Al Ahmed 2020

Communication Theory ISSN 1050–3293
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
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Internalized Orientalism: Toward a
Postcolonial Media Theory and
De-Westernizing Communication Research
from the Global South
Anas M. Alahmed
Media School, Indiana University-Bloomington, Bloomington, IN 47401, USA
This article applies the concept of internalized orientalism to explain how news represen-
tations reflect the power struggles and power relationships within postcolonial nations of
the global South through Orientalist discourses. Introducing the concept of internalized
orientalism to postcolonial media studies has the potential to de-westernize commu-
nication research by depicting the interplays of representations within the South. In
this article, I analyze internalized orientalism as a communication theory by studying
media representations of the Egyptian revolution in terms of four themes: (a) inability
of southern people to rule themselves, (b) religious versus civil state, (c) social conflicts
and the patriarchal state, and (d) dehumanization of people and reducing human agency.
I argue that internalized orientalism demonstrates how media representations reflect a
Western production of knowledge of the global South in the global South, working toward
reproducing neocolonial power. At the same time, I argue, internalized orientalism offers a
lens for understanding the politics of representations and knowledge production from the
South.
Keywords: Postcolonial Media Studies, De-Westernizing Communication Research, Internal-

ized Orientalism, Global South, Arab Spring, Power Struggles
doi:10.1093/ct/qtz037
The Arab uprisings in 2011 challenged the narrative of Oriental society as

Arab people took to the streets to demand political reforms, human dignity, self-
determination, and democracy. The uprisings brought new political protagonists to
the forefront of society led by people who were challenging the state formation. These
mass protests changed the perception that Arabs are incompatible with Western
civilization and modernity (Pace & Cavatorta, 2012). Corporate America’s media
coverage of the uprisings offered Orientalist narratives and represented the Arab
Corresponding author: Anas M. Alahmed; e-mail: dr.anas.alahmed@gmail.com
Communication Theory 00 (2020) 1–22 © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of
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Internalized Orientalism A. M. Alahmed
Spring as a movement in which the Arab people and society aspired to become

more American (Salaita, 2012). Similarly, in much of the hegemonic communication
literature, the Arab Uprising is constructed as a product of the West/U.S.-centric
technologies, reinforcing the racist construction of the Middle East as a primitive
world to be emancipated through technologies of modernization. The Arab uprisings
contested the Orientalist notion of Arab Exceptionalism, and that Arabs only
understand the use of violence to bring about changes (Agathangelou, 2012).
While the Arab revolutions challenged some presumptions regarding Arab society
and its potential related to political transformations and reforms, the question
remains as to whether the Orientalist perception reinforces the Orientalist narrative
of Arab despotism during these critical events. While it could be said that such
a power struggle exists to reinforce images of Arabs that are incompatible with
liberal democracy and Western modernity, one must wonder to what extent these
images of Arab despotism have been produced and reproduced by the Arab people
themselves through self-Orientalism or internalized orientalism1 thereby reifying
neocolonial knowledge formations that enable neoliberal interventions under the
label of emancipation. The ultimate goal of this article is to engage with internalized
orientalism as a form of postcolonial politics, and to explore how it relates to de-
Westernizing communication from the South.
Internalized Orientalism
Edward Said (1978) defined Orientalism using three interdependent meanings. The
first refers to Western academic scholarship that produces and teaches knowledge
about the non-Western world. The second focuses on Orientalism as “a style of
thought” (p. 2), while the third states that Orientalism is “a Western style for dominat-
ing, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (p. 3). This style of thought
and system of knowledge production of the global South “can be discussed and
analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient” (p. 3). Orientalism
acts as a construct of knowledge that is not only received from Western hegemonic
discourses toward the postcolonial South, but also reproduced by the Southern
people themselves.
This construction of knowledge production regarding the Oriental global South
is a process of producing the Other. The category of the Other is meant to establish
a power relationship between the Self as the West/North/colonizer and the Other
as the East/South/colonized. The production of the other underlies “a relationship
of power, of domination, of varying degrees of complex hegemony” (Said, 1978, p. 5)
and is a discourse that has a “corresponding relationship with political power” (p. 12).
However, this relationship is imbued with power imbalance because of “the inerad-
icable distinction between Western superiority and Oriental inferiority” (p. 42) and
provides insights into the tensions in the representations of the postcolonial South
within the postcolony itself. These struggles occur because the above relationship
is a “political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the
2 Communication Theory 00 (2020) 1–22

A. M. Alahmed Internalized Orientalism
familiar (Europe, the West, us) and the stranger (the Orient, the East, them)” (p. 43)

in order to “express the strength of the West and the Orient’s weakness—as seen by
the West” (p. 45). The unequal relationship between the Self and the Other is the heart
of postcolonial studies (Boehmer, 2002), suggesting that the production of the Other
as the orient enforces the dependency of the global South on the global North. The
uneven relationship between the North and South maintains the power inequities in
global politics, allowing the North to have authority over the South in postcolonial
politics.
Internalized orientalism goes beyond the analysis of the Self and the Other in the
realm of North and South relationships, exploring the binary relationship between
the self and the other within the Southern society itself. The colonial politics of the
global North that produced the South as orient is both internalized and reproduced
by the postcolonial society of the South, constituting ongoing forms of colonization.
Internalized orientalism maintains the hegemonic authority of the global North over
the global South through its agents of the global South and sustains the colonial status
quo in the postcolonial South. Orientalism is not solely a system of representation,
but rather an overarching logic of maintaining the imperial legacy of the global North
that has indelibly marked the formation of postcolonial states of the global South.
Internalized orientalism provides an entry point to illustrate how the global
South represents itself in discourses, including in the news media, which itself is a
reproduction of Western/colonial forms of knowledge production. Thus, adding the
adjective internalized indicates that this type of Western Orientalist discourse, as well
as the Western knowledge production of the postcolonial South, has been assimilated
by the Southern people themselves, specifically the elites of the South. The phrase
internalized orientalism itself is not new. It first appeared when Heng and Devan
(1992) discussed how elites in Singapore applied Western standards of knowledge
production to the modern West in relation to the premodern East. Other phrases have
been used to describe the same phenomena of internalized orientalism, including
internal orientalism (Schein, 1997; Jansson, 2003), internal colonialism (Hechter,
1975; Gouldner, 1977; Hind, 1984), auto-orientalism (Holden, 2001; Mazzarella,
2003), reverse orientalism (Abu-Lughod, 1991), re-orientalism (Lau & Mendes,
2011), oriental orientalism (Gladney, 1994), self-orientalization (Ong, 1999), orien-
talized the orientalism (Dirlik, 1996), counter-orientalism (Moeran, 1996), and self-
orientalism (Ching, 2000). Schneider (1998) referred to orientalism in one country,
while Mitchell (1988) described it orientalism within.
It is important to note that the relationship between the ruling class or the native
elites (the superior Self) and the oppositional indigenous people (the inferior Other)
in the postcolonial world parallel that between the colonizer and colonized in the
process of internalization. This internalization occurs when the native elites sustain
their relationships with their (former) Western colonizers for power (e.g., political,
social, militant, or economic). In order to maintain such a relationship, the domestic
elite groups reflect the same interests as those of the colonizers or the global North
and reproduce the self/other binary of Orientalist narrative and Western mode of
Communication Theory 00 (2020) 1–22 3

