The concept of imagined geographies (or imaginative geographies) originated from Edward Said, particularly his work on critique on Orientalism. Imagined geographies refers to the perception of a space created through certain imagery, texts, and/or discourses. For Said, imagined does not mean to be false or made-up, but rather is used synonymous with perceived. Despite often being constructed on a national level, imagined geographies also occur domestically in nations and locally within regions, cities, etc.
Imagined geographies can be seen as a form of social constructionism on par with Benedict Anderson's concept of imagined communities. Edward Said's notion of Orientalism is tied to the tumultuous dynamics of contemporary history. Orientalism is often referred to as the West's patronizing perceptions and depictions of the East, but more specifically towards Islamic and Confucian states. Orientalism has also been labeled to as the cornerstone of postcolonial studies.
This theory has also been used to critique several geographies created; both historically and contemporarily—an example is Maria Todorova's work Imagining the Balkans . Samuel P. Huntington's Clash of Civilizations has also been criticized as showing a whole set of imagined geographies.[ by whom? ] Halford Mackinder's theories have also been argued by scholars to be an imagined geography that emphasised the importance of Europe over non-European countries, and asserted the view of the geographical "expert" with the "God's eye view". [1]
In his book Orientalism, Edward Said argued that Western culture had produced a view of the "Orient" based on a particular imagination, popularized through academic Oriental studies, travel writing, anthropology and a colonial view of the Orient. This imagination included painting the orient as feminine- however, Said's view on the gendered nature has been criticized by other scholars due to a limited exploration of the construct. [2]
At a 1993 lecture located at York University, Toronto, Canada, Said stressed the role culture plays in Orientalism-based imperialism and colonialism. [3] By differentiating and elevating a national culture over another a validating process of "othering" is undertaken. [4] This process underlies imagined geographies such as orientalism as it creates a set of preconceived notions for self-serving purposes. [5] In constructing itself as superior, the imperial force or colonizing agent is able to justify its actions as somehow necessary or beneficial to the "other". [3]
Despite the broad scope and effect of orientalism as an imagined geography, it and the underlying process of "othering" are discursive and thereby normalized within dominant, Western societies. [6] It is in this sense that Orientalism may be reinforced in cultural texts such as art, film, literature, music, etc. where one-dimensional and often backwards constructions prevail. [7] A prime source of cinematic examples is the documentary-film Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People . [8] The film demonstrates the process of orientalism centric "othering" within Western films from the silent era to modern classics such as Disney's Aladdin . [8] Inferior, backwards, and culturally stagnate constructions of Oriental "others" become normalized in the minds of Western consumers of cultural texts; reinforcing racist or insensitive beliefs and assumptions. [9]
In Orientalism, Said says that Orientalism is an imagined geography because a) Europeans created one culture for the entirety of the 'Orient', and b) the 'Orient' was defined by text and not by the 'Orient'.
Said was heavily influenced by French philosopher Michel Foucault, and those who have developed the theory of imagined geographies have linked these together. Foucault states that power and knowledge are always intertwined. Said then developed an idea of a relationship between power and descriptions. Imagined geographies are thus seen as a tool of power, of a means of controlling and subordinating areas. Power is seen as being in the hands of those who have the right to objectify those that they are imagining.
Imagined geographies were mostly based on myth and legend, often depicting monstrous "others". Edward Said elaborates that: “Europe is powerful and articulate; Asia is defeated and distant." [10] Further writers to have been heavily influenced by the concept of imagined geographies including Derek Gregory and Gearóid Ó Tuathail. Gregory argues that the War on Terror shows a continuation of the same imagined geographies that Said uncovered. He claims that the Islamic world is portrayed as uncivilized; it is labeled as backward and failing. This justifies, in the view of those imagining, the military intervention that has been seen in Afghanistan and Iraq. Edward Said mentions that when Islam appeared in Europe in the Middle Ages, the response was conservative and defensive. Ó' Tuathail has argued that geopolitical knowledges are forms of imagined geography. Using the example of Halford Mackinder's heartland theory, he has shown how the presentation of Eastern Europe / Western Russia as a key geopolitical region after the First World War influenced actions such as the recreation of Poland and the Polish Corridor in the 1918 Treaty of Versailles.
