In “Postcolonial Approaches to
Communication: Charting the Terrain, Engaging the Intersections,” Raka Shome
and Radha Hegde outline the role scholars and students have in their study of
postcolonialism and communication. The two argue that we must responsibly “question and map” the
intertwined relationship between the histories, contexts, and geographies of
people and nations. This is an interventionist point of view advocating for
informed contextualization and action.
In their overview of the relationship that exists between communication studies and postcolonial studies, they warn colleagues to beware of how “the discrete positioning of cultures without any sense of their interconnected histories reproduces the violence of colonial modernities and fixes difference in a spectacle of otherness” (263). In other words, one must be conscientious and careful of arming oneself with the knowledge of many contexts, including historical, geopolitical, racial, and cultural context of one’s subject area. In acknowledging the specific context(s) of a topic, for example Vietnamese immigration to the United States between 1975 and 1995, one is less likely to make the mistake of falling into the essential binary traps that have long reduced the world to divisions between the global North/South, East/West.
The authors warn how “institutionalized knowledge is always subject to the forces of colonialism, nation, geopolitics, and history” (251). Therefore, we must question the phenomena, effects, and affects of postcolonialism. How do our observations relate to the communication of ideas, identity, or nationalism?
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the author of Half of a Yellow Sun, raises these types of questions in her writing. In her remarks for a TED talk, she points out the “danger of a single story” narrative. She emphasizes “how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story” and recounts her own experience growing up in eastern Nigeria reading British and American storybooks. Until she encountered Chinua Achebe and other African writers (who “saved” her), she did not know that girls like herself—with skin the color of chocolate and “kinky hair that cannot fit into pony tails” could actually “exist in literature.”
In the process of reading the Shome and Hegde article, I’ve become aware of what Homi Bhabha meant when he postulated how the “western metropole must [now] confront its postcolonial history, told by its influx of post-war migrants and refugees, as an indigenous or native narrative internal to its national identity” (254). Adichie’s excellent talk below builds on this struggle.
I was very intrigued by this article as well. One of the points that Raka Shome and Radha S. Hegde discuss which I found most interesting in their article was the discussion of post colonialism and identity. Shome and Hegde once again bring us back to the concept of hybridity in identity, and call for postcolonial scholarship to be responsible in its analysis and understanding of the complexity of the histories of and effects of colonialism on identity, among other things. They state that in order to engage in a most complete and democratic understanding of the ‘global-local dialogue’ of the world today, postcolonial scholarship must be responsible in its analysis so that we may move away from an “essentialist and universalist understanding of identities.” (100) Distinctly they call for an understanding of identity that takes into account hybridity: “In a time when the connections between space, place and culture have been unsettled, new forms of cultural practices are being defined globally.”(100) Shome and Hegde call attention to the fact that colonialism must be looked at beyond the historical facts, and needs to be viewed from standpoint which recognizes the extensive effects of colonialism.
ReplyDeleteI will jump on the bandwagon and say that the postcolonial theory articles really interested me as well. In general, we could tie the whole theory back to Edward Hall's idea of paying attention to context ("Beyond Culture") as an important part of communicating across cultures. If you don't understand the context of the relationship between states -- their history, cultural practices/exchanges -- then you cannot really begin to communicate new information and ideas effectively, as Shome and Hegde argued.
ReplyDeleteBut what struck me most about the blog, MJ was the quote you had from Adichie, and the idea of being "vulnerable in the face of a story". I felt that her words expertly highlighted nearly the entire issue of postcolonialism. There is power in information. Whether it was through the greater scientific knowledge, the literature, or other cultural capital, the West created the narrative that "won" (the noopolitik) during the colonial era, and is still winning out because of the narrative's institutionalization. You could even link this discussion to Nye's article; the colonizers exercised their "smart power" -- their hard control over a region and the soft power over the people -- to such a success that it is still the dominant narrative in much of the world.
But, the implications of this type of "success" in smart power, in controlling the narrative for hundreds of years, are scary, as Adichie points out the "vulnerability" with which the colonized constantly live. Hall states that once things become institutionalized (become "extensions"), they usually take on a life of their own and we let them rule our lives. So then how do we even go about undoing institutionalized relationships and communication patterns that have been in effect for hundreds of years?
Dianna and Brittany, thank you for your insightful comments! Dianna your incisive conclusion perfectly underlines the question we all must answer: Given Hall's notion "that once things become institutionalized (become "extensions"), they usually take on a life of their own and we let them rule our lives...how do we even go about undoing institutionalized relationships and communication patterns that have been in effect for hundreds of years?"
ReplyDeleteWhenever I think about institutions, I think of what Prof. Nanette Levinson says in her "Communication, Social and Economic Development" class at SIS. She notes that while "institutions regulate human interactions, they do not DETERMINE interactions" [capitalization my own]. In facing the narrative of hundreds, if not thousands, of years of colonization, we must not despair and lose hope. Although things such as ideas, practices, and beliefs can become institutionalized, they can also become de-institutionalized. We must remember that institutionalization is a process. And even institutions can be abandoned.
In the field of communication, we can observe institutionalization occurring through "isomorphism"--coercive, normative, and mimetic (Zucker, 1987). Organizations, institutions, and societies adopt and "institutionalize" practices, beliefs, and behaviors in a number of ways for a number of reasons. The doing and undoing of these adoptive practices happen everyday, actually. Remember the move from hand-copying to the printing press? How about the shift from telegraph to radio and telephony? And of course, we can't forget the displacement of beepers/pagers, which lost to cellphones in the late 1990s. Some of these technologies, especially the radio, are stalwarts of time, but others are not. Institutions such as universities and religious centers of power (printing press) have been major champions of institutional change.
The same can be said about relationships. Let's not forget that it was only 49 years ago that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I have a dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The United States at the time was still very much segregated. Exactly 100 years before Dr. King's speech, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Today, President Obama leads the United States as its first president of color. A tremendous achievement made possible through institutional changes in U.S. society and culture. The de-institutionalization process can be a chaotic one (the Civil War); but it can also be a relatively smooth. It is determined by how people choose to view relationships and use communication. Sometimes, it's a top-down change, but more often than not, it takes a collective bottoms-up approach.
I should also add that by talking about change, perhaps we are participating in it!
ReplyDeleteI really loved reading your blog. It was very well authored and easy to understand. Unlike other blogs I have read which are really not that good.Thanks alot!
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