Week 7 - Cultural Struggles

INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL STUDIES & POST COLONIAL STUDIES AND

DEBATES INCLUDING “THE OTHER” AND “ORIENTALISM”

Cultural Studies
! It is not equal to the term culture or to the terms of cultural theory or cultural
anthropology!

Cultural Studies is a fixed term for an academic field, with blurred borders. It is, like a
lot of other terms we have learned, difficult to define, as it borrows from many
different disciplines and thus becomes interdisciplinary. It borrows freely from other
social science disciplines, the humanities, and the arts. It studies functions in society.
Cultural studies appropriates their theories and methodologies an uses diverse
methods (ethnography, linguistics, psychoanalysis, etc.

It is a field that emerged when academics who were from the British working class
began questioning the traditional views of culture.
Students and academics from previous colonies (such as India, Egypt, etc.) became
important and influential members of the discourse.
Cultural studies questions working class’s culture of American popular culture.

The subject derived from the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the
University of Birmingham established in 1964.

Cultural studies is not a discipline but a collective term for many diverse intellectual
questions and discourses about marginalization, diversity and equality. It has roots in
post colonial studies, class theory and ethnic studies.

Cultural studies aims to empower people and to understand the intrinsic relationship
between culture and various forms of power. Cultural studies is politically engaging.

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 Amongst many different topics, the ones that were in the early cultural studies
revolved around

Popular culture of young working class men

Rockers, punks, and mods

These young men were seen as a resistance to the dominant system.

It asked questions revolving around gender

Images of women

Masculinity

Ethnic minorities

Social construction of science

Reggae music

(I’d argue that this largely falls under ethnic minority due to its roots)

RICHARD HOGGARD - 1918 — 2014

Sociologist

Grew up in poor circumstances in Leeds

Became known for his book “The Uses Of Literacy” in 1957, in which he
examined the influences of mass media on the cultural changed in the UK at the
time. As well as its effect on the traditional working class structure.

He founded the aforementioned ”Centre for Contemporary Cultural

Studies”

STUART HALL - 1932 — 2014

Cultural theorist, political activist, and Marxist Soiologist

Born in Kingston, Jamaica - to a middle-class Jamaican family of African, British,

Portuguese Jewish, (and likely Indian) descent.

Director of Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies since 1968.

He was largely concerned with questions revolving around race, ethicity

predujices, and cultural identity.

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 5 Characteristics of Cultural Studies

1. Cultural studies aims to examine its subject matter in terms of cultural practices
and their relation to power.

a. It’s constant goal is to expose power dynamics and examine how these
dynamic influence and shape cultural practices.

2. Cultural studies is not simply the study of culture, rather it aims to analyze the
social and political context within culture manifests itself.

3. Culture in cultural studies always performs two functions: being the object of
study and being the location of political criticism and action.

a. Cultural studies aims to be both an intellectual and pragmatic enterprise.

4. It exposes and reconciles the division of knowledge. It aims to overcome the

divide between the tacit (the intuitive knowledge based on local culture) and
objective (”universal”) forms of knowledge.

a. It assumes a common identity and interest between the knower and the
know, between the observer and what’s being observed.

5. The tradition of cultural studies is not one of value-free scholarship, but one
committee to social reconstruction by critical political involvement. Cultural
studies aims to understand and change the structures of power and dominance
everywhere, but in especially in industrial capitalistic societies.

a. It is committed to

i. a moral evaluation of modern society

ii. a radical line of political action

Examples of cultural studies in everyday life that were mentioned in the lecture
included:

The gender pay-gap

Lego ads that were non-gender focused, rather that they were focused on the
Lego experience. (Vs Legos now that are very gender focused, like Lego-City
building for boys and Lego Friends for girls.)

Colors at a child’s birthday: blue for boys, pink for girls.

The role of the father in the family - article: Don't Be Grateful That Dad Does His
Share

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 “Studies have found that fathers who work long house have wives who do
more child-care, while others who work long hours have husbands who
sleep more and watch lots of Television.”

“Studies have found that working mothers with preschool-age children are
two and a half times more likely as fathers to get up in the middle of the night
to tend to their kids.”

“Studies have found that men with babies spend twice as much weekend
time in leisure activity as their female partners do.”

Stereotypical roles that black men play.

Timnit Gebru’s team and their paper on Google’s AI. It derailed potential risks
with large language processing models, including over-relying on Dara from
wealthy countries that have a larger internet access. “The result that AI-
generated language will be homogenized, reflecting the practices of the riches
countries and communities” eradicating knowledge from poorer countries and
lesser-spoken languages.

