Gazing at the Golden Age: The Role of Perspective in Counter-Memorial Display

Abstract

How does the traveling museum exhibition 1001 Inventions design memories of the Golden Age of Islam to counter Islamophobia in the modern world? The Golden Age of Islam occurred centuries ago but is still a potent rhetorical force; I seek to understand how counter-memories of this era have been used to re-shape current image of Islam, particularly in the West. I also examine the role perspective plays in the rhetorical construction and circulation of countermemory. With American politicians pushing a ban on Muslim immigration, European nations closing their borders to Muslim refugees, and struggles within the Muslim community over the true nature of Islam, it is crucial that rhetoricians examine how different memories have been used to legitimate various ideologies about Islam. To answer this question, I analyze the 1001 Inventions exhibit and its companion book using the concept of perspective as used by Kenneth Burke and Donna Haraway, as well as Michel Foucault's idea of counter-memory. I explain how 1001 Inventions designs memories of the Golden Age to depict Islam as scientific and tolerant. My analysis shows how the exhibit uses Burkean metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche to display a situated, embodied perspective on the Golden Age. It also shows how the exhibit counters anti-Islam discourse and what Bruno Latour would call a "modern" viewpoint by merging past and present, Islam and the West, and religion and science. However, because it emphasizes merger over division, this exhibit reifies a Western narrative of progress and essentializes Islam. These mergers create rhetorical footholds for critics to maintain a sharp divide between past and present, Islam and the West, and religion and science. I conclude that had the exhibit been designed using Burkean irony, offering a perspective of perspectives on the Golden Age, it would have inoculated itself against Islamophobic pushback, blunted criticism, and presented a more robust counter-memorial account of an historical era worth remembering.