Race, racism and representation (cultural studies 5.1, session 6) PDF

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Race, racism and representation The ideology of racism: its historical emergence- possible to argue that xenophobia, deriving from ignorance and fear, has perhaps existed as long asdifferent ethnic groups have existed- Race and racism —> very particular history- Racism first develops in Engla...

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Race, racism and representation The ideology of racism: its historical emergence - possible to argue that xenophobia, deriving from ignorance and fear, has perhaps existed as long as different ethnic groups have existed - Race and racism —> very particular history - Racism first develops in England as a defense of slavery and the slave trade - Racism first emerged as a defensive ideology, promulgated in order to defend the economic profits of slavery and the slave trade - Key figure in the development of the ideology of racism: planter and judge Edward Long - „History of Jamaica“ —> popularized idea that black people are inferior to white people - Suggests that slavery and the slave trade are perfectly acceptable institutions - Starting point: assertion that there is an absolute racial division between black and white people - Charles White made similar claims: „white European being most removed from brute creation may be considered as the most beautiful of the human race“ - Edward Long’s own racism is underpinned by sexual anxieties - „lower class of women in England are fond of the blacks, for reasons too brutal to mention“ - „English blood will become contaminate with this mixture“ which will spread into higher classes - Samuel Estwick „Considerations on the Negroe Cause“ - Argued that black people should be prevented from entering the country in order to „preserve the race of Britons from stain and contamination“ - People argued that if slavery is allowed to end, „the Negroes from all parts of the world will flock hither, mix with the natives, spoil the breed of our common people, increase number of crimes and criminals“ (John Scattergood, 1792) - Fear that own native population would be decreased in favor of a race whose mixture with natives is disgraceful —> could never be considered as part of the people; introduction into the community can only serve to elbow as many out of it who are genuine subjects - Slavery and slave trade were of economic benefit to many people not directly involved with its practice - New ideology of racism spread quickly among those without a direct economic interest in slavery - David Hume: quite clear about the difference between whites and non-whites - Negroes and all other species of men are naturally inferior to the whites - There was never a civilized nation of any other complexion than white - Uniform and constant difference could not happen, if nature had not made an original distinction between breeds of men - 19th century: widely taken for granted that human race was divided into superior white and inferior others - Seemed only write that white Europeans should establish colonies across the globe - „Racism was not confined to a handful of cranks“ - Every scientist and intellectual in 19th century Britain took it for granted that only people with white skin were capable of thinking and governing - Only after WW2 racism finally lost its scientific support - 19th century: racism could make colonial conquest appear as if directed by God - Thomas Carlyle (1867): „ The almighty maker appointed him (the Nigger) to be a servant“ - Sir Harry Johnston claimed that „the negro in general is a born slave“ with the natural capacity to „toil hard under the hot sun and in unhealthy climates of the torrid zone“ - Less extreme versions justified imperialism on grounds of a supposed civilizing mission - James Hunt argued that although Negro is inferior intellectually to European, he/she becomes more humanized in natural subordination to the European than under any other circumstances - Negro race can only be humanized and civilized by Europeans - Colonial secretary Joseph Chamberlain: - „I believe that the British race is the greatest of governing races the world has ever seen. I say this not merely as an empty boast, but as proved and shown by the success which we have had in administering vast dominions“ Orientalism - Orientalism has constructed a knowledge of the East and a body of power-knowledge relations articulated in the interests of the power of the west - Orient was a European invention according to Edward Said - Orientalism: term describes the relationship between Europe and the Orient - The way the orient has helped to define Europe as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience - European culture gained strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient - Can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it,… race, racism and representation (session 6)

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- Orientalism: system of ideological fiction - One of the mechanisms by which the West maintained its hegemony over the Orient - Approach by Edward Said - Two imperial plot structures - 1st: stories that tell of white colonizers succumbing to primeval power of alien colonial environment - Stories of whites, who because of the supposed power of their racial heredity impose themselves on the alien colonial environment and its inhabitants

- From the perspective of Orientalism: both narratives tell a lot about the desires and anxieties of the culture of imperialism

- Approach shifts focus of attention away from what and where the narratives are about, to the function it serves for producers and consumers

- Prevents us from slipping into a form of naive realism - Shifts concern from how the story is told to why, and from those whom the story is about to those who tell and consume the story

