Page 14 - Introducing Cultural Studies

epresentation of the Other

The process, and the products, that gives signs their particular
meaning is representation. Through representation, abstract and
ideological ideas are given concrete form. Thus the idea/sign
"Indian" is given a specific ideological shape in the way "Indians"
have been represented in colonial literature - in the novels of
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) and E.M. Forster (1879-1970) for
example - as cowards, effeminate, untrustworthy.
The representative entity outside the self - that is, outside one's
own gender, social group, class, culture or civilization - is the Other.

The most common representation of the Other is as the
darker side, the binary opposite of oneself: we are civilized,
they are barbaric; the colonists are hard-working, the natives
are lazy; heterosexuals are good and moral, homosexuals are
immoral and evil.

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