thinking regarding their own social world. Thus, the ruling and elite classes in the

postcolonial states construct themselves as the Self by attributing the inferior aspects
of the local culture to the rest of the society, who becomes the Other. The designation
and identification of the Other demonstrates the same representational strategies
deployed in the historical Western stereotyping process, with the elites depicting
themselves as modern, civilized, and progressive.
While Western Orientalist knowledge is reproduced in the global South to serve
the political-economic interests of the global North, many other factors contribute
to postcolonial conditions as well. For instance, the hierarchical structure spanning
class, education, culture, and urban/rural divisions reflecting Western values came
into existence with the Western influence within postcolonial society during the
colonial period and continues to play an important role in the society. In other
words, colonialism layered and inserted itself so deeply within the social hierarchy
(Washbrook, 1993) that it did not allow creating or imagining a new society even
after territorial occupation was over. Colonization creates agencies that continue
to serve colonial interests in the postcolonial politics of the global South, enabling
local elites to profit from colonizing processes and maintain their hegemony in
politics and economics. The power structure replicates itself in the postcolony with
Orientalist knowledge production internalized within the society. Hence internalized
orientalism is one mechanism that reflects colonial legacy in the postcolonial world.
News representations play a centralized role in furthering this condition.
In order to understand how internalized orientalism is a major factor in the
knowledge production within the global South, several news stories on the 2011
Egyptian revolution in the Egyptian newspapers are examined in this study. The
purpose of this investigation is to demonstrate how these stories represent the people
and their revolutionary movements in the shadows of Orientalist discourse. The
conclusion discusses how internalized orientalism contributes to communication
theory and the communication field at large.
Postcolonial media meets de-Westernizing communication
The following section situates internalized orientalism an anchor to understanding

the role of representations of the Egyptian revolution in 2011 within the contexts of
the global South. In order to understand how internalized orientalism works in news
representations, and how news representations attempt to reproduce the Western
knowledge of the postcolonial South, this study draws attention to four specific
Orientalist themes with regard to the global South that are built on stereotypes
contributing to the idea of Oriental despotism and its representation (Ventura, 2017).
These themes have been central to constructing the Orient: the inability of Arabs or
an Oriental culture to rule themselves/itself; the inability of the Arab people to have a
civil state; the inability of the people of the South to democratize themselves without
patriarchal norms; and the reproduction of a representation that reduces their human
agency. These Orientalist narratives reproduce a lens of Orientalism reinforcing the

image of Arabic society as despotic. Within the Egyptian context, the colonizer or

the master of the internal colony is the military and the colonized is the country’s
subjugated people.
Egyptian revolution and Western knowledge production of news
This section first provides a chronicle of events of the Egyptian revolution briefly,
then examines news representations of the Egyptian revolution, its implications
for reproduction of Western Orientalist knowledge in postcolonial South, and its
influence on postcolonial politics of Egypt after the revolution. Four themes of
representation in relation to the binary construction of the Self and the Other (i.e.,
the military and the people) are explored.
Egyptian revolution and newspapers

On 25 January 2011 when police day in Egypt was to be celebrated, Egyptians had
already decided to go to Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo to demonstrate and
demand for the end of the Mubarak regime. This was inspired by the Tunisian
revolution and the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in December 2010, which
launched the cascade of the Arab uprisings. Within weeks of protests, the former
president of Egypt Hosni Mubarak left his position on 12 February and handed over
power to the Supreme Council of the Armed Office (SCAF). In June 2012, Mohamed
Morsi was democratically elected as the President. However, in July 2013, Morsi was
deposed from power through a military coup d’état led by Minister of Defense (now
president) Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. This section analyzes some news representation from
three different newspapers (Al Ahram, Al Shorouk, and Al Masry Al Youm)2 during
the period when Mubarak left power up to the military coup to understand how
newspapers with different ideologies reflect or challenge the Orientalist discourse of
the global North regarding the global South.
When Mubarak left his position of power, political leadership was in a vacuum;
thus, the revolution was seen as an expression of disorder of the Egyptian state. The
revolution interrupted the relationship between the Egyptian state and its people,
shifting the relationship between the Self and the Other. The Egyptian state became
more vulnerable with more power in the hands of the people. Thus, the revolution
opened the door to a new political atmosphere that challenged the authoritarian
regime. As the power of the people threatened the military power, the altered
relationship between the Self and the Other made it even more evident that an
existential antagonism between them is central to Egyptian society and politics. Post
revolution, Egypt became further polarized with the collapse of the state power
and not having anyone to fill the gap. Even though SCAF managed to hold the
transition period after the revolution, it was nevertheless the demand of the people
to have a civilian president to mitigate the power of the military in the political
leadership. That also explains why SCAF rushed the presidential and parliament
elections before establishing a new constitution post revolution. When Morsi was

elected as a president, he was considered an Other because he was an outsider,

not from the military institution, and from an Islamic background, throwing more
challenges to deal with an Other that fits the category of the Oriental stereotype
in the post-revolution moment. Hence, it is a significant moment to examine how
discourses around Egyptian revolution reproduce Western knowledge of the Other
in the postcolonial South.
Three newspapers were chosen to examine the political implications of Western
thought replicated in the newspapers with three different ideological orientations—
a state paper, a liberal paper, and an independent one—in order to bypass any
possibility of a conclusion with a homogenized judgment of such a representation.
The newspapers reflect elite articulations, given the classed nature of news produc-
tions. As texts, they allow us to see how internalized orientalism is produced and
reproduced through discourses within postcolonial societies.
Unfit for democracy: Unable to self-govern