- example: Hollywood’s Vietnam - Way it tells story of America’s war in Vietnam is a classic example of a particular form of Orientalism - most unpopular war has become most popular one when measured in discursive and commercial terms - America still holds authority over Western accounts of America’s war in Vietnam - Hollywood invented Vietnam as a contrasting image and a surrogate and underground self of the US - Tries to imply that what happened there, happened because Vietnam is like that - From the perspective of Orientalism it doesn’t matter whether Hollywood’s representations are true or false —> What matters is the regime of truth they put into circulation

- Hollywood’s power is productive and not a negative force - Three narrative paradigms, models for understanding or regimes of truth, which featured strongly in Hollywood’s Vietnam in the 1980s

- First narrative paradigm: „the war as betrayal“ - Discourse about bad leaders - Examples: Uncommon Valor, Missing in Action I+II+III, Rambo: First Blood Part II - Politicians are blamed for America’s defeat in Vietnam - Discourse about weak military leadership in the field - examples: Platoon, Casualties of War - Defeat as the result of an incompetent military command - Discourse about civilian betrayal - examples: Cutter’s Way, First Blood - War effort was betrayed back home in America - All films are structured around loss - Different versions of what is lost are symptomatic of a displacement of a greater loss - Use of American POWs is undoubtedly the most ideologically charged of these displacement strategies - Seems to offer three powerful political effects - first: to accept the myth that there Americans still being held in Vietnam is to begin to retrospectively

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justify the original intervention - Vietnamese as barbaric —> no need to feel guilty about war; deserved full force of American military intervention second: discourse about weak military leadership in the field - Defeat: result of an incompetent military command Also a discourse about civilian betrayal - War effort was betrayed back home in America All the films in this category are structured around loss - Uncommon Valor, Missing in Action I - III, Rambo: First Blood Part II —> lost prisoners - Cutter’s Way, First Blood, Born on the Fourth of July —> lost pride Different version of what is lost are symptomatic of a displacement of a greater loss - Displacement of that which can barely be named: America’s defeat in Vietnam Displacement has three powerful political effects - first, to accept the myth that there are Americans still being held in Vietnam is to being to retrospectively justify the original intervention - second, process called feminization of loss —> those blamed for America’s defeat, whether they are unpatriotic protestors, uncaring government, weak and incompetent military command are alway represented as stereotypically feminine (weak, indecisive, dependent, emotional, unpredictable) Implication that „masculine“ strength and single-mindedness would have won the war, while feminine weakness and duplicity lost it Films turned what was thought to be lost into something that was only missing race, racism and representation (session 6)

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- Defeat is displaced by the victory of finding and recovering American POWs - People were looking for a positive ending where America was the one winning the war - Second narrative paradigm: „inverted firepower syndrome“ - Narrative device in which the US’s massive techno-military advantage is inverted - ≠ scenes of massive destructive power off American military force —> individual Americans fighting -

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the numberless forces of the North Vietnamese Army and/or men and women of the national liberation front (Viet Cong) Loss of innocence is presented as the realization of the realities of modern warfare and as a result of America playing fair against a brutal and ruthless enemy - Ideological implication: if America lost by playing the good guy, it is obvious that it will be necessary to play the tough guy in the future in order to win Third narrative paradigm: „Americanization of the war“ - meaning of the Vietnam war has become in Hollywood’s Vietnam an absolutely American phenomenon - Imperial narcissism of the US - Doomed from the beginning to follow the dictates of fate —> ultimate brutality = loss of American innocence Hollywood produced a particular regime of truth To really discover extent to which Hollywood’s Vietnam has made its truth tell requires a consideration of consumption Need to focus beyond the meaning of a text —> focus on the meanings that can be made in the encounter between the discourses of the text and the discourses of the consumer Focus on consumption (= production in use) os to explore the political effectivity (or otherwise) If a cultural text is to become effective, it must be made to connect with people’s lives —> part of their lived culture Formal analysis of Hollywood’s Vietnam - Points to how the industry has articulated war as an American tragedy of betrayal and bravery - Does not tell us that it has been consumed as a war of bravery and betrayal Absence of ethnographic work on the audience for Hollywood’s Vietnam —> two pieces of evidence that may provide us with clues to the circulation and effectivity of Hollywood’s articulation of war - The First consists of speeches made by George Bush in the build up of the 1st gulf war - The Second are comments made by American Vietnam veterans about Hollywood and other representations of the war But: even these factors do not provide conclusive proof that hollywoods account of the war has become hegemonic where it matters Weeks leading up to the 1st Gulf War: Bush assured people that this won’t be another Vietnam - Was seeking to put to rest a spectra that had come to haunt America’s political and military self-image („Vietnam syndrome“) Debate over American foreign policy had been grotesquely distorted by reluctance to use power to defend national interests (according to Pres. Nixon) Fear of another Vietnam made America ashamed of its power, guilty of being strong Bush was articulating what many powerful American voices throughout the 1980s had tried to make the dominant meaning of the war —> Vietnam war as a noble cause betrayed an American tragedy“ 1985: First Welcome Home parades for Vietnam veterans - Powerful mix of political rhetoric and national remembering - Clear attempt to put in place a new consensus about the meaning of America’s war in Vietnam Speeches about the triumph of the 1st gulf war helped shaping the understanding of the war - But the affective power of this way of understanding the war was given an extreme boost by Hollywood’s Vietnam Many memories recalled by Americans have been of a war they had lived cinematically Memory had little relationship to the facts of the war US deployed in Vietnam the most intensive firepower the world had ever witnessed Hollywood narratives do not feature the deliberate defoliation of large areas of Vietnam, the napalm strikes, the use of free fire tones, the mass bombing,… 2nd example of consumption of Hollywood’s Vietnam is provided by comments of American war veterans - Some say they have forgotten where some of their memories came from - What really happened got mixed up with what has been said about what happened so that the pure experience is no longer there - Vietnam war no longer a definite event but a collective and mobile script in which we continue to scrawl, erase, rewrite our conflicting and changing view of ourselves Memory of Vietnam has ceased to be a point of resistance to imperialist ambitions and is now invoked as a vivid warning to do it right next time race, racism and representation (session 6)

