We are looking at identity and representation through the lens of Empire and Colonialism. It had an aim to undermine the universalist claims that ‘great literature has a timeless and universal significance [which] thereby demotes or disregards cultural, social, regional, and nations differences in experience and outlook’.

Postcolonial criticism challenges the assumption of a universal claim of what is good and what is bad.

‘constituted a fundamentally important political act’

Edward Said

the power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming or emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism – Edward Said Culture and Imperialism

‘imperialism was principally economic‘ and looked to answer that question by highlighting ‘the privileged role of culture in the modern imperial experience’

‘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 desire to contain the intangibilities of the East within a western lucidity, but this gesture of appropriation only partially conceals the obsessive fear.’

ORIENTALISM

– is a term expressing the varying historical and cultural relationship between Europe and Asia, specializing in the study of Eastern cultures and traditions. ‘In this view, the outlying regions of the world have no life, history or culture to speak of, no independence or integrity worth representing without the West.‘ culture is the identification of a country.

 Jacques Lacan

– we are going to look at the other

The mirror stage

we cannot actually see ourselves as whole, we use a reflection to understand who we are / who we are not.

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.

Comparison

Jacques Lacan looks at how you reflect at yourself which apply to cultures and that is why explore the other.