Introduction to Visual Cultures and Narrative Form - Term Paper Example

 Introduction to Visual Cultures and Narrative Form Introduction Orientalism is the manner of seeing that visualizes, overstates, accentuates, and distorts dissimilarities of the Arab peoples and cultures as weighed against those of the United States and Europe. Further, orientalism involves studying the cultures and societies, people, and languages of the near and Far Eastern by Western Scholars who see the Arabic culture as backward, uncivilized, exotic, and occasionally risky. However, perception of the East arises from preconceived archetypes envisioning all of them as similar to each other but essentially variant from the Western societies without any supporting facts or reality. Said [ CITATION Sai79 \p 1-3 \n \t \l 1033 ] in his criticism of orientalism redefined it as the constellation of false assumptions that underlay the attitude of the Western nations towards the Middle East. The Western nations, America and European thereby used orientalism culture and romanticized images of Middle East and Asia as a justification of their colonial and imperial ambitions. Said fiercely denounces this culture and equally criticizes the Arab elites whose practices revolved around internalized ideas from British and American orientalists. The danger linked to the orientalism culture by the West is that some East can treat it as truth thereby affecting relations and ideologies. However, Said[ CITATION Sai79 \n \t \l 1033 ] emphasizes that it is hard to label half of the continent as orient and manage to generalize that what applies to Egyptians equally applies to Chinese. Orientalism in this paper supports Edward Said’s critical theory approach to international relations theory where the West forms a one-way image of the Oriental. The discussion focuses on definition of terms, orientalism and Occident, and early orientalism and contemporary orientalism. Definition of terms The orient according to Said [ CITATION Sai78 \p 4 \n \t \l 1033 ] refers to a representations’ system enclosed by forces from politics that introduced the orient into western consciousness, Western learning, and Western Empire. The system of representation results from the condensation of diverse attributes into a single image not from facts but from perceptions that are regarded as a standard of comparison[ CITATION Hal92 \l 1033 ]. In addition, orientatlism offers a criterion for evaluation that other world societies rank negatively or positively thereby functioning as an ideology. For the West, the orient is constructed relative to the West and has largely assisted in the definition of Europe or the West since it is views as the contrasting image, experience, idea, and personality[ CITATION Sai79 \p 1-2 \l 1033 ]. The orient involves nations adjacent to Europe and that form the greatest, oldest, and richest colonies[ CITATION Sai79 \l 1033 ]. In addition, the Orient is also the best resource for language and civilization, cultural contenders, and one of the innermost and recurring images of the other. Additionally, the orient orient assisted in definition of the modern day Europe, part of its European material culture and civilization. The Oriental refers to the subject represented by orient thinking. The oriental is normally defined as weirdly treacherous as it threatens the West; one image that generalizes and stereotypes numerous national boundaries and cultures. Latent orientalism is the insentient, impenetrable certainty regarding the orient being that is unanimous and inert. According to Said [ CITATION Sai78 \p 23-40 \n \t \l 1033 ], the latent orient is disconnect, backward, eccentric, passive, and sensual with a high tendency to incline towards stagnation. As a penetrable feminine with supine malleability, the orient’s value and advancement judgment involves comparison to, and in terms of the West hence always defined as the other[ CITATION Hal97 \l 1033 ]. Manifest orietalism refers to spoken and effected representations. The inclusions manifest orientalism is information and knowledge modifications regarding the Orient together with changed policy resolutions constructed by orientalist thinking. Consequently, manifest orientation involves the actions and words of latent orientation. Occident in the ancient world referred to Europe or the West. The origin of the Occident was in West Europe although this currently embraces geographically beyond the European border but not Eastern Europe. Other nations considered the west are USA and Canada, New Zealand, and Australia[ CITATION Hal92 \p 185 \l 1033 ]. However, there is no simple meaning of the West, which then represents multifaceted ideas. According to Hall [ CITATION Hal92 \p 185 \n \t \l 1033 ], the concept of East and West has remained mythical that are not primarily regarding place and geography. Scope of orientalism In his book, Said [ CITATION Hal94 \p 1-5 \n \t \l 1033 ] the division of the world as comprising the East and the West was a doing by Europe. Each division had a name with the East being the Orient, and the West being the Occident. While the occident was civilized, the orient was uncivilized thus defining an artificial boundary that founded the concept of theirs and ours, them and us. Compared to the orientals, the Europeans defined themselves as the better race and used this as a basis for their acts of colonization. Colonization was also justified as a duty by the West to civilize the uncivilized East and this involved ruling them. For the West, Europe regarded itself as having the rights to represent the Orientals in the West by themselves, which resulted to orientalising of the orient in subject to the European perceptions. In order to portray and emphasis, the artificial elements linked to the orientals, the Europeans generalized attributes through particular reports, literary works, and in other sources. As a result, the minds of the Europeans adopted a certain image regarding the orientals which then infused prejudice in the European attitude. Such prejudice was evident in the orientalism or the study of the orientals, and in all their reports and research. The orientalism culture never died and is still present today with Islam viewed as a terrorist religion and the Arabs as uncivilized[ CITATION Hal94 \l 1033 ] regardless of whether or not the generalization was an irrational action of an individual. Said [ CITATION Sai78 \p 4-7 \n \t \l 1033 ] regards such generalizations as discursive construction of the East founded on asymmetrical relationship between Occident and Orient. In addition, Said further refers to this relationship as founded on the power of domination of diverging degrees of multifaceted supremacy (5). Orientalism and international relations Hall [ CITATION Hal92 \p 187-192 \n \t \l 1033 ] identifies the attributes of the West to include