, fueled up by a will to knowledge and control over new territories. I shall argue that late nineteenth century British women travel writers operated not only in the power structures of gender but also within the larger structures of empire, class categorization, and race dynamics.

Orientalism poetics: story by Leonid Solovyov “The Nomad”

Abstract: The article deals with the problem of orientalism in literature, narrowed to the question of “Russian orientalism” and its Soviet derivation. The names of Nikolai Karazin and Andrey Platonov are mentioned among Russian literary Orientalists. The researchers identify the differences between Soviet Orientalism and the Orientalism of the XIX century. The analytical paradigm presented in the article outlines the prospects for the scientific study of “Uzbek impressions. Salir-Gul” (1933) by Sigismund Krzyzanowski and Pavel Zaltzman's novel “Central Asia in the Middle Ages” (1930s). For the first time, the novel “The nomad” (“Kochevye”) by the Russian writer of the twentieth century Leonid Solovyov written in 1929 and published in 1932 is analyzed in detail. Appeal to the folklore, ceremonial, and ritual life of the peoples of Central Asia becomes one of the main techniques of Leonid Solovyov's Oriental poetics. Solovyov's narrator is not a traditional orientalist observer of an alien, and therefore exotic, picture of the world. In Solovyov's poetics, the subject of the story merges with its object and represents a single whole: Russian literature spoke in the voice of a stranger. The material of the article corresponds to the intentions outlined in modern postcolonial studies.

Central Asia in Contemporary Russian Literature: Among Nostalgia, Trauma and Orientalism

Abstract: Central Asia in contemporary Russian literature is represented by two main discourses, Nostalgia discourse and New Orientalism discourse. This article follows a diachronic perspective in an attempt to understand their origins, the characteristics of the Tashkent text and the Tajikistan text in literature, as well as historical and cultural factors which led to the present-day image of Central Asia in Russian culture, from the first Orientalist works through hybridisation processes to the collapse of the USSR and the Post-Soviet trauma. As a sample of contemporary literature, novels by Dina Rubina, Suhbat Aflatuni, Andrey Volos, Yevgeny Chizhov and other writers are analysed.

Islam as a Challenge to The Ideology of Religious Studies: Failures of Religious Studies in the Middle East

Abstract: Why has Religious Studies failed to gain ground in Middle Eastern universities? This article aims to move beyond a lens of underdevelopment to think about the significance of Muslim opposition to the discipline. When we suppose that studying religion and religions is an obvious thing to do, we risk casting those who deliberately avoid it as somehow irrationally refusing to see what is in front of them. But what if their objections reveal something troubling about the received terms through which we talk about cultures around the world? By taking seriously a certain Islamic perspective on the terms of Western scholarship, this article highlights ways in which it supports Timothy Fitzgerald’s critique in The Ideology of Religious Studies (2000). It poses a challenge to the idea of value-free study of religion, religions and the religious as conducted through any discipline. This author’s hope is that a focus on Muslim voices may bring these concerns home in particular to the fields of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, where the terms of comparative Religious Studies have been embraced as an escape from Orientalism.

“Naturalizing” Asian Americans: Edith Eaton

Abstract: This chapter focuses on the first Asian North American author, Edith Eaton, who started to publish under the nom de plume Sui Sin Far at the turn of the twentieth century, in a context of legal exclusion, Orientalist fascination, and xenophobic nativism. Eaton wrote most of her articles and fiction out of an unwavering commitment to the dignity of the Chinese immigrants in North America. In trying to bring the Chinese closer to a wider audience, more often than not Eaton echoed the discourse and conventions of the time, most notably the Orientalist and sentimental idioms. As this chapter intends to demonstrate, an ecocritical reading of Eaton’s work allows us to see how her handling of those conventions dismantled, or at least questioned, the racist animalization of her time (the pest-pet dichotomy), sometimes by exposing its crude fallacy and unfairness, sometimes by resorting to alternative natural metaphors like flowers.