Imagology

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Imagology
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Imagology

• Study of images of (supposedly) national
  character in literature. Not what the Other is
  but how s/he is perceived and represented.
• Sees national images as intrinsic to a texts
  inner fabric, permeating its very substance
  (Dyserinck 1967, 1982).
• Deconstruction of the rhetoric of national
  characteristics.
• Analyse how and why it was constructed

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The issue of Otherness (Alterity)

• Closely linked to the debate Alterity / Identity
• People external to ones society are naturally
  perceived as Other in terms of language, mores,
  religion or physical characteristics.
• Stereotypes,clichés, ethnic prejudices
• Essentialism
• Determinism
• Self / Other dialectic at the core of the debate
  on alterity.

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Imagined Communities

• The Other is endowed with a specific set of
  characterizations and attributes which cannot be
  tested empirically and, therefore, are
  imaginated (Leersen)
• Generally, imaginated discourse
• a singles out a nation from the rest of humanity
  as being somehow different or typical,
• b articulates or suggests a characterological,
  collective-psychological motivation for given
  social or national features.

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Study of Otherness

• A developing field in comparative literature and
  cultural studies
• Falls under the labels of imagology or semiotic
  theory of culture, literary geopolitics, cultural
  geography.
• de Certeau calls it Ethno-graphy .

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The representation of the Other as inferior

• Imagology is closely linked to the study of the
  racial, gendered, or ethnic Other, in other words
  to the way a hegemonic culture or gender group
  views different and subaltern ones as exotic or
  inferior or just plain alien (Miller 1).

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Identity

• Identity too is constructed and not a
  transcendent-essentialist notion.
• Often based on binary oppositions,
  characteristics belonging to ones own culture
  are opposed to those belonging to the other
  culture,
• ones own characteristics are idealized
• those of the Other are denigrated.

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Self-definition

• One defines ones own culture by defining other
  cultures in the same way as the self defines
  itself by defining the other Each description
  or definition of the other culture implies a
  self-description or self-definition(Pfister 4)
• Stephen Greenblatt calls this process
  self-fashioning.

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Constructedness of Nationality e.g. National
Identity

• What came first, Nation or Nationalism?
• Notion of nationality has no ontologically
  autonomous existence. There is no nationality per
  se.
• Case of Italy. An abstraction. (indicates neither
  a state nor a nation). Gioberti popolo italiano
  non esiste, è un presupposto) Existed only in
  literature and thanks to it. Literature promotes
  it

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Field for imagological studies

• Exists because it has been articulated
• Literature, because it manifests and documents
  the nations identity (V. Italian lit.)
• Travel literature
• Culture (cinema, TV, cartoons)
• National stereotypes are first and most
  effectively formulated, perpetuated and
  disseminated by imaginary literature.
• Nationality Identity Alterity are literary
  tropes (Guyard, Létranger tel quon le voit,
  1954)

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Imagology a meta-discursive practice

• Study of literary representation of foreign
  cultures and nationalities .
• Study of national and ethnic stereotype in
  literature.
• Discourse analysis. Imagology is concerned with
  representations as textual strategies.
• What has been written about him/her.

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What Imagology is not

• Its aim is not to understand the society or
  culture of another country.
• Not sociology nor even literary sociology
  (Wellek)
• Not anthropology.
• Not collective opinion but a summa of
  subjectivities.

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Not an objective representation

• Not what the Other is but how s/he is perceived
  and represented. What has been written about
  him/her.
• The image is a textual construct. No question of
  its validity or objectivity.
• Not making the difference, i.e. Considering
  difference an objective datum, has let to
  persecutions, podroms, colonialism, Hitler)

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Subjectivity in the construction of the Other

• Subjectivity must be taken into account in the
  analysis of representations of the Other.
• The nationality represented is silhouetted in the
  perspectival context of the representing text or
  discourse.
• Dynamics between those images which characterize
  the Other (hetero-images) and those which
  characterize ones own, domestic identity
  (self-images or auto-images).

