Sexuality And Spatiality In Alteritist Discourse
Gender and sexuality have long held an important place in western attitudes towards the people and regions of the world - from the titillating accounts of harem life in the Middle East to terrifying captivity narratives of North America. This book pulls together this large, disparate, and often contradictory literature, and views it as a corpus. Schick argues that such images served to construct spatial difference, and thereby helped Europe represent its own place in the world during an age of rapid geographical expansion.
It reflects on why foreign women were variously portrayed as alluring or threatening, foreign men as effeminate weaklings or dangerous rapists, and foreign lands as sexual idylls or hearts of darkness.
