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“
• POSTCOLONIALISM operates a series of signs maintaining the European-Atlantic power over the Orient by creating ‘an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness‘. (Said, 1978:238). 

‘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 ORIENT AS THE ‘OTHER’

• the recognition of the ‘Other’ is mainly attributed the French philosopher and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.
• A good way to develop an understanding of this term is in his exploration of the mirror stage of child development, whereby, as we cannot actually see ourselves as whole, we use a reflection to understand who we are / who we are not. Lacan proposed that in infancy this first recognition occurs when we see ourselves in a mirror. Applying that theory to culture, communications and media studies, it is possible to see why we are so obsessed with reading magazines, listening to music, watching films, videos and television because, essentially, 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 = Ideological state apparatus
• we are socially constructed 
• Althusser noted that individuals often believe that they are ‘outside ideology’ and suggested the notion of ‘interpellation‘ as a way to recognise the formation of ideology. In that ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in such a way as to recruit subjects among individuals. In other words, the way in which society calls / addresses / hails you is interpellation, which is the way in which your subject identity is formed and which, more often than not, corresponds to the dominant ideology.

Frantz Fanon

• The Wretched of the Earth – book
• the book is articulating the way he was constructed as the ‘other’ specifically through the way he was hailed, called, perceived and understood because he is a black man

 Hegemonic struggle (Gramsci) the chance to reclaim

‘from America, black voices will take up the hymn with fuller unison. The ‘black world’ will see the light’ – Frantz Fanon

1. Assimilation of colonial culture corresponding to the ‘mother country’ Chinua Achebe talks of the colonial writer as a ‘somewhat unfinished European who with patience guidance will grow up one day and write like every other European.’ (1988:46)
2. Immersion into an ‘authentic’ culture ‘brought up out of the depths of his memory; old legends will be reinterpreted’
3. Fighting, revolutionary, national literature, ‘the mouthpiece of a new reality in action’.

•  Achebe writes, ‘a new situation was slowly developing as a handful of natives began to acquire European education and then to challenge Europe’s presence and position in their native land with the intellectual weapons of Europe itself’

Antonio Gramsci – Hegemony

•  Gramsci suggests that power relations can be understood as a hegemonic struggle through culture. 
• hegemony is a struggle that emerges from NEGOTIATION and CONSENT.

Common’s letter to the free: Orientalism questions

• Q1:How can you apply the concept of Orientalism to Common’s Letter to the Free?
• Q2: Can you apply Fanon’s 3 phase plan of action to this music video?
• Q3: How is the audience called / addressed / hailed (interpellated)? Use examples from both the lyrics and the visual grammar (shot, edit, mise-en-scene) to show how audiences are drawn into a specific subject position / ideological framework?

The specials Ghost town: Orientalism questions

• Q1: Where can you identify ‘hybridity’, ‘ambiguity’ and ‘cultural polyvalency’ in this music video?
• Q2: How does this text apply to Fanon’s 3 phase plan of action?
• Q3: How is the audience called / addressed / hailed (interpellation)? Use examples from both the lyrics and the visual grammar (shot, edit, mise-en-scene) to show how audiences are drawn into a specific subject position / ideological framework?

Paul Gilroy: 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.’ (2004:13) His theme of Double Consciousness, derived from W. E. B. Dubois, involves ‘Black Atlantic’ striving to be both European and Black through their relationship to the land of their birth and their ethnic political constituency

• Barry notes the stress on ‘cross-cultural’ interactions is indeed a characteristic of postcolonial criticism. Often found by foregrounding questions of cultural difference and diversity, as well as by celebrating ‘hybridity’, ‘ambiguity’ and ‘cultural polyvalency’. A unique position where ‘individuals may simultaneously belong to more than one culture – the coloniser and the colonised’. (2016:198) Even Fanon suggests an emphasis on identity as ‘doubled, or ‘hybrid’, or ‘unstable’.