Internalized orientalism reinforces the perception of the global South and reproduces
Western knowledge of the Oriental Other in which the colonized Other is unable to
rule itself. Instead, it requires assistance from the colonizer Self. According to Said
(1978), Western knowledge produces Western “capacities for self-government” (p.
32). “Egypt cannot have self-government” (p. 34) because “Egypt requires, indeed
insists upon, British occupation” (p. 34) to assist in its governing.
Consider Al-Ahram, the state runs newspaper. It reported consistently how the
military, which replaced the British colonizer, was responsible for democratizing
and governing Egypt. For instance, one of the Al-Ahram’s headline showed that a
senior officer declared “the Army Will Stand with the People” (Shabban, 2011) which
referred to the military leading Egypt during a political transition. This statement
suggested that self-government was not possible without the (internal) colonizer.
In addition, the independent newspaper, Al Shorouk indicated of a power struggle
between the Self and the Other in the post-presidential elections by stating that the
military was “Siding With the People” (“The army: Our side is with the people,”
2012). A phrase like “siding with the people” suggests that a military’s mission is
to democratize Egyptians by standing with people and such democratization is only
possible with the military’s assistance.
Al-Ahram printed the military’s declaration that: “Our Goal is to Build a Modern
( . . . ) State ( . . . )” (“Tantawi in October victory,” 2011b). It published a similar
report on October 20, 2011 “Military is Eager to Establish a Democratic ( . . . ) State
( . . . )” and a military officer “We Are Working to Build a Democratic ( . . . ) State”
(Tawfiq & Hijab, 2011). Such narratives situate the military, not the people or the
revolutionaries, as key to bringing democracy. That logic of bringing or establishing
democracy fits the orientalist discourse where Western politics justifies war—note
the more recent Iraq invasion—to bring democracy to people since Oriental people
are unable to democratize themselves. Similar to colonists using democratization as
a rationale for political intervention, the Egyptian military claimed that its goal was

to build a democratic state after the revolution suggesting that Egyptian people are

unable to democratize themselves. These representations establish the military as the
chief actor committed to democratization and leading the country through a political
transition. Without the military (Self), the people of the country (Other) would not
know how to democratize and self-govern.
After the revolution, when the first presidential election was held in spring 2012,
the liberal newspaper Al Masry Al Youm questioned the ability of the elected president
to rule Egypt; a claim could be seen in the headline “Sisi3 Takes the Initiative.”
(“Sisi takes the initiative,” 2012a). Such a headline not only showed that a military
officer was actually managing the state, but it indicated that he had more power than
the president. Al Shorouk posted a similar headline with “The Army’s Patience is
Decreasing” (Aljahmi & Khaial, 2013). This headline was a call from the newspaper
asking the head of the military take control from President Morsi.
This representation of the Arabic people as unable to rule themselves without help
from the military (i.e., Self) conformed to the orientalist idea of the Arab Other,
but this Other was within—it was internalized by representations that ostensibly
served a society struggling to govern itself. In this representation, the people were
unable to govern themselves because they were weak, inferior, and secondary to the
military/Self. According to Said (1978), in the division between the Self and the Other
in the knowledge production of Orientalism, the Self/West/North was “rational,
developed, humane, [and] superior, [while] the Orient was aberrant, undeveloped,
[and] inferior” (p. 300). This characterization flows into the argument that the
Orient/Other cannot rule itself without help from the military/Self.
Egyptian military—patriarchy state and parental role

According to Said (1978), “since the Orientals were ignorant of self-government,
they had better be kept that way for their own good” (p. 228). This idea that they
had “better be kept” is furthered by way of having native elites at the helm of the
state serving as colonial agents. They maintain state oppression in the postcolonial
South and, hence, the legacy of colonialism. Here, internalized orientalism reinforces
the classic Eurocentric knowledge of Oriental despotism, where the tyrannical and
patriarchal authority in power keeps the unruly masses under control. As such, state
oppression was made evident through the portrayal of the military rule as patriarchal.
Consider the story by Othman et al. (2012) that was published in Al Masry Al Youm
titled “The Army Observes and Threatens.” In this story, where two oppositional
protests between pro-Morsi and anti-Morsi appeared, the military not only warned
the public not to engage in such a conflict, but its role to mediate among protesters.
This story indicated that the military was acting in a parental role in society, attempt-
ing to keep its children from fighting. The army was represented in a parental position
befitting the Orientalist discourse of the Other as patriarchal. Kandil (2012, p. 232)
argued that military propaganda symbolized the unity of the military and the people
by presenting a picture of “a soldier gazing adoringly into the eyes of infant he held
carefully in his arms—the helpless infant here, of course, represents the people.”

