Shohat and Stam

Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality, and

Transnational Media

(or mapping modernity/colonization,

redux) uh…what ?
G205 Gendered Ads & Global Consumer Identities
week 13
Theoretical paradigms change over
time. .
Structuralism
• Universalisms
• Essentialisms
• Taxonomic (create structures)
• Descriptive (synchronic)
• Separates mind/body
• Categories define
• Theorists: Marx, Levi-Strauss,
Freud
In these last few weeks WE ARE DEALING WITH THIS
EXCESS . . . . . . .
Post-structuralism
• Particularities
• Social Constructionism
• Deconstruction
• Historical (diachronic)
• Can incorporate body, but
• all categories produce
“excess”
• Theorists: Butler, Rubin,
Foucault, Stryker
 Modernity & Globalization
• Modernity in America occurred over several hundred years
and is most often associated with the rise of industry
(factories, urbanization, etc.) in the 19th and early 20th
centuries.
• Globalization describes an ongoing process by which regional
economies, societies, and cultures have become integrated
through globe-spanning networks of communication and
trade.
• Constitutive of this process of globalization signals an
increased portion of economic or other activity is carried out
across national borders
Shohat and Stam suggest media studies
need to look at Bakhtin’s Multichronotopia
in relation to globalization.
• The cinema in particular, and audio-visual media in general, is in Bakhtinian terms
"multichronotopic." (see page
• "chronotope" (from chronos, time, and topos, place) suggests the inextricable
relation between time and space in the novel, it also seems ideally suited to the
cinema as a medium where "spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one
carefully thought-out concrete whole."
• Commercials/advertising as mini-drama (A.A. Berger)
• Bakhtin's description of the novel as the place where time "thickens, takes on flesh,
becomes artistically visible" and where "space becomes charged and responsive
to the movements of time, plot and history" seems in some ways even more
appropriate to film than to literature.
• Thus cinema embodies the inherent relationality of time (chronos) and space
(topos); it is space temporalized and time spatialized, the site where time takes
place and place takes time.
• Lets think about this in application to films…….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dzuB6hcULY
If these were film shots
what would they say to you
in regard to space and time?
In other words, how do you
interpret these images?
Multiculturalism
• acceptance or promotion of multiple ethnic cultures, for
practical reasons and/or for the sake of diversity and applied
to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the
organizational level, e.g. schools, businesses, neighborhoods,
cities or nations. (legal example? Affirmative Action)
• stressing the importance of different cultures, races, and
ethnicities.
• A body of academic work that “critically engages issues of
power relations in the practices and discourses of colonialism,
imperialism, and racism” (Shohat and Stam, 6-7).
• Used to combat racism and to forward decolonization (7).
• Example, pushes “the West” versus “the rest” argument.
• Page 8, why the term is still useful and how it should be used.
 The beginning of COLONIALISM
The thirteen colonies of the United States of America

Connecticut,
Delaware,
Georgia,
Maryland,
Massachusetts,
New Hampshire,
New Jersey,
New York,
North Carolina,
South Carolina,
Pennsylvania,
Rhode Island,
and Virginia.

Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

 1776-1890=114 years of
1890 “development” during
In 1890 we had 43 states. modernity
Peiss argues the
Industrial Revolution
occurred around 1890…
this means the
infrastructure of the
U.S.A. could now support
a “mass” audience…..

This expansion took

place over a period of
114 years and displaced
and killed thousands of
people in the process.
RED = human-made Boundary
Blue= Disputed Boundary
Current and Past U.S.
Territories

The term colonization,

which is derived from the
Latin colere, "to inhabit,
cultivate, frequent,
practice, tend, guard,
respect.”
• colonization refers to
settler colonies, trading
posts, and plantations.
• Colonialism concerns
the ruling of new
territories‘ over existing
peoples.
State, Nation, or Nation-State?
• State: The accepted definition of a state was supplied by Max Weber in his book
Politics as a Vocation: "A sovereign entity (rules itself), within a defined/specific
territory (in defined borders), that holds a monopoly of the legitimate use of
violence in the enforcement of its order. An empire does not have borders as it
chooses to continually advance them. A state does not necessarily rule a people
with a common culture, it is merely a political concept.
• Nation: comprised of people who share community, common identity, who are
living within a defined territory and organized under a systematic government.
A nation is a body of people who share a real or imagined common history,
culture, identity, religion, morality, language, traditions, ethnicity or ethnic
origin; typically inhabit a particular country/territory/region. Depending on the
source, there are 189 –200 states in the world today and 800+ nations.
• Nation-State: Countries where the social concept of "nation" coincides with the
political concept of "state" are called nation-state. Examples of a nation-state:
France, USA, Israel. A politically independent, may be multi-cultural and is
defined as a group of people united in the political and legal structure of the
State.
Postcolonial
• The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as "of, relating to,
or being the time following the establishment of
independence in a colony.“
Post-colonialism
(postcolonial theory, post-
colonial theory)
• is a specifically post-structual intellectual discourse that
consists of reactions to, and analysis of, the cultural legacy of
colonialism.
Post-colonial
• The list of former colonies of European powers is a long one. They are
divided into settler (eg. Australia, Canada) and non-settler countries
(India, Jamaica, Nigeria, Senegal, Sri Lanka). Countries such as South
Africa and Zimbabwe, which were partially settled by colonial populations
complicate even this simple division between settler and non-settler.
• In strictly definitional terms, for instance, the United States might also be
described as a postcolonial country, but it is not perceived as such
because of its position of power in world politics in the present, its
displacement of native American populations, and its annexation of other
parts of the world in what may be seen as a form of colonization.
• For that matter, other settler countries such as Canada and Australia are
sometimes omitted from the category "postcolonial" because of their
relatively shorter struggle for independence, their loyalist tendencies
toward the mother country which colonized them, and the absence of
problems of racism or of the imposition of a foreign language
Postcolonial theory
• Just a few of the questions scholars are asking:

