Stuart Hall: West and the Rest

● How ideas create the reality that we live in?

● In this article, he says that we assume there is something called West, we have to understand
that our ideals are always ready infused with myths and fantasies.
● Generalizations like the West represent very complex ideas.

Hong Kong

● West was assumed as more modern. Hong Kong (?)

● West and East are historical generalizations, not geographical entitites.

How do Constructs Function?

● They allows categorization. We create categories, woman, man, Turks, Kurds.

● They offer sets of images.
● A standard of moral comparison.
● A criteria of evaluation.
● Think about LGBTI community, they threaten the order and it is all about order. Anything
that you cannot categorize becomes excess. Any categorization makes our world
controllable, ruling tools.

European Expansion

● Began in the first half of 15th century by Portuguese voyages to Africa with the defeat of
Moors. The defeat of Islam.
● Took a different form in the end of 15 th century with Columbus adventures.

Breaking the Frame

● Why it happened in 15th Century?

● Europeans were squezzed into corner by strong Islamic states, hold out of the trade routes.
● There are physical barriers:
o Darkness of the Middle Ages
o Europe was contained by Islam
o Technological difficulties
● Mental barriers: fear.
o The image of the world was very limited. Four continents: Europe, Asia, Africa and
Terra Australis. No pacific ocean.
o Cape Bojador: The Cape of Fear. The sea at Cape Bojador was known to swallow
whole ships that sunk in its giant waves, consumed by fire, with crews at the mercy
of feared sea monsters.
● Portuguese Exploration
o In order to circumvent the Muslim monopoly on trans-Saharan caravans, the
Portuguese around 1420, sought to have access to rich African resources by ship.
o Vasco de Gama’s Voyage: Chosen by King Manuel of Portugal.
o Pero da Covilha: We don’t have Süveyş Kanalı yet.
o Columbus’s voyage: This guy had an idea. I will circumstance the world by going to
west. Started Columbian voyages.
● Consequences of Expansion
o World Map: Europe is the center of the map. It is a particular projection.
 o Film: Geography uses another projection that centers Europe. Europe looks bigger.
Peter’s projection looks like more accurate. Traditional projects distort the sizes.

Discourse

● A particular way of representation, a group of statements providing a new language. Consists

of multiple statement what Foucault calls discursive formation.
o Discourse has no individual source
o They are not closed systems
o Statements are in relation to each other.
o Discourses are not reducible to class interests, they always operate in relation to
power.
o The question whether a discourse is true or false is less important than whether it is
effective in practice.
o When it is effective it is called a regime of truth.
● Women are fragile, sensitive (Discourses are way of representing a particular topic)
● So they need protection. (They produce meaningful knowledge.)
● They need to be protected by men that have to be strong and dominant to protect them.
(This knowledge influences social practices so has real consquences and effects.)

Ideology vs. discourse

● Ideology refers to a set of beliefs, values, and ideas that shape how individuals and groups
understand and interact with the world around them. Ideologies can be explicit or implicit,
and they often reflect the interests and perspectives of those who hold them. Ideologies can
be expressed through language, symbols, practices, and institutions, and they can be
reinforced or challenged by social norms and power dynamics.
● Discourse, on the other hand, refers to a particular way of representing and talking about the
world. It involves a set of statements that provide a new language or framework for
understanding a particular issue or topic. Discourses are not individual creations but rather
emerge from social, historical, and political contexts. They are not closed systems but are
constantly evolving and shifting as new statements and ideas are added to the mix. In this
sense, discourse is a way of creating meaning through language and communication.
● The relationship between ideology and discourse is complex. Ideologies can be expressed
and reinforced through discourse, and discourse can help to shape and transform ideologies
over time. However, discourse is not the same as ideology, as it is only one of the many ways
in which ideology can be expressed and circulated in society.

İdeal kadın vs. ideal erkek

● S

Foucault Order of Things

● This book first arose out of a passage in Borges. Taxonomy and categories showed another
system of thought, which is our own limitation of thinking into another category.
● A major part of fantasy and science were led by several key themes.
o The theme of paradise
o Simple innocent life
 o The lack of a developed social organisation
o People living in a pure state of nature
o Frank and open sexuality and of course women

Hall sums up the discursive strategies that we have reviewed thus far involved in the approach of the
west to the rest under the following headings:

● Idelization (Simple, honest, beatiful people and land)

● The projection of fantasies of desire and fears of degradation (Women are batiful even after
childbirth, they live sex freely, even incest and sodomy)
● The failure to recognize difference as difference or understanding it through European
categories (no economy no civilization)
● Tendency to impose European categories and norms, to see difference through the modes of
perception between West and East.

Noble vs Ignoble Savage

● The debate if the natives were “true men” raged for most of the fifteenth century.
● Ferdinand and Isabelle issued decrees saying that “ a certain people called Cannibals” can be
enslaved.
● One view that “they probably descended from another Adam… born after the deluge and…
perhaps have no souls”, because they could be enslawed that way.
● In the beginning, all the world was America. Indians were children, idiots, who were unable
to reason needing protection. John Locke claimed that the New World allows us to see the
former phases of Europe.

