Repackaging Orientalism

Abstract

This article analyses representations of Egypt and Turkey in brochures produced by tour operators for the British outbound packaged tourism market. It suggests that two specific `phases' of Orientalist discourse are deployed in promotional materials on the two destinations. Turkey reiterates the discursive division of western `reason and modernity' from eastern `stasis and passivity' while Egypt re-enacts the material intervention of Europeans to generate and articulate particular kinds of knowledge about the Orient. It suggests that it is not simply the material existence of the destinations, but the occupation of specific historically contingent positions of `sovereign subjectivity' from which to `know' them that is offered to tourists.