 (photo above - a common image on the streets of Buenos Aires) In this imaginary tango the role of the Other is performed by ‘La Otra’ the female other (Argentina) This Otra is guilty of Otherness or, to put it differently, is accused of being an Otra in that she lacks and exceed in “something” compared to the male (Colonizer). Her excessive passion and her lack of control over it beg for the male’s embrace and leadership. She will be dragged into the dance, be led through it, and be held while performing unstable/excessive footwork. Her instinctive “passion” can never totally subdued, she passionately resist and is comforted by the male embrace/control. But her passion is aroused by the male desire...In the performance the exotic Argentina (Other) threat the colonizer (the One) through her display of excess. The exotic is the passionate hunting past at the margin of the imperial civilized world. For the Other to become an Exotic, this threat needs to be tamed, tilted toward the side of the pleasurable, the disturbingly enjoyable: the erotic. The dangerousness however, should be retained, evoked again and again, as proof of the necessity of colonial civilised domination. Exotic places, persons and things often display the amiable side of the Other: plants, perfumes, clothing, jewellery, food and spices, art, courtship, songs and dance. The threatening side equally exoticised, remains in the background, a haunting violence: dictators, volcanoes, diseases, polygamy, poverty. The femaleness of the exotic is identified precisely in this ambivalence. The exuberance, sumptuousness, danger and sensuality of the exotic are again, a result of measuring the Other (as she is constituted) with the imperial bourgeois morality of the coloniser’s stick. The exotic Other always comes out of this operation as an oddity lacking something-rationality, control, decorum, propriety – and exceeding in something else – violence sensuality and passion. CommentsLeave a Reply | ArchivesSeptember 2011 Categories |
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