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- Concerns were fully justified by Bush’s triumphalism at the end of the 1st gulf war - Kicking the Vietnam syndrome by winning the Gulf War has liberated a nation and made America once again strong, whole and ready for the next war Whiteness - in terms of the population of the world: white people no significant number - In terms of power and privilege however they are the dominant color - Does not mean that all white people have power and privilege - power of whiteness: exists outside of race and ethnicity; categories only apply to non-white people - Whiteness = human norm from which races and ethnicities are a deviation - Richard Dyer: - No more powerful position than that of being just human - Claim to power is the claim to speak for the communality of humanity - Raced people can only speak for their race non-raced people can speak for it - Point of being the racing of whites is to dislodge them/us from the position of power by understanding the authority with which they/we speaking in and on the world - To understand normative power of whiteness we have to forget about its biology and think about it as a cultural construct, as something that is presented as natural, normal and universal - what makes whiteness so powerful is that it is more than the dominant colouring - Operates as an unmarked human norm at which all the other ethnicities have to measure themselves - White people are rarely thought of as white people, but simply as human without ethnicity - e.g. white writer = writer black writer = black writer - Blackness is a sign of ethnicity whereas whiteness is just a sign of the human - When a black person speaks he/she is expected to speak on behalf of other black people - Ethnic invisibility of whiteness positions it as the normative human - Many white people think of themselves as neutral and normal in terms of ethnicity and race - Refer to other people’s ethnic origins, while their own remains invisible and unmarked - To put and end to this privilege and power we have to see whiteness as the sign of just another ethnicity - Noticing difference is not the problem; it is how we make difference signify that may or may not be a problem - Any discussion of race and ethnicity that does not include a discussion of whiteness always contributes to the power and privilege of whiteness - Power and privilege is underpinned by its unmarkedness and its universality as simply human and normal - White seems natural and normal Anti-racism and cultural studies - discussion of race and representation inevitably involve an ethical imperative to condemn the deeply inhuman discourses of racism - Stuart Hall: - Work that cultural studies has to do is to mobilize everything that it can find in terms of intellectual resources in order to understand what keeps making the lives we live profoundly and deeply inhumane in their capacity to live with difference - Cultural studies’s message is a message for everyone - No one can afford to turn eyes away from the problems of race and ethnicity that beset our world - Need to know what sorts of insight and reflection help dealing with the challenges involved in dwelling comfortably in proximity to the unfamiliar without become fearful and hostile - Need to consider whether the scale upon which sameness and difference are calculated might be altered productively so that the strangeness of strangers goes out of focus and other dimension can be made significant - Need to consider that human beings are far more alike than they are unalike - Work of cultural studies is to intellectually, and by example, help to defeat racism - Help to bring into being a world in which the term „race“ signifies nothing more than the human race - Gilroy: - Race must be retained as an analytic category not because it corresponds to biological or epistemological absolutes, but because if refers to investigation to the power that identities acquire by means of their roots in tradition - Identities are the most volatile political forces in Britain today

race, racism and representation (session 6)

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