Sultan’s Court: European Fantasies of the East

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Our Price: $22.00

Year: 1998
Pages: 222
Binding Paperback
ISBN 1859841228

Product Code: 756790921

Description

Alain Grosrichard (au); Liz Heron (tr); Mladen Dolar (in). A fascinating deconstruction of Western accounts of ‘Oriental despotism’ in the 17th & 18th cent., focusing on portrayals of the Ottoman Empire & the supposedly enigmatic structure of the despot’s power & his court of mutes, dwarfs, eunuchs & wives. Drawing on the writings of Montesquieu, Rousseau & Voltaire & others, Grosrichard goes further than merely cataloguing their intense fascination with the vortex of capriciousness, violence, cruelty, lust, sexual perversion & slavery which they perceived in the seraglio. He describes the process as one in which these writers were constructing a fantasmatic Other to counterpose to their project of a rationally based society. Explores what it can reveal about modern political thought & power relations generally.

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