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The Cabinet of Orientalisms

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Abstract

The visual wonders of Strawberry Hill and Fonthill Abbey represent a dynamic aesthetic model of oriental and gothic features that diffused like atomised particles through the arts and culture. Borwein offers a theoretical reading of orientalisms, as the Cabinet of Orientalisms, extending visions of materiality and meaning by Karen Barad, Félix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze, Graham Harmen, and others with an aesthetic lens that allows for assessment of the spectacle of contemporary theories (or artefacts), which are projected onto the origins of the model. Radical, avant-garde, visual, fractal, or alternative models imply aspects of speculative materialism and agential realism. These are explored through a juxtaposition of early oriental tales and gothic novels, to reinscribe the abstraction process of aesthetic and material exchange as a pre-history of gothic theories of orientalism.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, Canada

    Naomi Simone Borwein

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  1. Naomi Simone Borwein
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  1. Hull University, Hull, UK

    Clive Bloom

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Borwein, N.S. (2021). The Cabinet of Orientalisms. In: Bloom, C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Gothic Origins. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84562-9_22

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