...“The idea of ‘otherness’ is central to sociological analysis of how majority and minority identities are constructed. This is because the representation of different groups within any given society is controlled by groups that have greater political power. In order to understand the notion of “The Other,” sociologists first seek to put a critical spotlight on the ways in which social identities are constructed. Identities are often thought as being natural or innate – something that we are born with – but sociologists highlight that this taken-for-granted view is not true” (othersociologists.com). In Frankenstein, Shelley represents Victor as someone who comes from a higher class family, and took advantage of that along with the knowledge...
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...Part A Otherness is the process when a group of people single out another person or a group of people based on their perceived differences from them. The singled out group or person (the “others”) could be different because of their sex, skin color, religion or anything else that is different from the people who are doing the “othering.” However, being different doesn’t necessarily mean you are being othered. Othering occurs when you are teased, belittled, or otherwise rejected from general society because of your differences. Part C - Analysis of “The White House” by Claude McKay Claude McKay’s “The White House” introduces us to how the author experienced othering based on his skin color. He clearly states in lines 13 and 14, “Oh, I must keep my heart inviolate against the potent poison of your hate” (McKay, n.d., line 13 and 14) how he feels the hate coming from the people around him. One could determine from this that he feels as if the world is against him. McKay shows that he will preserve against the othering that he feels by stating “But I possess the courage and the grace to bear my anger proudly and unbent.” (McKay, n.d., line 3 and 4.) This, despite, clearly feeling like an outsider after having described a door shutting in his face (McKay, n.d., Line 1). The group of people responsible for the othering in this work are the white people, who believed that African Americans should be treated differently because of their skin color. An example of this...
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...As for Donna Haraway’s “The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness”, I found the paper very intriguing to read. Being an animal lover myself, I can understand from where Haraway was coming from in this paper. The fact that she decided to use “companion species” instead of just the simple “pet” term signified so much, especially since she focused this paper mostly on one of my favorite animals, dogs. By attempting to explore the unique connection and history between the different species that is dogs and humans. With that being said one of the goals she wanted to achieve in her study was break down the core bond that we have with dogs; our ideas, mutuality, and our use of primal urge with them. This brings up certain questions such as why we keep animals as pets and why it is important to study how they have evolved and grown with us over time....
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...The default man is another stereotype of what is known to be the dominant figure in society. The default man is supposed to be white, middle-class, heterosexual, and middle-aged. This means that if a person does not fit into this category they are immediately powerless compared to the default man. This can be related by to Asian American art because in the art they is a portrayal of Asians being deemed less worthy and this fight to be equals. This is a great article to be read towards the end of our class because it is describing the fight for equality not just for Asians, but also for every minority. It sheds light to show us how we can break the mold of what is suppose to be “right”. It empowers people to have self-acceptance and to slowly but surely transform our world into a better place. Yes, I agree with the opinion of the author. It again shows how White people in society are given the upper hand. In Western culture White people are the dominant race and it is also explained with what the author defines as the default man. The default man is supposed to be a white, middle-class, heterosexual, and middle-aged. This can be shown throughout history. Every President that we’ve had has fit the category of the default man. The President is also a figure known to every in America as the most powerful man. It is only until recently that we were able to jump over the hurdle of what people thought to be the norm and we now have a Black President. It has taken our country a long...
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...Completely Human: Wheelchair May Be Included On a warm Tuesday afternoon in the sunshine state, students and faculty members bustled to and fro from my view parked in front of academic one. Waiting patiently for the next bus to come, I silently hoped the lift on this one worked unlike the last bus. Seeing as I would be late for class anyway, I just wanted to at least catch the professor. Tires screeched as I witnessed the giant shuttle bus hiss to a halt at the curb. Releasing my brakes, I navigated my wheelchair to a closer spot next to the great vehicle. Upon learning of my goal of reaching Modesto A Maidique Campus, the driver got right down to business turning levers and pushing buttons to let down to lift that is to bring me inside. Giving it a test drive, he continued to tap the buttons to direct machinery upward. Stubbornly, the lift wouldn't budge. Every switch and button combination failed to get the lift off the ground while the defiant lift wouldn't cooperate, a long line of students form to get on the bus. The minutes crawled by slowly but surely approaching the time of departure. As if setting off a silent alarm, everyone in the line fidgeted and squirmed with an insatiable itch to board the shuttle. The air was thick with the crowds’ agitation swimming among the murmuring, the grumblings and the glances in my direction. With the help of another personnel, the driver finally got the relentless machine to reluctantly move. Finishing up the test I was allowed to...
