69/70 (2010/2011) - Recensio.net

Geschichte: Übergreifende Darstellungen
resembled one another and that Europe’s superiority was not immediately self-evident.
Similarly, for a stunning Secession-style building portal in Amsterdam from the 1920s,
Wintle observes the parallel caryatids of Europe and Asia and concludes that the former is
more “assertive” and the latter more “submissive” (423). Again, another viewer might be
more struck by the resemblance between the two.
Wintle considers critically the project of European Union as an occasion for stoking
European pride with “a torrent of shamelessly positive images,” such as mugs and ashtrays
marked with European emblems. Shifting into the first-person plural, Wintle notes the
“manipulative schemes to adjust our feelings of loyalty and identity” and the “almost
underhand agenda, advanced by Euro-enthusiasts to strengthen the movement towards
European Union” by trying to stimulate broader political enthusiasm (435). For Wintle,
sensitivity to Eurocentrism in the Renaissance seems also to imply some degree of Euroskepticism
in the present.
Some may feel that Wintle makes his argument about Eurocentrism too emphatically,
that Said is invoked a little too broadly to characterize Europe’s negative “othering” of the
other continents. In this regard, the continental issues of Southeastern Europe, and of Eastern
Europe more generally, would have complicated the picture (of Europe) in interesting
ways. Wintle does note that the northern continental boundary between Asia and Europe,
running through the Russian empire, has often fluctuated in European history, and could
even be considered to be arbitrary. He further observes that, by the 18 th century, the Ottoman
and Russian empires both belonged to the European state system, while European
Turkey (that is, Southeastern Europe) and European Russia both were clearly mapped as
parts of Europe (that is, Eastern Europe) (282f.). More attention to these regions would
probably suggest a less clear-cut mental mapping of continental differences and some visual
complications as well.
In Wintle’s discussion of the 18 th century he compares Turks and Africans as non-European
racial “others,” citing, for instance, the image of the vanquished Turk in the Belvedere Palace
in Vienna – “with shaven head and heavy moustaches, clearly Turkish and a defeated
alien” – and concluding that “for the whole of the early modern period, a semi-racialized
image of the Turk, usually in the act of being trampled, was common” (308f.). Yet, the
subject of Turquerie in 18 th -century visual and decorative arts suggests a more nuanced
perspective on Turkish subjects. Recent research by Walter Denny and Perrin Stein suggests
that Turquerie reflected a new intimacy with the Ottoman empire, and not simply a
Saidian sense of the Turks as exotic aliens. 18 th century portraits of Europeans in Turkish
costume suggested that Turkishness was perhaps just a matter of costume, and that Turks
and Europeans were actually quite close, indeed that Turks were themselves ambiguously
European. Shaven heads and moustaches on Turkish men were not necessarily markers of
racial differences, since facial hair could also be seen as a superficial matter of style rather
than an issue of fundamental difference. Costumes and moustaches were the only necessary
alterations for Mozart’s Italian lovers in “Cosi fan tutte” to transform themselves into
Albanians on the operatic stage in Vienna in 1790. Orientalism becomes ambiguous demi-
Orientalism in Eastern Europe.
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