Research Catalog

Title

The Gay Girl in Damascus hoax : progressive orientalism and the Arab Spring / Andrew Orr.

Author

Orr, Andrew, 1976-

Publication

Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter Oldenbourg, [2023]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xi, 161 pages; 24 cm.

Summary

The Gay Girl in Damascus Hoax explores the vulnerability of educated and politically engaged Westerners to Progressive Orientalism, a form of Orientalism embedded within otherwise egalitarian and anti-imperialist Western thought. Early in the Arab Spring, the Gay Girl in Damascus blog appeared. Its author claimed to be Amina Arraf, a Syrian American lesbian Muslim woman living in Damascus. After the blog's went viral in April 2011, Western journalists electronically interviewed Amina, magnifying the blog's claim that the Syrian uprising was an ethnically and religiously pluralist movement anchored in an expansive sense of social solidarity. However, after a post announced that the secret police had kidnapped Amina, journalists and activists belatedly realized that Amina did not exists and Thomas "Tom" MacMaster, a forty-year-old straight white American man and peace activist living and studying medieval history in Scotland was the blog's true author. MacMaster's hoax succeeded by melding his and his audience's shared political and cultural beliefs into a falsified version of the Syrian Revolution that validated their views of themselves as anti-racist and anti-imperialist progressives by erasing real Syrians.

Series Statement

Transnational queer histories ; Volume 1

Subject

• Since 2010
• Blogs > Political aspects > Arab countries
• Hoaxes in mass media
• Arab Spring, 2010-
• Blogs
• Social media
• Arab countries

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction: Orientalism and the Western Imagination -- Chapter I Crafting a Digital Heroine -- Chapter II Amina and the Media -- Chapter III The Scandal -- Chapter IV Academics, Ideology, and Identity -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index.

Call Number

JFE 23-2563

ISBN

• 9783111056579
• 3111056570

LCCN

• 2022950765
• 9783111056579

OCLC

1379096330

Author

Orr, Andrew, 1976- author.

Title

The Gay Girl in Damascus hoax : progressive orientalism and the Arab Spring / Andrew Orr.

Publisher

Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter Oldenbourg, [2023]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Transnational queer histories ; Volume 1

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chronological Term

Since 2010

Other Form:

9783111057231 PDF

9783111057583 ePub

Other Standard Identifier

9783111056579

Research Call Number

JFE 23-2563