Moreover, the image “of a cruel/compassionate father in relation to his child is

matched by an image of a benevolent despot in politics” (Sharabi, 1987, pp. 215–216,
quoted in Ayubi, 1995). The image reflects not only hierarchical authoritarianism of
the Arab in the postcolonial narrative, but also communicates that “the relationship
of the citizen to state is similar to the child’s traditional relationship with the father”
(Ayubi, 1995, p. 166). Such representations assign the role of fatherhood to the
military to protect Egyptians. What gets communicated here is that without the
patriarchal role of the military, Egypt would collapse. This idea can be seen in the Al
Masry Al Youm headline: “( . . . ) The Regime is Failing ( . . . ) and the Army is Egypt’s
Only Hope” (Shalabi & Eldargly, 2013).
Moreover, a headline such as “Sisi to People: Do Not Worry About Egypt”
(Othman, 2013) signifies that the military would always be there to protect the
country. The idea of the state as patriarchal is further communicated when nar-
ratives refer to the ruling class (the Self) as a savior or hero, a common refer-
ence found in Western media representations. The patriarchal representation of
the military links the military to heroism in the sense that “only a hero could
bring all these factors together” (Said, 1978, p. 85) and that the military is such “a
hero rescuing the Orient from the obscurity, alienation, and strangeness which he
himself had properly distinguished” (Said, 1978, p. 121). Western media enforces
the idea of a hero as someone for the common people to rally around. Therefore,
by destroying the common Orient (Other) and its natural narrative, the military
(Self) is able to break down the defenses of the people against the damaging thought
processes.
Additional headlines supporting this idea can be found in Al-Ahram’s headline
“Sisi: The Army and Police are Obligated to Protect the Stability of the Homeland”
(“Sisi: The army and police are obligated,” 2013a), Al Shorouk’s headline “( . . . ) and
Demands that Sisi to Protect Them” (“The big clash is approaching,” 2013b, emphasis
added), and Al-Ahram headline “Sisi: The Army Will not Allow Chaos or the State to
Collapse” (Tawfiq & Mustafa, 2013). The last headline came only one week before
the military coup that put Sisi in power, acting in a parental role over both the
government and the opposition.
Even though some scholars argue that the patriarchal status of Egyptian military
as savior and protector has been rooted in Egyptian society through popular culture
(Khalil, 2012; Mostafa, 2017), it is nevertheless the history of British colonialism
that formed the basis of the Egyptian modern army as early as the 1820s. The
modern Egyptian army’s foundation in British colonial history also sealed its identity
to become a colonial agent within the dominant internal politics of Egypt. Even
after Egyptian independence from Britain in post-WWI, the military could not
come to its own as it has been already “far more under the control of the British
and its development much more carefully regulated” (Tignor, 1966, p. 384). The
struggle for autonomy in postcolonial Egyptian politics can be traced back to this
historical construction of the Egyptian military as an institution by the colonial power
(Mitchell, 1988).

Therefore, the patriarchal mode of the state in the postcolonial politics of the

global South explains the structure of the military as a powerful entity. As Shohat
(1992) indicated, postcolonial politics relates to the geo-political hegemony of power
relations. The power struggle between the colonizers and the colonized is between
nations where relationships between the dominant and subordinated groups are
continuously rearticulated through new mechanisms of control to maintain the status
quo. The dominant narratives on subordinated groups in the postcolonial society of
the South must maintain them as vulnerable and unstable. Hence, the discourse and
materiality of the patriarchal role of the military is necessary in postcolonial politics.
After the January 2011 revolution, the military continued to convince the people that
it was on their side and threatened them if they demanded removal of the military by
any means.
Religious state versus a civil state

Internalized orientalism in post-revolutionary Egyptian representations manifests
in the debate over having a civil vs a religious state as well. The representations
fall into the Orientalist discourse—especially that of Muslim Arabs—in which Arab
states are either despotic regimes or Islamic and religious ones, but not civil, modern
states. Arabs are “designated as backward, degenerate, uncivilized, and retarded, the
Orientals were viewed in a framework constructed out of biological determinism and
moral-political admonishment” (Said, 1978, p. 207). Note how knowledge production
of the uncivilized Other gets reproduced and distributed when right after the removal
of Mubarak a senior military officer expressed worries about the future of Egypt after
the revolution. He affirmed the importance of Egypt being a civil state over a religious,
state. The media solidified these views. As the headline in Al Shorouk “The Army
Emphasizes the Civil State” (“The army emphasizes the civil state,” 2011c) indicated,
the military had already decided its position regarding this argument. Similarly, the
headline titled “Egypt Will Not be Iran or Gaza” (Hammad, 2011) suggested that
Egypt would not become a religious state. The underlying implication was that the
civil state would represent the civilized Self, contrary to the religious, uncivilized
Other. However, there was no narrative of a military state, which has been the form
of political rule for Egypt.4
The civil versus religious state argument reflecting the binary of the civilized Self
and the uncivilized Other is internalized and centralized in the postcolonial global
South. Said (1978) explained that Orientalist discourses constructed the knowledge of
Muslims and Arabs “as closed traditional societies” (p. 299), not advanced or civilized
since they follow politicized religion as foundation of government; therefore, their
politics would never be compatible with the West.
Islam has never easily been encompassed by the West politically ( . . . ) Islam and
Middle Eastern societies are totally political, an adjective meant as a reproach to
Islam for not being liberal, for not being able to separate (as we do) politics from
culture. The result is an invidiously ideological portrait of us and them. (p. 299)

Within the context of internalized orientalism in the Egyptian revolution, traditional

refers to a society that is less developed and more religious, while modernity refers to
a privileged, high- culture society with a civil government (Faruqi & Fahmy, 2017).
Moreover, the rhetoric of a superior civil state over an inferior religious state was also
presented by Sisi to legitimize the military coup and establish the military as a civil,
modern ruler in contrast to the uncivil one. This was to claim the superiority of the
military over the elected president, Morsi, Sisi, the leader of the military coup, also
made this point in a conversation with the former United States Secretary of Defense
Chuck Hagel after the military coup. Sisi told Hagel that in order to make sense of the
coup over an elected president one must understand that “there are revolutionaries
who want to change our [added] way of life, who want to bring back centuries-old
practices” (Kirkpatrick, 2018, p.227). These revolutionaries refer to the people or
the Other who demanded an end to the military rule in Egypt, and “centuries-old
practices” refer to their religious practices.
On several occasions, some representations used Quranic verses to describe the
people through a language that is centuries-old time. Al Masry Al Youm used the
phrase “This is the Parting of Ways Between Me and You” (“Brotherhood and
Salafists,” 2011a) taken from the Quran. The religious discourse was referenced to
report a situation, where clashes were occurring between Islamist candidates over
the parliamentary seats won in the election. Another example from Al Shorouk can be
found when the newspaper reflected on the presidential team by printing the headline
“Morsi’s Team: Islamists Except a Little” (Fathi, 2012) by using a Qur’anic phrase
“except a little.” The phrases of Quran are considered a centuries-old practice since
it is not a language that is used in contemporary times, while influence of Islam in
governance is considered destabilizing. In other words, Western discourses consider
Islam or Quran pre-modern since Islamic religious sentiment expressed through
Quran has been established as the formidable Other when juxtaposed against the
Eurocentric understanding of modernity. Hence, it is important to understand the
overall objectives of movements that politicize religion. It is imperative to do so for
the advancement of de-Westernization.
When representations characterize societal divisions in terms of civil or religious
values, they doubt cultural members’ political identity in the post-revolution state
and question the nature of self-determination actualized by the people. This type
of discourse further demonstrates how neoliberal politics in the capitalist world
subjugates the Other via Orientalist expressions. Internalized orientalism operates
by having the elites in the postcolony question the identity of its very own cultural
members.
Regardless of how the West views the Middle East, internalized Orientalism was
used by the military in Egypt to exclude the Other from participating in politics.
It is primarily through representations of the modern and traditional that native
elites in postcolonial societies dole out a reproduction of Western body of knowledge
to fuel political control. Colonial power not only constructed institutions, rebuilt
towns and villages, disciplined bodies, and introduced schooling, but also divided