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Genres

• Fiction. Often concerned with encounter with
  Other whether at home or abroad.
• Travel literature and literary works engaging
  with questions of travel
• Michel de Certeau Every story is a travel
  story, a spatial practice
• Fictional accounts (but all representations are
  fundamentally fictional)
• So-called truthful travel account, are also based
  on construction of delf and other.
• Drama (V. Shakespeare) Poetry

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The question of Otherness (or Alterity) in Travel
Literature

• Most travel writing - whether part of an
  anthropological, sociological, semiological or
  literary project - is concerned with the
  encounter with Otherness either directly or
  through signs.
• Terms of a discourse on Otherness were
  established in descriptions of the natives in
  countries discovered by the Western world
  (seeTodorov, Fanon)

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Emergence of travel writing as a focus for study

• Dismissed in the past as a subliterary genre.
• At best considered as an historical archive .
• Travel writing has emerged in recent years as a
  focus for study and research across a whole range
  of disciplines.
• Now being studied in terms of its history, formal
  characteristics, and problems of representation,
  and for what it can be made to say about a whole
  range of themes

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Reasons for the resurgence of interest in travel
writing

• Cultural studies. (cf. Raymond Williams).
• Discourse analysis, or rhetorical analysis
• a suspicious close reading
• deconstructing the text
• decoding of imperialist rhetoric and its key
  tropes.
• Anthropology, Ethnography. Were the first to show
  interest in Otherness
• Representations of identity and difference.
• Discourse of the Other
• Colonialism, Postcolonialism. (cf. Todorov)
• Multidisciplinary studies.

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Effects of travel studies

• Increase in understanding of and interactions
  with the rest of the world.
• Change in how others have perceived and
  understood other places, cultures and societies.
  Self.consciousness about stereotyping.
• Inputs about a whole range of themes
• history, geography, society, art
• identity and difference
• Gender and Power,
• elitism
• Nationalism

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Travel and Otherness

• Travel literature mostly focuses on different
  people and countries and on how certain
  characteristics, functions, and qualities are
  assigned to them.
• Ideological bias behind national stereotypes (See
  Edward Saids Orientalism (1978).
• Ideas of difference, strangeness, exoticism, lack
  of civilisation do not only apply to far off
  countries (e.g. The East) but also to places
  nearby (Ireland, Italy)

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Conventions about the representation of the Other

• Stigmatisation of a foreigner or someone who is
  different from oneself as a way of defining and
  securing ones own positive identity through
  comparison.
• Ignoring or demeaning the artistic and literary
  manifestation of the Other and imposing ones
  language and ones own literary and artistic
  canons are all forms of discrimination.
• The Othering process may take subtler avenues and
  work out through language.
• e.g. stereotyping, the use of clichés, metaphors.

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Conventions continued

• Inexpressibility can only be represented by
  inversions no longer a matter of a and b,
  simply of a and the converse of a. ( Hartog, The
  Mirror of Herodotus).
• Binary oppositions, whereby characteristics
  belonging to ones own culture are opposed to
  those appertaining to the other culture, in
  such a way that ones own characteristics are
  idealized and those of the Other are denigrated.

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Some important theorists

• Edward Said,Orientalism, (1978) a seminal work
  that has transformed the study of culture and
  cultures. It uncovers the ideological bias behind
  national representations (primarily concerned
  the East and colonized countries., but applicable
  to other countries as well)
• Yuri M. Lotman Universe of the Mind A Semiotic
  Theory of Culture (1990).
• Michel de Certeau, creates a historical
  psychology of alterity.
• Joep Leersen, Raymond Corbey, Manfred Beller.
• Hayden White Tropics of Discourse (1984) a
  milestone in modelling and theorising
  non-fictional representation of the Other.
• New Historicists (Greenblatt, Montrose) study
  documents related to travel and conquest as if
  they were literary texts.

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Questions for discussion

• How have literary texts expressed, or
  propagandized identity?
• How are is the image of the other used to
  exorcise certain undesirable traits of the self?
• How is otherness confronted or assimilated
• What is the role of the Other in
  forming identity?