● Bartolome de Las Casas, champion of Indians, firmly objected to Indians being enslaved by
Spaniards, stating “They have the faculty of Reason.”
● The "noble savage" also acquired sociological status. In 1749, Rousseau produced an account
of his ideal form of society: simple, unsophisticated man living in a state of Nature,
unfettered by laws, government, property, or social divisions. "The savages of North
America," he later said in The Social Contract, "still retain today this method of government,
and they are very well governed"
● The "noble savage" concept, which originated during the Enlightenment period, romanticizes
indigenous cultures as inherently pure, virtuous, and untainted by the corrupting influence of
civilization. It emphasizes their harmony with nature, simplicity, and closeness to a state of
innocence. This portrayal often idealizes indigenous peoples as noble, wise, and in touch with
a more authentic way of life.
● On the other hand, the "ignoble savage" perspective, as discussed earlier, denigrates
indigenous cultures as uncivilized, savage, and lacking in refinement or sophistication. It
views them as inferior and justifies the colonization and domination of native populations by
European powers.
Stereotyping

● Collapsing complexities into simple representations.

● Essentializing attributes
● We are trying to organise our lives, the environment we remain.

Eurocentrism
 ● It is difficult to provide a definition of Eurocentrism since (despite its being an -ism)
● Neither a coherent body of knowledge nor a social theory.
● Not the simple sum of preconceptions.
● It is not a banal ethnocentrism testifying simply of the limited horizons. It is different from
Ottomanism since it has a colonial, cihan-şümül imparatorluk cultural background.

Ethnocentrism

● Boğaziçi, İTÜ ethnocentrism

● evaluation of other cultures according to preconceptions originating in the standards and
customs of one's own culture.
● What makes European ethnocentrism a uniquely durable and powerful structure is the
unequal power relationship between Europe and its others
○ Unequal power relationship (economic and politically) constitute another dimension
● Edward Said, Orientalism, 1978: He opened a field ve 70’ler bir kriz zamanıydı, büyük bir
dönüşümün içinden geçiyorduk ve bu zor zamanlardan çıkan bir eleştiri vardı: Bu dünya çok
Avrupa merkezci bir dünyanın içinde yaşıyoruz. Batı dışının kendini anlamlandırmasına yol
açtı. Doğu yerine Güney dedik. Said argues that Orientalism is ontological and
epistemological difference between the East and the West. Epistemik fark: Doğu değişmez,
1000 yıl öncesinin kitabını okusam yeter. Ontolojik fark: Sen gözlüklüsün, ben gözlüksüzüm.
“denial of x”. Biz zamansal olarak aynı yerde değiliz. Gelişmişlik ve gelişmemişlik meselesi en
temelde bunun üzerine kuruludur.

Sources of this Archive

● Classical Knowledge: The ideas of the golden age etc.

● Religious and biblical sources: Columbus believed the Orinocro (in Venezuela) to be a sacred
river flowing out of the Garden of Eden.
● Mythology: In the 16th century Sir Walter Releigh still believed he would find the king El
Dorado.
● Traveler’s tales:
Feminization of the world and male exploration

● He wrote that the earth was shaped like a woman's breast whose summit was like the nipple
and he was sailing towards that nipple.
● Baktığınız zaman bütün bu explore gemilerinin uçlarında hep kadın figürleri var: Mermaid,
siren
● Eski haritalarda dikkatlice bakarsanız bir siren kendine bakıyor, bir mermaid point ediyor. Bir
yandan tehlikeyi işaret ediyor, bir yandan da bilinmezi hem motherly hem de conquerable
yapıyor.
● This scene is from a drawing by Jan van der Straet, has become an emblem of the Discovery:
the reclining woman, nude in a luxuriant New World landscape, greeting the European man
who stands on the shoreline before her, armoured and bearing a staff with crucifix in his
right hand and astrolabe in the other. Discreetly hidden under his tunic is a sword [...] this is
just one in a long series of graphic and verbal representations of the Discovery as an erotic
encounter between a fully clothed European male and a naked Amerindian female, an image
that has been firmly established in the Western cultural imagination for quite some time.

Pornotropics

● "During the Renaissance, as the "fabulous geography" of ancient travel gave way to the
"militant geography" of mercantile imperialism and the triangular trade, so the bold
merchant ships of Portugal, Spain, Britain and France began to draw the world into a single
skein of trade routes. Mercantile imperialism began to be emboldened by dreams of
dominating not only a boundless imperium of commerce but also a boundless imperium of
knowledge"
● How does Bacon define Rennaisance?
○ "My only earthly wish is... to stretch the deplorably narrow limits of man's dominion
over the universe to their promised bounds." Bacon's vision of a world knowledge
dominated by Europe was animated not only by an imperial geography of power but
also by a gendered erotics of knowledge: "I come in very truth leading to you Nature
with all her children to bind her to your service and make her your slave."
● Gendering of the imperial unknown: As European men crossed the dangerous thresholds of
their known worlds, they ritualistically feminised borders and boundaries. Female figures
were planted like fetishes at the ambiguous points of contact, at the borders. Sailors bound
wooden female figures to their ships' prows and baptised their ships with female names.
Cartographers filled the blank seas of their maps with mermaids and sirens. Explorers called
unknown lands "virgin" territory. Philosophers veiled "Truth" as female, then fantasised
about drawing back the veil In myriad ways.
● Domesticity and Commodity Racism: Irkçılığın yaygınlaştırılması ve domestize edilmesi,
reklamları izleyin. Beyazlar siyah çocuklara öğretiyor. Bisküvi kutusunun üstünde negro imajı
var.