Pedagogical Escapism and Western Performativity: A Psycho-Aesthetic Critique of Belly-Dance Adaption Symbolics

Authors

Maryam Farahani, University of LiverpoolFollow

Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9870-0181

Author Bio

Maryam Farahani, PhD, MA, MA(Ed), MSc, BA, is a research associate at the University of Liverpool with 20 years cross-disciplinary experience and interfacing expertise in humanities, education, social and health sciences. She specializes in historical psychologies of ancient Eastern civilizations and 18^th and 19^th century revivals in literary and performance studies, spanning East-Western HE contexts. Her current work is centred on ancient to modern performativity models stretching leadership and aesthetic domains across HE, healthcare, and corporations. She has published on women’s literature, performance, and sports, having specialized in medical histories, narratology, and literature of colonial and postcolonial contexts. Her publications address implications of performativity histories for narrative and cultures, disability, literary, and gender studies.

Abstract

This paper addresses positionality misreading in Western pedagogical adaptions of belly dancing. Raqs Sharqi, known in the West as belly dancing, is a predominantly West Asian and North African discipline and performance art with multimodal varieties, globally taught and practiced while crossing sport, narratology, and story-telling boundaries. As a unique performance activity, it portrays a dynamic entertainment space to connect one’s multiple identities. I argue that Raqs Sharqi, not only as an aesthetic-educational art form but also, perhaps unwittingly, reiterated as an Orientalist communication trope in belly dancing, has forged East-West performativity models. However, the historical education-literature for Western women and modern adaptions of Raqs Sharqi are socio-culturally disconnected. In want of aesthetic meaning-making for contemporary cultural identity elaborations, Western pedagogical and adaption processes overlook elemental aspects including cultural perspectives, the process of cognitive development, individual authenticity, and group politics of belonging and autonomy.

Challenging Eurocentric and English-speaking narratives about Middle Eastern identities, Raqs Sharqi, in its intersectional positionality, is the loci of continued West Asian and North African identity heterogeneities. The narrative fluidity afforded to this historical and religious conceptualization, I contend, is somewhat lost in conceptions of Western dance homogeneity in entertainment. Reasons are multidimensional, illustrative of patriarchal histories of women’s education, Western literary and art erotic-exotic rhetoric traps, and the influence of contemporary media and digitalization. Drawing on philosophical foregrounding, Dialogical Self Theory (DST), and symbolic interactionism, this study elucidates the progress of escapism and performativity enforced by positionality misreadings in Raqs Sharqi. In so doing, I expand on the colonial continuity of dance pedagogy, delineating the socio-positionalities of pedagogic framing and empowerment double standards.

Keywords

Adaption, belly dancing, emotive, escapism, pedagogy, performativity, Raqs Sharqi, symbolics

Recommended Citation

Farahani, Maryam (2025) "Pedagogical Escapism and Western Performativity: A Psycho-Aesthetic Critique of Belly-Dance Adaption Symbolics," Comparative Woman: Vol. 4: Iss. 1, Article 3.
Available at: https://repository.lsu.edu/comparativewoman/vol4/iss1/3