Cultural imperialism comprises the cultural dimensions of imperialism. The word "imperialism" describes practices in which a country engages culture to create and maintain unequal social and economic relationships among social groups. Cultural imperialism often uses wealth, media power and violence to implement the system of cultural hegemony that legitimizes imperialism.
Colonialism is the pursuing, establishing and maintaining of control and exploitation of people and of resources by a foreign group of people. Implemented through the establishment of coloniality and possibly colonies, this colonization keeps the colonized territory and people socio-economically othered and subaltern to the colonizers and the metropole. While commonly advanced as an imperialist regime, colonialism can take the more particular and potentially autonomous form of settler colonialism, when colonial settlers pursue a more complete colonization of the land and people, often towards a replacement and possibly even genocide of the native populations.
Imperialism is the practice, theory or attitude of maintaining or extending power over foreign nations, particularly through expansionism, employing both hard power and soft power. Imperialism focuses on establishing or maintaining hegemony and a more or less formal empire. While related to the concepts of colonialism, imperialism is a distinct concept that can apply to other forms of expansion and many forms of government.
In art history, literature and cultural studies, orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects of the Eastern world by writers, designers, and artists from the Western world. Orientalist painting, particularly of the Middle East, was one of the many specialties of 19th-century academic art, and Western literature was influenced by a similar interest in Oriental themes.
A Passage to India is a 1924 novel by English author E. M. Forster set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. It was selected as one of the 100 great works of 20th century English literature by the Modern Library and won the 1924 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Time magazine included the novel in its "All Time 100 Novels" list. The novel is based on Forster's experiences in India, deriving the title from Walt Whitman's 1870 poem "Passage to India" in Leaves of Grass.
Geopolitics is the study of the effects of Earth's geography on politics and international relations. While geopolitics usually refers to countries and relations between them, it may also focus on two other kinds of states: de facto independent states with limited international recognition and relations between sub-national geopolitical entities, such as the federated states that make up a federation, confederation, or a quasi-federal system.
Postcolonial feminism is a form of feminism that developed as a response to feminism focusing solely on the experiences of women in Western cultures and former colonies. Postcolonial feminism seeks to account for the way that racism and the long-lasting political, economic, and cultural effects of colonialism affect non-white, non-Western women in the postcolonial world. Postcolonial feminism originated in the 1980s as a critique of feminist theorists in developed countries pointing out the universalizing tendencies of mainstream feminist ideas and argues that women living in non-Western countries are misrepresented.
Other is a term used to define another person or people as separate from oneself. In phenomenology, the terms the Other and the Constitutive Other distinguish other people from the Self, as a cumulative, constituting factor in the self-image of a person; as acknowledgement of being real; hence, the Other is dissimilar to and the opposite of the Self, of Us, and of the Same. The Constitutive Other is the relation between the personality and the person (body) of a human being; the relation of essential and superficial characteristics of personal identity that corresponds to the relationship between opposite, but correlative, characteristics of the Self, because the difference is inner-difference, within the Self.
Political geography is concerned with the study of both the spatially uneven outcomes of political processes and the ways in which political processes are themselves affected by spatial structures. Conventionally, for the purposes of analysis, political geography adopts a three-scale structure with the study of the state at the centre, the study of international relations above it, and the study of localities below it. The primary concerns of the subdiscipline can be summarized as the inter-relationships between people, state, and territory.
In postcolonial studies and in critical theory, the term subaltern designates and identifies the colonial populations who are socially, politically, and geographically excluded from the hierarchy of power of an imperial colony and from the metropolitan homeland of an empire. Antonio Gramsci coined the term subaltern to identify the cultural hegemony that excludes and displaces specific people and social groups from the socio-economic institutions of society, in order to deny their agency and voices in colonial politics. The terms subaltern and subaltern studies entered the vocabulary of post-colonial studies through the works of the Subaltern Studies Group of historians who explored the political-actor role of the common people who constitute the mass population, rather than re-explore the political-actor roles of the social and economic elites in the history of India.