modernist Egyptian autocratic elites from the rest of Egypt’s people (Mitchell, 1988).

This division is necessary for control. It leads people to believe they are different and
construct polarizing models of the modern Self and the traditional Other. Western
discourses tend to utilize and maintain this polarization to the extent that elites and
masses fail to have any communication.
Likewise, when a representation makes a derogatory reference to a religious
state or Sharia law, it is aligned with the Orientalist thought regarding Muslims as
Others. Although Sharia is an Arabic word in origin, it has been associated with
an objectionable body of law at odds with Western values; thus, the word Sharia is
considered to be an orientalist one since it refers to a law that is unsuitable for any
contemporary civilization. Hence, Sharia becomes a trope in Orientalist discourses
to homogenize all Muslims and argue that Islamic tradition is incompatible with
modernity (Khiabany, 2011).
Dehumanizing the people and reducing human agency

The representation of the revolution dehumanized the people who participated in
toppling an oppressive regime, and not those who exercised power in that regime.
Such a representation is an outcome of internalized orientalism that dehumanizes
representations of people in mass mobilizations and social movements. Dominant
discourses typically turn ordinary people into a passive category of the Other. The
abstraction in the case of Tahrir Square is an example. Such abstractions represented
the power of the revolution—not the people. The representations did not quite
highlight the people as revolutionaries or legitimate actors but presented them
as an abstraction that removed their individualities. These portrayals obscuring
revolutionaries or activists, reducing their agency, and undermining their political
forces served as representational strategies—a process to depoliticize the revolution.
The use of revolution in the representations appeared to show that the revolution, not
the people, held the power and that the revolution upset the regime because the nation
revolted. Reducing the power of the people and neglecting the agency of the Arab
people and revolutionaries to make their own history fits the Orientalist assumptions
of Western representations of Arabs.5 Similarly, erasing the local contexts of labor,
student, and activist organizing in Egypt that formed the infrastructure of the Arab
Spring, the “revolution” was given a spontaneous character.
Hence, for the protests in downtown Cairo in Tahrir Square, people in Tahrir were
rendered passive and powerless. Tahrir was designated a certain identity or value or
agency through either the military or as a place of the revolution, but it had nothing
to do with the people. Thus, Tahrir Square became an abstract symbol to legitimize
the revolution. The phrase Tahrir became a term to erase the people and signify a
location that symbolized power instead of representing the people exercising their
power. Headlines like “Tahrir Demands,”6 instead of “people demands” presented
Tahrir as part of the revolution demanding change, not a place where people gathered
to demand change. As such, narratives drew attention to the frequent demonstrations

in Tahrir, reflecting the demands of the revolution. They were not presented as the

demands of the Egyptian people, who were never under the spotlight.
Finally, dominant representations of the revolution noted that when general
people actively participated in the revolution and politically mobilized to remove
Mubarak, it was the military’s assistance that allowed them to do so. The military as
the superior Self manipulated the representation of the people or the inferior Other
to reinforce its legitimacy as state ruler. For instance, some supporting headlines
were “( . . . ) the People Gave Legitimacy to the Military” (Othman, 2011), “( . . . ) the
People and the Army Unity in the Friday Protests ( . . . )” (“New victory of people,”
2011), and “( . . . ) Military and People are One Hand” (Hashim et al., 2011). These
headlines gave the idea that the military and the people were working together and
that the people themselves were passive in making the revolution a reality. Their
participation and subsequent success only occurred because the military helped
them. Dehumanizing the people is meant to remove the people from being an active
Self to a passive Other. Reducing the power of the people and marginalizing their
roles in society contextualize the anti-systemic struggles in the Arab region. The
local elite discourses systematically obliterated the narratives and materiality of labor
organizing in Egypt, keeping elite power intact (El-Shazli, 2019).
Military and the people—struggle of the self and the other
According to Bhabha (1994), the colonialists created the ideas of the self-as-other and
other-as-self, both of which serve to make colonialism more of a political ideology
than merely a method of political intervention and economic imperialism. While
the binary of the Self/Other in postcolonial studies appeared in racial differences
(North/South), racial differences are not indispensable within the context of internal-
ized orientalism. In internalized orientalism, this difference between the Self/Other
is essentially politicized. Therefore, in order to represent the Other within the logic
of internalized orientalism, it is necessary to understand that the Other is not about
being different in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and
any other minority category. Rather, the classification of the Other is possible because
of a political ideology. The state either subjugates masses through internalization of
Western thinking that activates the political ideology of self/other or consolidates
minorities into an Other and maintains a divided society.
What makes physical differences, however, such as race, gender, and class, different
from political ideology is that the latter is focused on social hierarchies. Internalized
orientalism has become part of the organic, dynamic society in postcolonial politics
where certain people accept the Orientalist discourse and then reproduce it as
Western knowledge. As such, it has become an internalization process that is used
to reflect the Western knowledge production of the global South. Since the purpose
of Orientalism is to ensure the West have hegemonic authority over the Orient in
order to maintain the power establishment that supports the status quo in the Arab
state, such reproduction of Western knowledge regarding the global South is the main