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...《跨文化传播》课程论文 题目：Japanese System of Bilingual Education: Connecting Intercultural Communication with Bilingualism (跨文化传播、双语形象与多元文化主义：以日本双语教学为例) 研 究 生： 阿夏 指导教师： 安然 学 号： 201122800213 学 院： 新闻与传播学院 专 业： 传播学 华南理工大学研究生院 二〇一二年七月 Abstract The concept of "bilingualism" (two-, multilingualism) has become a symbol of the XXI century. Bilingualism is a way of thinking, perception of the world, self-identity. Open borders within the Schengen Zone, simplified procedure of obtaining temporary visas due to lack of human resources within the countries, etc. caused the significant increase of the immigration processes. Moving from one country to another, people are introducing traditions, lifestyle and language of the country of origin to the new ground. (Intensive processes of integration taking place in modern global community, could be characterized as comprehensive and multifaceted, and can be analyzed from different perspectives, theoretical frameworks and approaches. It should be noted that these processes determine the complex, multifaceted problems, among which there is a multilingualism, the most common variant of it - bilingualism. ) Bilingual education is a form of education in which information is presented to the students in two (or more) language (Bilingual education). English has been playing a central role in the cross-cultural communication as the common international language...
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...Otherness: Essays and Studies 1.1 October 2010 Haunting Poetry: Trauma, Otherness and Textuality in Michael Cunningham’s Specimen Days Olu Jenzen Early conceptions of trauma are intimately linked not only with modernity but specifically with the height of industrialisation (Micale and Lerner 2001). This is converged in the opening of Specimen Days particularly in the image of an industrial accident at the ironworks where a young man is killed by the stamping machine. His young brother, replacing him at the machine after the funeral, then experiences an apparition of the dead brother still trapped inside the machine, which leads him to believe that all machines house entrapped ghosts of the dead. Writing on the Victorians’ anxieties about internal disruption caused by the advent of the railway, Jill Matus (2001, 415) has pointed out that, Freud himself remarked in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), [that] there is ‘a condition [which] has long been known and described [and] which occurs after severe mechanical concussions, railway disasters and other accidents involving a risk to life; it has been given the name of traumatic neurosis’ (12). Freud’s remark brings to the fore the traumas of the industrial age as both individually and publicly experienced and negotiated. This condition of trauma as private and public, individual yet also societal is held in tension throughout Cunningham’s novel. Reflecting on the otherness of trauma and its vexed relationship to representation...
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...period like and what influence did this period have on the selected film?) How might Aborigines find truer representation in Australian film and other popular cultural mediums? By Danielle Gold Charles Chauvel’s ‘Jedda,’ (1955) is a film firmly placed within the dominant ideology of its time, limited by the otherness of its chosen subject matter. As a medium of cultural production, film has a necessary relationship with the hegemony of its own culture; sometimes progressive and other times simply perpetuating. As a representation of the debate over the ethics and feasibility of assimilation, ‘Jedda’ reflects the failed premise of its time, the hierarchical approach to culture and civilization perpetuated by white Europeans. Despite this hamartia it has been applauded with “the only dignified Aboriginal male lead that has been allowed to exist in a film made by white directors in Australia,” (Johnson, 1987:48) what is certainly a progressive allowance (though the word is problematic). It has become evident that true representation of the Aborigine in Australian popular culture is dependent on undoing the dualistic understanding that establishes their otherness. Culture is a discourse of common iconography. Signifiers of language, appearance, values, history, cuisine, beliefs… are inscribed, developed and perpetuated by popular media. In Nationalism and Literature Sarah Corse uses canonical texts; “the American The Great Gatsby and the Canadian Fruits of the Earth,”...