Orientalism is a 1978 book by Edward W. Said, in which the author establishes the term "Orientalism" as a critical concept to describe the West's commonly contemptuous depiction and portrayal of The East, i.e. the Orient. Societies and peoples of the Orient are those who inhabit the places of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Said argues that Orientalism, in the sense of the Western scholarship about the Eastern World, is inextricably tied to the imperialist societies who produced it, which makes much Orientalist work inherently political and servile to power.
In the humanities discipline of critical theory, critical geopolitics is an academic school of thought centered on the idea that intellectuals of statecraft construct ideas about places, that these ideas have influence and reinforce their political behaviors and policy choices, and that these ideas affect how people process their own notions of places and politics.
Edward Wadie Said was a Palestinian-American academic, literary critic and political activist. As a professor of literature at Columbia University, he was among the founders of post-colonial studies. As a cultural critic, Said is best known for his book Orientalism (1978), a foundational text which critiques the cultural representations that are the bases of Orientalism—how the Western world perceives the Orient. His model of textual analysis transformed the academic discourse of researchers in literary theory, literary criticism, and Middle Eastern studies.
Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. The field started to emerge in the 1960s, as scholars from previously colonized countries began publishing on the lingering effects of colonialism, developing a critical theory analysis of the history, culture, literature, and discourse of imperial power.
Geocriticism is a method of literary analysis and literary theory that incorporates the study of geographic space. The term designates a number of different critical practices. In France, Bertrand Westphal has elaborated the concept of géocritique in several works. In the United States, Robert Tally has argued for a geocriticism as a critical practice suited to the analysis of what he has termed "literary cartography".
Tropical geography refers to the study of places and people in the tropics. When it first emerged as a discipline, tropical geography was closely associated with imperialism and colonial expansion of the European empires as contributing scholars tended to portray the tropical places as "primitive" and people "uncivilised" and "inferior". A wide range of subjects has been discussed within the sub-field during late 18th to early 20th century including zoology, climatology, geomorphology, economics and cultural studies.
Postcolonial international relations is a branch of scholarship that approaches the study of international relations (IR) using the critical lens of postcolonialism. This critique of IR theory suggests that mainstream IR scholarship does not adequately address the impacts of colonialism and imperialism on current day world politics. Despite using the language of post-, scholars of Postcolonial IR argue that the legacies of colonialism are ongoing, and that critiquing International Relations with this lens allows scholars to contextualize global events. By bridging postcolonialism and International Relations, scholars point to the process of globalization as a crucial point in both fields, due to the increases in global interactions and integration. Postcolonial IR focuses on the re-narrativization of global politics to create a balanced transnational understanding of colonial histories, and attempts to tie non-Western sources of thought into political praxis.
Nesting Orientalisms is a concept introduced by Serbian scholar Milica Bakić-Hayden, a visiting lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh. It is based on gradation of "Orients", i.e. otherness and primitiveness.
Decoloniality is a school of thought that aims to delink from Eurocentric knowledge hierarchies and ways of being in the world in order to enable other forms of existence on Earth. It critiques the perceived universality of Western knowledge and the superiority of Western culture, including the systems and institutions that reinforce these perceptions. Decolonial perspectives understand colonialism as the basis for the everyday function of capitalist modernity and imperialism.
Imperial feminism, also known as imperialist feminism, colonial feminism or intersectional imperialism refers to instances where, critics argue, feminist rhetoric is used to justify empire-building or imperialism. The term has come into greater usage in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with one scholar declaring it as something which "privileges inequality through gender bending that masquerades as gendered equality... Imperial feminism privileges empire building through war." The related term intersectional imperialism has applied to the foreign policy of Western nations which are perceived as engaging in, or supporting, imperialistic policies while at the same time promoting inclusive and progressive rhetoric at home.
