Orientalism – Edward Said

The link between Culture, imperial power and colonialism.

“the power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming or emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism”

“an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness“

‘an economic system like a nation or a religion, lives not by bread alone, but by beliefs, visions, daydreams as well, and these may be no less vital to it for being erroneous’ V. G. Kiernan

the recognition of the ‘Other’ is mainly attributed the French philosopher and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan We are exploring ‘The Other’ as a way of exploring ourselves.

Louis Althusser: ISA’s & the notion of ‘Interpellation’

all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, through the functioning of the category of the subject

ISA stands for Ideological State Apparatus

we are socially constructed and what socially constructs us is ‘despite its diversity and contradictions . . . the ruling ideology, which is the ideology of ‘the ruling class’

“Ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in such a way to ‘recruit’ subjects among individuals . . . through the very precise operation that we call interpellation or hailing“

Frantz Fanon – The Wretched of the Earth

“mechanics of colonialism and its effects of those it ensnared“

As an early critical thinker of postcolonialism, Frantz Fanon took an active role, proposing the first step required for ‘colonialised’ people to reclaim their own past by finding a voice and an identity.

Antonio Gramsci – Hegemony

Gramsci raises the concept of Hegemony to illustrate how certain cultural forms predominate over others, which means that certain ideas are more influential than others

Hegemony is a struggle that emerges from negotiation and consent.

Syncretism, double consciousness & hybridisation

mechanisms for understanding cross-cultural identities

Paul Gilroy – is insistent that “we must become interested in how the literary and cultural as well as governmental dynamics of the country have responded to that process of change and what it can tell us about the place of racism in contemporary political culture.”

 Double Consciousness, derived from W. E. B. Dubois

“hybridity”, “ambiguity” and “cultural polyvalency”