Orientalism Reversed: Syrian Acrobats and Jugglers in the West, an Occidentalist Literature of Their Own

Abstract

Starting from the mid-nineteenth century, many Arab acrobats furnished the performances’ scenes of Western theatres and fairs. Many were recruited to serve as displayers at the World Columbian Exposition (1893) and even earlier as exclusive performers and racial beings to gratify the quest of Western spectators. The orientalist discourse burgeoned and grew out as a consequence of those expositions that used ethnicities as representatives of exoticism. I argue that despite ethnic clustering and racial amassing in such ludo-entertaining space wherein Arabs were exhibited, the discourse of alterity and otherness generated to describe Arab acrobats’ weird practices and queer attire failed to formulate a solid argument. Resisting the voices of Arab acrobats neutralized that. This article purports to highlight the fascinating literature that shifts the spotlight downwards and reconsiders the position of Syrian (a term which, in the 19th century, encompassed much of the Levant, including modern-day Lebanon) acrobats as active participants in Western circuses. Starting from the turn of the nineteenth century, these acrobats furrowed their itineraries as fluid identities and dissenting voices. Using a postcolonial micro-historicist approach, this paper aims to undermine orientalist discourse by consolidating Syrian alternative discourses of difference, framing them as occidentalism and as counterproductive accounts.