The Hijab and the Sari: The Strange and the Sexy

This paper undertakes four tasks. It examines a tradition of cinematic and narrative representation that we might call "the narrative of moral gentrification." It insists on the importance of excavating the racialist and often racist images, motifs, and myths that constitute this tradition. It recommends a form of philosophical aesthetics, located at the intersection of aesthetics, ethical perfectionism, and critical race theory, as a resource for doing this work. And it insists on the importance of subjecting problematic or qualitatively inferior expressive objects to critical scrutiny for the sake of developing proper iconographies and archives of white supremacist expressive culture.