Neither East Nor West
Posted on by September 30, 2009 by banafshe.zabeti
Ideas for change has met Professor Kerstin W. Shands. Ideas about East and West are discussed by different theorists in Neither East Nor West, an anthology edited by Kerstin Shands and published in 2008 by Södertörn University in Stockholm. After reading Neither East Nor West, I felt that this is a book that actually contributes to changes for a better world with a variety of postcolonial essays on literature, culture and religion. The emphasis is on the ideas of development and how we can progress and deconstruct stereotypical ways of thinking about race, gender, caste, subalternity, and religion. You can find debates about postcolonialism versus postmodernism and learn more about the very roots of postcolonial theory.
Is there a risk of creating a kind of intellectual and critical elite who understands the problematic, while the “common” people who clearly need to question there own stereotypical way of thinking, remain unaffected?
-I think we always have to be aware of risks of reinforcing rather than deconstructing cultural divides, and this is something we have to work against in different ways. My own university is a meeting place for students and teachers from very different cultural and social backgrounds, and part of the aims is to encourage not only a multidisciplinary, but also a multicultural education. Education has a tremendously important role to play in making studies and research part of constructive forces for change.
Is it possible to discuss how different identities are constructed and how stereotypes are reproduced through the media, with the journalist elite who work within a cultural frame and a normative way of writing? (Is there hope?).
-One would hope so, and I think it is done. This is a question that could be more fully answered by the media specialists in my department. We also have to be clear about whose identities we are talking about, and whether identities are indeed constructed (we are not brick buildings), by whom and in what context, because we all consist of several identities and roles, and identities tend to be fluid. Elite journalists too are personalities and we cannot just take the journalist elite as a group and say that they are all the same.
Are the stereotypes and pictures of the others deeply rooted in our minds or can the “common” people be critical?
-Unpalatable as it may be, the sensationalism and stereotyping you refer to may be a way for the media today to attract readers’ attention in a competition with the Internet. But yes, every reader has a responsibility to read critically. Information is power – but it is we as readers who give media whatever power it has. Again, this is why I think education is crucial in developing critical thinking skills. Not just learning how to read, but learning how to evaluate what you are reading.
Do you think that there always need to be a group that according to the media are to be blamed for the failure of integration or do you think we can reach some kind of deconstruction, and in that case HOW?
-Ideally, no group should be blamed for failures of integration. Everybody has a responsibility to counteract such ‘othering’ of particular groups. Awareness and vigilance are key aspects. Will the media change? If society as a whole changes, the media will change, too. Every society tends to have its ‘others’. So far, our collective level of maturity hasn’t reached the level where we can deal with this constructively. But there is no law of nature that says that it should be impossible. Every human being needs to look inside and deal with their own shadows and understand the mechanism of projection – projections of fears and insecurities. And of course we can help each other in this process. Only when individual human beings have resolved these issues from within will we be able to move towards this greater change on social and collective levels.
Banafshe Zabeti