connection between the colonizer and the colonized in postcolonial politics. As Said

concluded (1978), the Orient Other “is at bottom sometimes either to be feared ( . . . )
or to be controlled” (p. 301). Those Others are the Egyptian people who the Self feared
might lead Egypt, and, hence, were to be controlled by the military state.
Nevertheless, since the political structures and identities in Egypt were rooted
in and controlled by the military institutions in the postcolonial society, the rev-
olution challenged the military state or the Self since the people or the Other
were demanding the removal of the Self from power in order to insert the Other
instead. This attempt to transform the political identity of the Self into the Other
threatened the institutionalized authoritarian military state power, and the native
elites’ privileges with regard to ruling the country and controlling the economy. While
the elite members of the society monopolized the identity of the state (e.g. military
officers, autocrats, business officials), the revolutionaries or the Other challenged
the monopolized identity by attempting to reshape the existing political rule and
bring forth a new phase in the political landscape by balancing the power structure.
This new phase of democratic Egypt asked to end the role of the Self as an agent
of the global North. In an attempt to undermine the revolutionaries, the military
reproduced the Western knowledge of the people of the global South as religious,
conservative, uncivilized and unable to rule themselves. Reproducing the Orientalist
image of Egypt, the military juxtaposed the question of a progressive civil state over a
despotic one.
Internalized Orientalism as a de-Westernizing approach from the South
As the previous examples of news representations show, internalization among

Egyptians regarding who they are in relation to the military was the result of intense
initiation, domestication, narration, formation, and acquisition of ideologies gained
through national discourses and media propaganda meant to idolize the Egyptian
state run by the military as a colonial agent. Internalized orientalism in conversation
with postcolonial media studies contributes to de-Westernizing communication
research by uncovering the Western lens and Western conceptions of the global South
that are used to explain the non-Western world, folded into logics of dominance by
postcolonial elites. It offers an opportunity to understand the relationship between
certain societies in the South and their Orientalist representations within. Here,
mediated depictions are constituted amid class struggles between the Self and the
Other in news texts and representations. The relationship between the Self and
the Other, however, is ambivalent and not as straightforward as is often portrayed
(Shohat, 1992). These ambivalent relations are a product of the colonial discourse
that is institutionalized in the state apparatus through the field of representation
(Slemon, 1994). Internalized orientalism explains the implication of colonial projects
and impact of their politics on the colonized territory through the reproduction
of Western knowledge production in news texts. Thus, internalized orientalism is
particularly appropriate for understanding the power of media since media as part

of postcolonial projects is “affected by the imperial process from the moment of

colonization to the present day” (Ashcroft et al., 2002, p. 2).
Consequently, internalized orientalism draws attention to double representations;
first, a representation that reflects Western production of knowledge about the
postcolonial states of the global South, and second, a representation that reproduces
the Western knowledge by the Southern/oriental people themselves. It captures the
complex power relationships in postcolonial politics and how such power relation-
ships are represented and reflected in news media texts. In the Egyptian context,
the military became an Orientalist agency and such a representation of the military
showed an Orientalist political narrative in which it assisted democratization and was
the only institution able to prevent chaotic dogmatism in Egyptian politics. When
the representations confirmed the political reality regarding the colonial agency of
the military and its role in society as the Self, it fell into an Orientalist discourse by
reproducing Western knowledge of the people and the society of the global South.
Internalized orientalism attends to whether a representation reflects the role of the
colonial agent as the Self or challenges it.
In order to construct a political system, colonialism relied on establishing intel-
lectual traditions, and creating educational institutions and discourses to transmit
and reproduce knowledge that continued to serve postcolonial politics (Headrick,
1977). Subsequently, the postcolonial global South implemented a mirror of colo-
nialism by creating an identity that reproduced the colonial inequalities. It caused
the colonized to embrace many of the economic and political issues of the Self in
order to remain dependent on the colonizer, and, eventually, allowed the colonizer to
help the colonized (Sethi, 2011). This legacy of colonialism in postcolonial nations
sustained through internal colonialism is necessary for the purpose of Western
political domination of the global South (Mamdani, 2001). The reproduction of the
Western knowledge in postcolonial South is an outcome of this process.
In the post-2011 revolution in the Arab world, these ambivalent relationships
resulted in media representations that failed to conceptualize people’s ability to rule
themselves. Internalized orientalism provides an explanation of the workings of the
voices in the global South, emphasizing the importance of interpreting “the erased
agency of subaltern communities in elite structures” (Dutta, 2015, p. 136). The
erasure of the subaltern voice is produced on an ongoing basis through the discursive
productions of postcolonial elites. Such an understanding of the colonial legacy is
not solely about how representations reflect reproduction of colonial knowledge, but
what also matters is situating the global South as speaking subjects. The colonial
empire caused the existing postcolonial society of the global South to mutate, whereby
Western colonial assessments were intersected with long-held values. In other words,
colonialism was a dominant political instrument that modified existing structures
rather than building new ones. This understanding brings postcolonial media studies
to investigate the political economy of postcolonial media production, representa-
tion, and practice at large in new ways, and understand how these elements reflect
the relations of power within the global South.

