Week 5.

2: Reading Journal
Michael Torres

Introduction (45 words)

The Spectacle of the “Other”: Stuart Hall
Stuart Hall was a Jamaican-born British Marxist sociologist, cultural theorist and political
activist. This article looks into history and the modern world and investigates what the meaning
of difference is and what is taken into account for those who are in charge of portraying
“otherness.”

Main Ideas (832 words)

a. 1. Introduction (pp. 225-226)
- Why is difference an area needed for representation
- Representing difference in the West looks like giving meaning to “other cultures” by
the practices of exhibition and history in ethnographic museums
- The racial differences discussed could be applied to gender, sexuality, class, and
disability
- Have avenues for representation of “difference” and “other” changed/evolved or
have they remained similar to past structures?
b. 1.1: Heroes or villains? (pp. 226-234)
- Figure 4.1 shows Olympic Sunday Times Magazine in 1988 where all the Olympians
pictured are all black
- (Olympians) Racial identity message: this race is used to being discriminated against
solely on color, where here we see ‘victims’ or losers being portrayed in a winning
light. Is this for shock factor?
- (Olympians) the photo is a trailer for a article surrounding drug-taking in
international athletics. Ben Johnson (winner of the sprint) was found to have taken
drugs and was disqualified. The author of the article makes one black athlete the
target for heroism and villainy
- Meaning of the Ben Johnson picture is ambiguous open to multiple meanings
- Discourse of written language and discourse of photography are required to produce
a meaning to a scene
- What meaning is of privilege surrounding the HERO or VILLAIN article? Winner and
record braker/ disgraceful drug-taking athlete: seeing this picture both ways is
important to understanding representation of ‘otherness’
- Majority looks at ‘others’ in radical binary lenses
- Images show an event (denotation) and carry a message (connotation)
- Difference is constantly being marked and is a constant thing for those who are
racially and ethnically different than the majority
- How does the representation of difference link to the forces who are in power? The
connotation for their meanings around the representation can be vague but hold
underlying discriminatory meanings that can’t be seen in plain sight
c. 1.2: Why does ‘difference’ matter? (234-238)
 - ‘difference’ matters because it is essential to meaning; without it, meaning. Would
not exist
- We recognize difference through binary oppositions: white/black,
masculine/feminine, day/night, American/foreigner
- Binary oppositions are open to reducing/over-simplifying all distinctions of a very
rigid 2-part structure
- We need difference because we can only construct meaning through the dialogue
with the ‘Other.’
- One group can, therefore, not be in charge of the sole meaning
- Culture depends on giving things meaning by assigning them different positions
within a classificatory system. ‘difference’ is on a basis of symbolic order in which we
call CULTURE
- Marking ‘difference’ leads to close ranks and expel anything that might be seen as
abnormal. Although ‘difference’ can be seen in a powerful, yet taboo lens because of
the threat to disrupt cultural order.
- ‘other’ is fundamental to the constitution of the self, to us as subjects, and to sexual
identity
- Sexual ‘difference’ begins to be assumed and explored in very young children
- Difference is viewed through various lenses linguistic, cultural, social, and psychic
levels
d. 2. Racializing the ‘Other’
- There was three major events when the “west” encountered black people: European
traders and west African slaves, European colonization on Africa, WWII migrations
—‘race’ and images of racial differences are shaped by these three profound events
e. 2.1: Commodity Racism: Empire and the Domestic World
- Progress of white explorer-adventures and the encounters with the Black African life
was recorded through various mediums
- ‘spectacle’ advertising translates things into a fantasy visual display of signs. And
symbols/ materials found on minority lands
- The image of colonial conquest was detrimental to the imagery portrayed of Africa—
‘Darkest Africa’ was stamped onto various products of the time
- Soap symbolized the ‘racializing’ of the domestic world and the ‘domestication’ of
the colonial world/ apparently had the power to wash black skin white
- Pear’s Soap: The White Man’s Burden
f. 2.2: Meanwhile, down at the plantation…
- Real and imagined physiological, biological, and anatomical differences were argued
to show mental and physical superiority and inferiority
- The negro, It was argued, only found happiness when under the authority of the
master
- Among whites, ‘culture’ was opposed to ‘nature’. Amongst blacks, it was assumed,
that ‘culture’ coincided with ‘nature.’/ Whites developed culture in order to
overpower human ‘nature’
 - In the attempt to make a distinction of biological and social in relation to race, the
body became a spiritual object that took life once the variables of culture and nature
were brought upon it
- “inconvertible evidence” (in relation to race)
- Naturalization allows for the distinction between whites and blacks to be permanent
and fixed/ culture is able to be changed, whereas nature is a part of us and
embedded into our creation
- Racial difference in slavery surrounded around two main themes: ‘innate laziness’ of
blacks they were born with, ‘innate primitivism’ surround lack of culture and
animalistic characteristics
- Blacks were reduced of their essence in order for nature to remain favorable for
whites

Quotes
How one picture can be home to various meanings:
“He encapsulates the extreme alternatives of heroism and villainy in world athletics in one
black body” (pp. 228)

How we see such radical extremes around the idea of difference:

(others) “They seem to be represented through sharply opposed, polarized, binary extremes—
good/ bad, civilized/ primitive, ugly/ excessively attractive, repelling-because-different/
compelling-because-strange-and-exotic.” (pp. 229)

How one much have dialogue with the ‘other’ in order to create meaning:
“The word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes ‘one’s own’ only when… the speaker
appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic expressive intention” (pp. 235)

The full picture is never told solely relying on the self. One yearns for ‘other’ to reach for
completeness.
“Our subjectivities are formed through this troubled, never-completed, unconscious dialogue
with—this internalization of—the ‘Other.” (pp. 238)

Documentation of integration of culture

“Progress of white explorer-adventures and the encounters with the Black African exotic was
charted, recorded and depicted in maps and drawings, etchings, and (especially) the new
photography, in newspaper illustrations and accounts, diaries, travel writing, learned treaties,
official reports and ‘boy’s own’ adventure novels.” (pp. 240)

Based upon the classification of the perceived superiors during the American-African slave
trade era
“This racialized discourse is structured by a set of binary oppositions. There is the powerful
opposition between ‘civilization’ (white) and ‘savagery’ (black).” (pp. 243)
 Opinion (125 words)

This article discussed how racial differences were originally formulated and how they
carry into modern day. In the beginning where examples surrounding Olympians and how the
meanings of the articles can hold implicit bias regarding race was an excellent introduction. The
way that whites were able to market off the black people’s differences was clearly shown in
proper identification, and readers can see the problematic exploitation that took place. The
second chapter allowed one to further dive into how the minds of these white people justified
the treatment they were inflicting on the black community. This article did a good job at
showing various forms of racial ‘othering’ and how societies need to stop creating radically
opposing binaries that can be detrimental to ethnic communities.