industrialized, capitalist, developed, urbanized, modern, and secular thereby synonymous to modernity but logically antonymous of underdeveloped and backward. These characteristics of the West became evident during the enlightenment period in Europe. During this period, the society in Europe was the most developed globally and considering the name, West was because of internal advancement. As a result, the concept of the West came to be as an organizing factor found in the system of global power relations. The implication of the West concept was its influence in organizing the world’s manner of thinking and talking. During the enlightenment period, international relations definition took the direction of the West and the rest with the two being two different sides of the same coin. In this regard, the West is what it is provided the Rest exists relative to it or the identification of what is unique to the West is identifiable in relation to that which differs in other cultures[ CITATION Hal92 \p 188-190 \l 1033 ]. However, Hall is quick to note that the West or Europe is not homogenous and unified but containing numerous variations amongst nations like between Germanic Northern and Latin Southern cultures that also paved way for variations in attitudes towards other cultures. Some of the ongoing internal differences in the West cultures are evident between Britain, Spain, Germany, and France. Conversely, the Rest cannot be presented easily in terms of necessary generalization given the existence of distinctions economically, culturally, and historically. Such distinctions are evident between Latin America, North Africa, Middle East, Australia, and native North America[ CITATION Hal92 \p 189 \l 1033 ]. For accurate presentation and definition of the West and the Rest, Hall [ CITATION Hal92 \p 189-190 \n \t \l 1033 ] reveals that lack of consideration for the differentiations results to discourse that prevents the presentation of varying European cultures as homogenous but provides room for their unity through the fact that they all differ from the rest. Equally, despite varying from each other, the Rest all have a sense of differing form the West. These two conclusions present the discussion of the ‘Ours’ and ‘Theirs’ as destructive since only simple constructs and distinctions are used to emphasize the differences. Hall [ CITATION Hal971 \p 225 \n \t \l 1033 ] dislikes the use of differences as a compelling theme of representation as used by the West and goes ahead to seek the typical forms and representational practices used by popular cultures today as a way of identifying the origin of stereotypes and figures. From the Western museums, The Rest, or other cultures defined by exhibition discourses and practices with racial and ethnic differences taking the forefront since they can be used in other instances of difference like gender, class, sexuality, and disability[ CITATION Hal97 \p 225 \l 1033 ]. For emphasis, cultural differences are stereotyped through images displayed in mass media and popular culture. Mass media racial stereotypes date back to the period of slavery to imperialism in the late 19th century and into the contemporary world. According to Said [ CITATION Sai79 \p 36 \n \t \l 1033 ], stereotyping visual representation by the West is possible through inventing ‘the other.’ Since the perception of the West is that of dominating the Rest, it mobilizes its power to implement such perceptions on the Rest with creative and critical information from orientalists used to meet other requirements like domination. Subsequently, knowledge offers power while more power requires knowledge thereby elevating the profitable dialectic of information and control[ CITATION Sai79 \p 36-38 \l 1033 ]. For the West, the definition of international relations revolves around representations. In this case, representations are a complicated business since more emphasis is on the differences[ CITATION Hal971 \p 226 \l 1033 ]. Consequently, the differences slot in feelings, emotions, and attitudes while mustering apprehension and fear in the viewer. An example of complexity in the meaning representation is in Heroes and villains where despite being winners in Olympics, the appreciation of the blacks is never for their heroism but representation through sharply opposing extremes like civilized/primitives, or good/ bad among others[ CITATION Hal97 \p 229 \l 1033 ]. Such extremes effectively present the manifestation of otherness with media similarly representing practices and figures repeatedly while accumulating the meaning of otherness from one text to the other such that images of the rest only has meaning in connection with each other like in the case of images of black athletes in different texts. Such accumulation of meaning forms what is known as inter-textuality. The use of differences to emphasis representations is due to its significance in the delivery of meaning without which Hall [ CITATION Hal97 \p 234 \n \t \l 1033 ] reveals that there could be no meaning like in the case of Black/White which can be contrasted with each other and emphasis that meanings depend on variations between the opposites. However, Hall [ CITATION Hal971 \p 235-245 \n \t \l 1033 ] highlights that binary oppositions are open to oversimplification, shallowness, and reductionism since there is an element of power between the binary opposition poles to bring out the discourse dimension. Said on the implications of orientalism Said [ CITATION Sai85 \n \t \l 1033 ] reveals that orientalism comes with cultural imperialism that operates in both consciously and unconsciously at a level that offers images of ‘good’ life and in quest of shaping the identities of people. The best example is the fact that colonization forced the conquered nations to take up imposed values by the colonizing westerners where the superior culture dominated and led to the formation of new cultures and values systems or influence on the existing. In addition, cultural imperialism influence also arises from capitalism, which not only structures but also regulates cultural exchanges especially between the first worlds or economically advanced nations and the developing nations. Through capitalism, first world nations gained economic merits and capitalist classes that criss-cross the universe in search of new trade markets for expansion of their profits. The pursuit of profits by the capitalists led to global presence establishment to expand presence, power, and wealth. However, in their search, the West’s perception of ‘the Rest’ as passive is consumers of their products is limited by cultures and traditions that the Rest hold to that give them the heroic power to dictate what is sold to them like McDonalds in India that has to avoid pigs which are dirty and cows which are Holy. 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