Tag: Special Issue

Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’ and Orientalism

Published April 4, 2022

Written by Haifa Mahabir

I hesitated on writing this piece, a critique of Frank Herbert’s seminal contribution to the literatures of speculative fiction. It feels a bit beneath the urgency of the topics we ordinarily lend our time to in lensing the Middle East and Northern Africa—the whole heart-breaking aftermath of foreign imperial ambitions. Our dispossession, and our grief. Our resistance. A Saidian orientalist critique of Dune is far too easy. Frank Herbert’s masterpiece of course, regarded as a foundational text of the Science Fiction genre, is inarguably rife with orientalist motifs and imagery.

War, Media and the ‘Middle East’

Published March 17, 2022

Written by Anne Caldwell

From the very beginning, this special issue was intended to question our academic and media narratives of the “Middle East” (or Southwest Asia) – the Levant and Palestine in particular. From the archives we utilise to the culture we analyse and the news media we consume, our understanding of South-West Asia and North Africa (SWANA) is not without its biases. This has never been clearer than in the current cultural clash over decolonisation, amplified in this moment by the crisis unfolding in Ukraine.