‘Shaking up’ vision: the video diary as personal and pedagogical intervention in Mona Hatoum’s Measures of distance

Abstract

Arguably, Muslim subjects of the diaspora, regardless if they identify as secular, religious, feminist, or queer, have taken on a new and further stigmatized visibility post‐9/11. How can students and teachers located in feminist classrooms, Muslim and non–Muslim alike, safely imagine Muslim bodies and identities outside and within war propaganda, border security measures, hijacked airplanes, racial profiling, and jihad? Given the relentless and overbearing mainstream media propaganda promoting a climate of fear and protection from ‘Muslims’ and their attributed geographies, physiognomies, and behaviors—essentially reproducing late nineteenth‐century colonialist visual anthropological practices; it is incumbent to revisit the cultural activities of contemporary transnational artists in order to conceptually ‘shake up’ or ‘shake off’ the psychological effects of US–led foreign policies, British and French imperialist histories, fervent nationalisms, and religious extremisms—all of which continue to forcibly shape and undermine personal identity claims within diasporic Muslim communities. In this paper, I pedagogically reinterpret the 1980s electronic media productions of Mona Hatoum, an extensively documented and culturally hyphenated Palestinian‐Lebanese‐British performance, video, and installation artist in order to underscore the possibilities of including visual art and media in the teaching and learning of anti‐racist feminist thought in university classrooms. In particular, I examine the video piece Measures of distance (1988).