This study argues that the Egyptian military and its institutions replaced the

colonizer in postcolonial politics. Former colonized countries have attempted to
resolve their identity crises by intervening in the legacies of imperialism and adapting
to the discourse of colonialism. The unequal relationship between the colonized as
the oppressed and the colonizer as the oppressor was explained in Fanon’s (1963)
examination of colonizing mechanism. Fanon argued that colonialists imposed their
cultural and economic ideas on the territory of the colonized so that even after
the colonizer left the occupied land their hegemonic ideology was by then already
represented by the military, and beliefs mirrored by the natives. Ideology in the
postcolonial global South shapes state politics, attitudes, and institutions, while
hegemony is the ability of this ideology to maintain the Self/Other relationship within
the state/society of the global South.
It is well established that Orientalism as “the system of European or Western
knowledge about the Orient” has become “synonymous with European domina-
tion of the Orient” (Said, 1978, p. 197). Internalized orientalism is an appropriate
application to understand the aftermath of colonialism in the postcolonial soci-
ety of the global South, attending to ongoing colonialisms that exist within the
global South. Since knowledge production constitutes the binary of the Self/Other
in media representations in postcolonial states, this Other can refer “to the colo-
nized others who are marginalized by imperial discourse, identified by their dif-
ference from the centre and, perhaps crucially, become the focus of anticipated
mastery by the imperial ego” (Ashcroft et al., 2013, p. 187). This imperial ego
continues to operate through internalized orientalism that informs the represen-
tations of the Other. Such a representation reflects the postcolonial discourse of
the global South, where knowledge production reproduces the imperial ego. The
struggle of such a representation, however, is to see to what extent this West-
ern knowledge production of the South is reproduced or resisted in postcolonial
society.
Internalized Orientalism as a communication theory
The idea of internalized orientalism opens up discussions about unequal distribution

of knowledge, and the struggle to produce new knowledge in the field of communica-
tion. How can postcolonial nations not rely on established knowledge? The overflow
of the global North’s production of the global South and an explanation of the same
necessitates de-westernization of the study of media (Iwabuchi, 2010). Internalized
orientalism contributes to communication theory by illuminating the complex and
intertwined nature of discourses. It allows examination of construction of Self/Other
binary in society by media and reproduction of the Orientalist knowledge production
of the postcolonial global South through these representations. It asks to problematize
political reality as a larger project of de-westernizing media theory (Khiabany, 2003).
This problematization of political reality offers an entry point to probe further into
the role of communication—how communication exists in society as a practice and to

what extent communication of the global South differs or mimics the Western mode

of knowledge production.
This article points to the ongoing role of imperialism in knowledge production
about the other at the margins of the global South, especially in media content (e.g.,
Boyd-Barrett, 2014; Sparks, 2012). Whereas on one hand the imperial machinery
constructs Western technology as the liberator, on the other hand, postcolonial elites
construct themselves as the emancipator of the people. This confluence of local and
colonial elite formations in erasing peoples’ voices plays out across spheres of knowl-
edge production. This Western perspective automatically excludes any possibility for
the Other to express herself in language designed by herself to create space for local
discourses from the margins (Dutta, 2015). Instead, it traps the Other in a ceaseless
cycle of discourse that is self-destructive. Postcolonial elites that dominate media
theorizing, often oblivious to their elite positions within knowledge production
circuits of the global North, recycle this trap in their analyses, failing to account
for the communicative practices within postcolonial societies that shape large-scale
inequalities and ignoring the confluences of elite tropes at local and imperial sites
(see Dirlik, 1999).
Furthermore, Western media bias is a problem because it often generates Western
knowledge regarding discursive practices in the global South without investigating
how they appeared in relation to decolonial struggles (Gunaratne, 2009). Such biases
in media theories lead to Orientalist traps by accusing society and people for their
struggles instead of examining how such events happen in relation to postcolonial
politics. Internalized orientalism to the contrary allows investigation of the global
South as a product of colonization and explains how the postcolonial state replicates
its historical conditions. Internalized orientalism reveals Orientalist thinking in post-
colonial news texts and other media discourses, demonstrating the role of discursive
resources in propagating the internalization of Orientalism.
Moreover, while there “is increasing concern over Western bias in media the-
ory and reaction against the lack of understanding of other cultures” (Khiabany,
2003, p. 415) knowledge of internalized orientalism may prevent application of
Orientalist worldview. Explaining power struggles and how they exist through news
representations in postcolonial politics at large, internalized orientalism disallows
essentialized categorization of the non-Western world. The Western bias in media
theory stems from the construction of the superiority of the Western knowledge
system. This bias in theory also comes from the extent to which media theory is
dependent on and reflective of the media itself (McQuail, 2000). Similarly, the bias in
communication theory is rooted in the belief that material progress can be achieved
through adoption of Western attitudes and cultures by the less developed nations even
as non-Western scholars struggle to fill the gap (Kim, 2009; McQuail, 2000). Even if
Western thinking is seemingly more progressive and open to change, it nevertheless
refuses to encompass non-Western thought processes.
Internalized orientalism offers a critical analysis of how media content serves as a
part of the state-capital apparatus and how media representations reflect state-capital

power. It suggests that media representations reflect power struggles in the postcolo-

nial world of the global South, seeking to understand how media constitutionalizes
and institutionalizes political power in the postcolony. Internalized orientalism chal-
lenges assumptions of media theory by contextualizing and historicizing Western
knowledge production, analyzing the role of imperialism in media and politics,
and explaining how these factors reflect in media discourses and representation.
Thus, challenging the politics of knowledge production within the global South,
internalized orientalism offers a cultural understanding that goes beyond ethnocen-
trism in communication theory and more towards a culture-centric approach (Dutta,
2015) that seeks to investigate communication practices in the global South amidst
structural formations.
Internalized orientalism offers a link that connects the media institutions of the
global South with colonial history, foregrounding the role of political economy of
media and communication research in the context of postcolonial politics of the
Global South. As Said explained, institutions are part of the Orientalist construction
of knowledge because Orientalism “expresses and represents ( . . . ) as a mode of
discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imaginary, doctrine,
even colonial bureaucracies and colonial style” (1978, p. 2). Narrating the terrains of
inequality that form its discursive resources, Said explains that “Orientalism depends
for its strategy on this flexible positional superiority, which puts the Westerner in a
whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the
relative upper hand” (Said, 1978, p. 7). This urgency for positional superiority is
what renders Western knowledge production powerful in the global hierarchy of
knowledge. It is also this relationship that, in a sense, prevents full de-westernization,
instead generating in postcolonial societies groups of elites that deploy orientalist
discourses to keep intact their power and control. While postcolonial studies in
the communication field largely attends to the Western constructions of the South,
internalized orientalism offers resources to investigate how representation works
in reproducing inequalities within the global South. It thus depicts the seamless
complicity between colonial formations and local elite control in the global South.
Conclusion
Internalized orientalism depicts how Orientalist discourse in media content reflects