How did the experience of colonization affect those who were colonized while also
influencing the colonizers? How were colonial powers able to gain control over so
large a portion of the non-Western world? What traces have been left by colonial
education, science and technology in postcolonial societies? How do these traces
affect decisions about development and modernization in postcolonies? What were
the forms of resistance against colonial control? How did colonial education and
language influence the culture and identity of the colonized? How did Western
science, technology, and medicine change existing knowledge systems? What are
the emergent forms of postcolonial identity after the departure of the colonizers? To
what extent has decolonization (a reconstruction free from colonial influence) been
possible? Are Western formulations of postcolonialism overemphasizing hybridity at
the expense of material realities? Should decolonization proceed through an
aggressive return to the pre-colonial past (related topic: Essentialism)? How do
gender, race, and class function in colonial and postcolonial discourse? Are new
forms of imperialism replacing colonization and how?
International / Transnational
International Transnational
• relating to, or affecting two • extending or going beyond
or more nations national boundaries
<international trade> <transnational
• relating to, or constituting a corporations>
group or association having • — trans·na·tion·al·ism
members in two or more
nations <international
noun
movement> • <global warming is a
• active, known, or reaching transnational problem
beyond national boundaries that requires a
<an international reputation> transnational solution>

Transnational media “reflect, refract, and transform cultural identity” (15).

Kellogg’s 1921
"A remedy [for masturbation] which is
almost always successful in small boys is
circumcision...The operation should be
performed by a surgeon without
administering an anesthetic, as the brief
pain attending the operation will have a
salutary effect upon the mind...In
females, the author has found the
application of pure carbolic acid to the
clitoris an excellent means of allaying
the abnormal excitement. “
-- Dr. John Harvey Kellogg

Mr. Kellogg thought sex was the ultimate abomination

and remained celibate even in marriage.
1922
New York
Times

Advertising under
“modernity” in the U.S.
And to satisfy our palate for the visual

Cosmopolitan, French Cosmopolitan, Russian

Edition, September 2000. Edition, May 2007.
the COSMOPOLITAN effect

Cosmopolitan, American Edition, Cosmopolitan, British Edition,

March 2007. August 2000.
 the COSMOPOLITAN effect

Cosmo en Espanol (Puerto Rico), Cosmo en Espanol (U.S.), April 2008

October 2007
the COSMOPOLITAN effect

Cosmo South Africa, May 2008 Cosmo South Africa, December 2007
 A man modeled a Burberry umbrella in Vogue that costs about $200.
Marketers need to “create brand awareness” in India, said Claudia D’Arpizio, a partner with the
consulting firm Bain & Company, who is based in Milan.

Who are they creating brand awareness for? Who are the producers and who are the consumers?
In Vogue India
magazine, a child
from a poor family
modeled a Fendi
bib, which costs
about $100.

NYT 9/1/08 - Some 456

million people in India
live on less than $1.25
a day. That is half the
population.
 Group Work/Discussion
• What are whiteness studies? What do they purport to do? How do these co-exist within
multiculturalism? How do Shohat and Stam challenge earlier forms of whiteness studies?
• What are cultural studies? How do they differ in the U.S. from where they originated in the
Frankfurt-School? What do Shoat and Stam suggest to overcome some of the conceptual and
theoretical problems?
• Your challenge is to figure out how the editors use the term "multichronotopic" in their
introduction. Be ready to explain what the term is and how the writers seem to put the terms into
use. How does this approach to media allow for us to better understand mass media, such as
cinema?
• Figure out all of the ways in which Shohat and Stam define multiculturalism? Discuss the ways in
which this term is both useful and problematic for scholars. Write the term on the board and define
it for the class. Use page numbers. Be prepared to discuss the answers to the questions I posed to
your group.
• Figure out all of the ways in which Shohat and Stam define postcoloniality? Discuss the ways in
which this term is both useful and problematic for scholars. Write the term on the board and define
it for the class. Use page numbers. Be prepared to discuss the answers to the questions I posed to
your group.
• Figure out all of the ways in which Shohat and Stam define transnational media? Discuss the ways
in which this phrase is both useful and problematic for scholars. Write the phrase on the board and
define it for the class. Use page numbers. Be prepared to discuss the answers to the questions I
posed to your group.