Comments on: What makes foreigners weird? A quick guide to orientalism

By: Ingrid Piller

Ingrid Piller — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 20:53:15 +0000

In reply to David. Interesting interpretation! If you are right, I'd find the poem even more morally reprehensible because it is then a cynical joke of bigotry that still upholds colonialism and racism ...

By: David

David — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 15:28:32 +0000

I’m certain the Stevenson poem *is* ironic. His use of ‘home’ and ‘abroad’ are indicators of that intent that any smart kid would pick up on, and his descriptions of exotic places that don’t match up with the nations he mentions are more subtle indicators that well-informed kids would pick up on. The mismatch is so total, it’s hard to believe it was anything other than intentional.
Oh, but he was writing for children? Indeed, but Stevenson didn’t talk down to kids, nor, if his interactions with Samoans in later years are anything to go by, did he look down on people of different culture or skin colour. I can also imagine him laughing to himself about how some people who would read it to the children in their charge would have zero insight how incorrect and bigoted it is if taken literally, while others, more broad-minded others, would get the joke.

By: fadiyah

fadiyah — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 05:10:00 +0000

A lot of North Africans look forward to migrating to a European country, illegally. These migrants include a lot of children, aged as less as six. However, a lot of them are caught and are sent back on the way or deported. The reason of their migration (popularly called burning) is to have a better lifestyle. These are the underprivileged children and young adults, with hardly any employment opportunities in their home countries. Usually, they come from extreme conditions of poverty, hopelessness and despair and do not have enough money to migrate to a country legally.

By: Matthew Nelson

Matthew Nelson — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 04:55:00 +0000

In reply to ALEXANDRA GREY. I agree Alexandra. Although a Eurocentric view can be problematic if used extensively. Is it not human nature to view the world through one's own unique perspective. I think from having lived abroad for a decade that the roles are reversed and each country tends to view other countries as 'weird' and 'strange' in comparison with their own individual normalised customs.

By: Jean Cho

Jean Cho — Tue, 06 Dec 2016 04:44:00 +0000

I personally think that academia is one area in which orientalism has prevailed and is still prevailing, and it takes many forms from othering to voyeurism. The East that we think we know has been largely constructed by Western imagination about exotic lands, and there has been a reinforcement of standardization and cultural stereotypes.

By: Adrian Morgan

Adrian Morgan — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 06:01:00 +0000

It’s easy to assume, at first glance, that the Stevenson poem was intended as parody, subtly mocking the narrator’s attitude — but since it was published for children it probably wasn’t.

By: Language on the Move

Language on the Move — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 02:18:00 +0000

In reply to ALEXANDRA GREY.

Thanks, Alex! It certainly wouldn’t occur to me to argue that ‘westerners’ have a monopoly on being obnoxious (incidentally, the idea of “the noble savage” is in itself an Orientalist trope). Your postcard example is indeed dreadful: the face of the minority characters seems to be a cross between animal and human face …

By: ALEXANDRA GREY

ALEXANDRA GREY — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 01:31:00 +0000

Not disagreeing at all that Eurocentric/Occidentalist gazes persists and are problematic, but I think it’s revealing to see how often “orientalism” occurs in my studies in and about the People’s Republic of China. That is, “Chinese” people “othering” people who, from different gazes appear to be insiders not others. Some theorists call this “self-orientalism” (I that implies it’s a frame received from empowered ‘orientalizers’ and then reapplied down the chain, more akin to elite closure, so I’ll just use the term “othering”).

Three examples:
1 – 18th C watercolour painting with in-text poems and descriptions of the ‘weird and wonderful’ tribal people produced by imperial Chinese travelers in areas of today’s S-W PRC, produced as both educative texts and fascinating curios for Beijing courtiers. Compiled and annotated well in Tapp and Cohn (2003) “The Tribal Peoples of South West China”, Bangkok: White Lotus.
2 – A 2009 Sina News article reporting a Guangxi News investigation into new street-signage at a major intersection in Nanning, South China, that residents have complained about because it is “misspelled”. Turns out its not erroneous Chinese Putonghua (in the romanized pinyin script) but the minority language, Zhuang, which also uses a romanized pinyin orthography. The article was re-posted with a Zhuang minority group online forum (Rauz Horizons) and readers commented on it. One points out, in high dudgeon, that the news ‘always’ reports these sorts of instances of Zhuang language as ‘weird’ stories rather than, after years of Zhuang language being increasingly written in public, and centuries of Zhuang language being used in the area, the media accepting that Zhuang language is normal and in-place. That is, the reader identifies and challenges a dominant, othering gaze.
3 – the entire minzu classification system of the PRC, still extant as law, and discursively in very wide circulation, in which ethno-linguistic groups are categorically othered as non-Han and as “minorities”. This othering gaze creates all sorts of products akin to some Ingrid describes, but most similar to the Woolworths “World Explorer” cards Ingrid cites are a set of postcards that I purchased at the GZAR Museum in Nanning. The cards depict each official ethno-linguistic group as a cartoon sheep in a traditional costume ( the “Zhuang” character is in the centre of the image attached). The cards’ text is in Putonghua and the intended audience is, I therefore assume, not Western orientalizers. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4b6fd9206bda2909595b1f1ce05410091b242b040bff138e9a96f3beb0b9d150.jpg

So, to what extent are the ideologies Ingrid draws our attention to products of Western culture and circumstance, and to what extent are they products of elite or empowered culture and circumstance situated in any cultural context?

By: Language on the Move

Language on the Move — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 22:42:00 +0000

In reply to Robert Phillipson. Thanks, Robert! Congratulations to Bessie and best wishes for the conference! Ingrid

By: Robert Phillipson

Robert Phillipson — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 11:35:00 +0000

Congratulations on yet another stimulating and revealing post. The racialisation of European empires, of the USA’s myth of its cultural superiority (‘manifest destiny’), and the continuation of this ideology in the development agenda of the past 60 years, is explored in a fascinating book: McCarthy, Thomas 2009. Race, empire, and the idea of human development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
My wife, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, coined the term linguicism by analogy with racism, sexism, and classim, so that language scholars would start analysing the linguistic features of social inequality. A Greek scholar, Bessie Dendrinos, analyses linguoracism in education, and its implementation in foreign language education, with such languages hierarchically ordered, generally backed up by a misuse of cultural assimilation in traditional foreign language learning. As opposed to the intercultural education that Ingrid advocates. Bessie’s retirement is being celebrated at a conference in Athens next week, where I am speaking, and exploring the connection between linguicism and linguoracism.

By: Tricia

Tricia — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 07:45:00 +0000

I felt sick in the stomach while reading about the unsavory othering that orientals have suffered under the European gaze. I guess in some ways this disturbing intercultural phenomenon still persists to this day but commodified in other forms like the media projection of white beauty as superior to brown beauty. Thanks for this eye-opener, Dr. Ingrid.