and reproduces Western colonial constructions of the global South by the Southern
people themselves. It therefore offers a theoretical lens not only to de-westernize
communication of the global South and its postcolonial trajectory, but also, to com-
prehend the power struggles related to media representations and their relationship
to power in postcolonial society. The role of the empire and the power of commu-
nication are the key to understanding the mode of Western knowledge production
that has been adopted within the postcolonial global South. Internalized orientalism
investigates this representation within postcolonial society, which either reflects or
challenges the perception of the Other and interrogates the nature of knowledge

production in the postcolonial South at large. As such, internalized orientalism offers

a lens to interrogate the political project of Western hegemony and its political
domination over the postcolonial South, attending to the role of postcolonial elites in
processes of othering and in producing new forms of colonial relationships.
While Said’s orientalism and postcolonial studies in general explain how Western
knowledge production constructs the global South as a whole, internalized orien-
talism offers a lens into understanding how the oriental logic is reproduced by the
elites in Southern societies themselves, working to legitimize hegemonic forms of
power and control. This article expands beyond the focus on the texts in the West
in postcolonial media studies to articulate a conceptual anchor for interrogating
power and control exercised by postcolonial elites through texts produced in post-
colonial contexts, deploying the colonial binaries of Self and Other. It situates this
internalization amid class and power struggles in postcolonial society, locating it in
its relationship to Western politics in the context of control over the postcolonial
world through local elite collaboration. Western knowledge construction of the global
South in orientalist logics is a tool that also serves the interests of the power elite
within postcolonial societies, reproducing colonial political economic configurations
of exploitation, extraction, and oppression (Dutta, 2018). Theorizing orientalist
formations within the ambits of the global South attends to the specific contexts
within which these formations reify ongoing forms of exploitation, oppression, and
control. The inequalities in distribution of power within postcolonial societies are
created, reproduced, and sustained through orientalizing discourses that prop up the
modern/Western/progressive local elite against the primitive/traditional/backward
Other. Given the preponderance of postcolonial academics from these elite classes in
postcolonial societies, a reflexive turn toward discourses generated within the South
offers a critical lens for examining new forms of colonial control legitimized through
internalized orientalism as well as critically attending to the knowledge that gets
produced in the academe under the “postcolonial” label. An emancipatory politics of
transformation calls for making visible these inequalities in discursive constructions
and disrupting the orientalizing logics that sustain these inequalities.
Notes
1 Internalized orientalism with lowercase o will refer to the current perspective, while
Orientalism with a capital O will refer to Orientalism literature in general.
2 All the news articles were originally published in Arabic and it was translated to English
by the author.
3 Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was appointed by former elected President Morsi as a minister of
defense after replacing Tantawi in August 2012. Sisi later overthrew Morsi’s in a military
coup d’état in 2013 and became the president of Egypt in 2014.
4 It seems that such a representation of military state would be unhelpful because the military
is a de facto, the struggle was either for a religious or civil state.
5 For more details about these assumptions and how they have inserted the Orientalist
narrative into Western representations, see Shihade (2012).

6 On 27 November 2011, for instance, the headline for Almasry Al Youm was “Seek for a

Lifeline.” The photo stated that “Slogans of Tahrir Demand Politicians to Leave and Choose
National Salvation Government” (Al Houfi et al., 2011). Another story from Almasry
Al Youm was titled “Thousands Protest return to Tahrir Demanding the Execution of
Mubarak and release the detainees” (Majidy et al., 2011). Also, see the front page of Al-
Ahram on November 26, 2011 when the main story was titled “The Danger of the Division”
and the subtitles were “Tahrir Demands the SCAF Leave” and “The Square Refuses [the
Government].” These titles showed how the people in Tahrir made decisions and without
Tahrir, there was no power for the people. Thus, Tahrir empowered people, not the other
way around.
Acknowledgments
The author thanks the editor Mahuya Pal for her contribution in editing the
manuscript in its first stage. Further thanks also go to Mohan J. Dutta. The author
also thanks James D. Kelly for his suggestions and support during the time of writing
the manuscript.
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Communication Theory ISSN 1050–3293

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Keywords: Postcolonial Media Studies, De-Westernizing Communication Research, Internal-

The Arab uprisings in 2011 challenged the narrative of Oriental society as

Corresponding author: Anas M. Alahmed; e-mail: dr.anas.alahmed@gmail.com

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2 Communication Theory 00 (2020) 1–22

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Communication Theory 00 (2020) 1–22 3

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Postcolonial media meets de-Westernizing communication

The following section situates internalized orientalism an anchor to understanding

4 Communication Theory 00 (2020) 1–22

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Egyptian revolution and Western knowledge production of news

Egyptian revolution and newspapers

Communication Theory 00 (2020) 1–22 5

elected as a president, he was considered an Other because he was an outsider,

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Unfit for democracy: Unable to self-govern

6 Communication Theory 00 (2020) 1–22

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Egyptian military—patriarchy state and parental role

Communication Theory 00 (2020) 1–22 7

Moreover, the image “of a cruel/compassionate father in relation to his child is

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8 Communication Theory 00 (2020) 1–22

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Religious state versus a civil state

Communication Theory 00 (2020) 1–22 9

Within the context of internalized orientalism in the Egyptian revolution, traditional

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10 Communication Theory 00 (2020) 1–22

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Dehumanizing the people and reducing human agency

Communication Theory 00 (2020) 1–22 11

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Military and the people—struggle of the self and the other

12 Communication Theory 00 (2020) 1–22

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Internalized Orientalism as a de-Westernizing approach from the South

As the previous examples of news representations show, internalization among

Communication Theory 00 (2020) 1–22 13

of postcolonial projects is “affected by the imperial process from the moment of

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Internalized Orientalism as a communication theory

The idea of internalized orientalism opens up discussions about unequal distribution

Communication Theory 00 (2020) 1–22 15

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Internalized orientalism depicts how Orientalist discourse in media content reflects

Communication Theory 00 (2020) 1–22 17

production in the postcolonial South at large. As such, internalized orientalism offers

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Communication Theory 00 (2020) 1–22 19

Dutta, M. J. (2015). Decolonizing communication for social change: A culture-centered

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