Abstract

This article explores Syrian-born author Mohja Kahf's poem "Thawrah des Odalisques at the Matisse Retrospective" (2003) as a transtextual 'intervention' on the paradigmatic Modernist representation of reified female bodies. Kahf re-writes the subjectivity and agency of the women in Matisse's paintings in a translational construction of a feminist, postodalisque subjectivity. The archival practices that have construed the predicament of modernity, namely the museum and the canons of 'modern' art, come undone in a post-colonial and feminist critique of the dominant narrative of modern (Western) identity.