A Distant Episode

Content Warning: The story and this guide discuss extreme violence, captivity, and enslavement. The guide also references imperialism.

The term “Orientalism,” as popularized by postcolonial literary theorist Edward Said, refers to the way in which Westerners tend to view so-called “Eastern” civilizations as exotic, romantic, and irreconcilably different from Western civilization. Said was particularly concerned with depictions of the Middle East and the Muslim and/or Arab world that highlight those aspects of the region and people that would be the most unfamiliar, exotic, or lurid to a Western audience. “A Distant Episode,” like Paul Bowles’s work generally, has a complex relationship to Orientalism and has been read as both upholding and critiquing it.

With its emphasis on brutality, danger, and mystery, Bowles’s story may be seen as an example of Orientalism. The people in the story whom the professor encounters all seem to be inscrutable in some way, with values that differ from the professor’s. The most extreme examples of this come in the form of the tribespeople of the Reguibat and the wealthy Algerian villager who purchases the professor. Bowles presents their violence toward and enslavement of the professor as matter-of-fact—the man who cuts out his tongue does so “dispassionately”—creating a tonal disconnect that seems to perpetuate stereotypes of the Oriental subject as utterly unknowable (not to mention “savage”).