Nigerian motion picture disqualified from the Oscars foreign film category for
having too much English dialogue, even though it is Pidgin English, an
integrated part of Nigerian culture

2. Postcolonial Studies and Debates — The Other & Orientalism

Post-colonialism

Background: The European empire is said to have held sway over more than 85% of
the globe by the time of WWI, having consolidated its control over several centuries.
The extent and duration of the European empire and its disintegration after WWII
have lead to widespread interest in post colonial literature and criticism in our own
times.
It is rooted in colonialism and questions regarding its impact on cultures today:

1. In previous colonies (usually those of the Global South or the East)

2. In previous colonizer countries (usually those of the Global North and the
West)

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 It raises questions and concerns regarding:

How do gender, race, and class function in post colonial discourse?

Are new forms of imperialism replacing colonisation? and how?

Common notions about different people (colonizer vs colonised) during colonialism:

Civilised vs Primitive

Rational vs Irrational

Occident vs Orient

It is very visible how laced it is with judgment and the “savior complex” rooted in
colonisers, seeing themselves as helping “the Other,” to become civilised, to become
rational, and to become a “cohesive” society. However, as previously discussed by
Franz Boas, all societies and cultures are made equal. He refused the claim that
some societies/cultures were fundamentally “primitive” or “backward” rather that they
had their own culture and society that had to be understood in its own terms.
This brings us to the concept of “The Other”

The Other
It is a term that stand for a representative outside one’s own identity, whether its
social group, class, culture, gender, civilization, ethnicity, etc… That person outside
one’s own identity is considered “The Other.”
As a generalisation: all non-western cultures are “The Other” within western society:
women, homosexuals, immigrants are often seen as the other.

Orientalism
Background: Named after the book written by Edward Said called “Orientalism”
published in 1978.

It refers to countries and regions which were previously colonies, and focuses on
Muslim cultures in the Middle East.
During colonial domination, ideas about the colonized people were formed. In
cscholarly works the colonized were described as Orientals that were inferior,
irrational, deprived, and childlike. It held a belief that Orientals could be understood,

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 defined, controlled, and manipulated by the dominant power, in this case being the
colonial power. This notion persisted long after colonies became independent.
EDWARD SAID - 1935 — 2003

Literature professor

An academic in the field of post-colonialism

Public intellectual

Lived between Palestine and Egypt, then later in the USA as an adult.

Edward Said’s Definitions and concerns of Orientalism

Orientalist: Everyone who researches, teaches, and writes about the orient. The
concern is that the Orient lives on and is perceived through these ‘expert
Orientalists.’

The difference between the Orient and the Occident is given as something
epistemological and ontological (as if it is a fixed reality). The concern is that it is
actually a fictional divide.

Small details are interpreted towards general statements about the Orient. The
concern is that Orientalism itself overrides the Orient’s reality.

Orientalism is the parameter for dealing with the Orient. The concern is that
legitimization for domination and restructuring the Orient and for having authority
in it.

Criticism of Edward Said’s Orientalism

Focuses on the middle East but left other regions such as Africa and Asia out.

Solely blames Imperialism and the West for thing that go wrong in the Middle
East, while there are so also non-colonial reasons.

Said argues himself from an outsider position

Supports Occidentalism, which in a reciprocal way stand for Arab researches

explaining the West. (I’d argue that this gives into the fictional divide and makes
it worse.)

The biggest critique is that Said’s Orientalism supports a dice of the world into
East and West which is not the reality.

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 Other scholars that worked on the concept of Orientalism:

Abdul Lafit Tibawi - Syrian scholar: English Speaking Orientalists (1965)

Hishem Djait - Tunisian historian and philosopher: Europe and Islam (1977)

Syed Hussain Alatlas - Malaysian sociologist: The Myth of the Lazy Native
(1977)

Examples of Orientalism in art include the Description de L’Egypte (composed 1809-

22). It illustrated the topography, architecture, monuments, natural life, and
population of Egypt. It was the most influential of many works that aimed to
document the culture of this region.

Please note that concepts like “The Other” and “Orientalism” are part of the
discourses in Postcolonial Studies. During colonialism, there was no consciousness
and/or conscious debate about these concepts, they were formulated afterwards.
Today’s debates are based on the observation that colonizers viewed the people in
colonies as different than themselves in the aforementioned ways.

Written by Rudyard Kipling in

1899.

It positions one culture as more

important than the other and
legitimizes the dominance of one
culture over the other. It
communicates this dominance as
something positive: a selfless act
of help. The savior complex I
mentioned in the beginning of this
lecture’s notes.

The depiction is that the USA used the “white man’s burden” as an argument for
imperial control of the Philippines and Puerto Rico on the basis of moral necessity. It

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 was, according to them, a duty to develop and modernize the conquest lands ignorer
to help carry the foreign barbarians to civilization.

This idea of “the white man’s burden”

was used in a multitude of ways, even
in advertising. An 1890’s ad for soap
uses the theme to enourage white
people to teach others cleanliness.

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