Textures of urban fears: The Affective geopolitics of the ‘oriental rug’

Abstract

This chapter focuses on a number of recent artistic interventions using ‘oriental’ objects and specifically carpets – and the strongly emotional reactions that they have provoked, crystallizing fears of the presence of the ‘Muslim other’ in European cities. While much of the current literature has focused on the ways in which such fears have invoked a securitization of Muslim bodies in European urban spaces, we wish to extend the discussion also to ‘Muslim objects’ and, specifically, ‘oriental’ carpets. We highlight how carpets have been both ‘Islamicized’ and made the object of a (geo)politics of fear, re-signifying carpets from what were historically objects of orientalist fantasies and markers of status to fearful objects. The at times violent reactions to the art installations that we describe here highlight to what extent this transformation has taken place, and we use these instances and incidents as a way of reflecting on the materialities of everyday (geo)politics, noting how a ‘(geo)politics of things’ works in concert with a (geo)politics of discourse and rhetoric to sustain contemporary populist agendas.