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...Charlotte Brontë described Heathcliff as a ‘man’s shape animated by demon life – a ghoul” To what extent do you think this is an accurate assessment of the ways in which Heathcliff is presented in the novel? Heathcliff is presented in this novel in various different ways. He is a character that arguably shifts from having human qualities, to presenting traits of the Byronic hero and finally becoming a typical gothic villain. The doomed central character of Heathcliff in this gothic novel could be paralleled to that of Satan in John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ where Satan is cast out by God from Heaven into the terrible darkness of Hell. One could argue that Brontë does in fact present Heathcliff as “a ghoul” by making a connection between him and the exotic and describing him from the very start as “dark almost as if [he] came from the devil” showing that his striking physical appearance, just like the Byronic hero, makes him unable to integrate into a higher social class. In an attempt to confine and dehumanize Heathcliff, Hindley forces him into servitude; although Heathcliff endures it, he plots how he can “paint the house-front with Hindley’s blood”. His cruelty serves to conceal the heart of a romantic hero and the fact that Heathcliff is subject to xenophobia which was a common sentiment among the British people in the colonial days of the early nineteenth century leads him to become an outcast and makes him a “child of the storm”, someone product of circumstances and...
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...Literature has often been used as a medium in which the author can bring to light the plight of people who are ostracized or marginalized for any number of reasons. From segregation and racial discrimination to inequality between Genders and the oppression of women, literature has the ability to reach out and usurp the perspective of the reader and provide them with a whole new one to shine a light on what life may be like being subjected to such experiences of “Otherness”. Both The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King are both books which bring to the fore the plights of two different groups of people: Women and the domination and subjugation of the gender is the basis for The Handmaid’s Tale, while Green Grass, Running Water identifies the attempt of Native Americans to hold onto their culture in the face of a society that disregards their ancestry and subsequently find themselves marginalized, and both books show how each of these groups attempt to speak out and resist despite the odds against them. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a book that explores the oppression and subjugation of women at the hands of a totalitarian regime...
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...Assignment 6 Final Draft Following the horrific events of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the United States has been unable to completely restore our trust in Middle Eastern nations and people for fear that they will plan another terrorist attack against us. In a post-9/11 world where Americans have become accustomed to associating Middle Easterners with terrorists, season 2 episode 1 of the television series 24 conveys this concept of otherness and the othering of Middle Easterners through its manipulation of time to show the dehumanization of Arabs as a threat to society and to stress the immediacy with which Americans must act against to such dangers. In this scene, 24 employs film analysis elements including windowing and time stamps to manipulate time in a way that emphasizes the immediacy of these actions and alters time as if it were real-time in order to show how Middle Easterners are often “othered” in a post-9/11 world. After the President of the United States has learned of the impending terrorist attack that is to occur in Los Angeles later that day, he says to a colleague that “there is a terrorist with his finger on a trigger, and [they’ve] got to get him.” While he is giving this statement, the episode employs a windowing effect in which the president is speaking in the top half of the screen and a Middle Eastern man, named Reza Naiyeer, is presented on the bottom half while he is driving in a convertible and speaking Arabic on the phone. The use...
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...that McKay believes very strongly against the exclusion of Africa Americans and their rights. After reading the poem you get a sense of how very strongly he believed in equal rights for all. The line “But I posses the courage and the grace to bear my anger proudly and unbent.” (McKay, n.d. , line 3 and 4) I feel that this demonstrates his strength to preserver despite what he is going through and how angry he may be. In the line “Your door is shut against my tightened face.” (McKay, n.d., Line 1) you can feel his sense of not feeling as if he belongs. He feels as if he is an outsider looking in and observing. You can feel his desire and need to belong but that he is being shut out. I believe this way he has demonstrated the feeling of otherness. The line “Where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass.” (McKay. n.d., Line 8) This line demonstrates very clearly that he feels as things belong to others but not to him. He strongly sates that the white Americans and their laws do not...
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...While we have discussed how West/German fears and attitudes have changed since 1987, we must still discuss the changes in German identity that transpired in this period. Let us begin by considering Pausewang’s West Germany, a nation that, as we shall see, often defines itself largely in relation to what it is not. As Linke notes, “after the end of fascism in Germany…[West] German cultural politics continued to perpetrate racial prejudice, invariably keeping the ‘other’ at a distance” (132). This language of otherness appears throughout Die Wolke, where it clearly defines what is not German, and in turn connotes what is German by omission. After the disaster at Chernobyl, for example, Janna-Berta’s grandparents refuse to believe that a meltdown...
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...Analysis of ‘Kubla Khan’ regarding Colonial Discourse: As a product of the complex discursive web of the 18th century, the Orientalist Coleridge could not act out of such historical forces as colonialism that had gone into shaping him and his poetry.He, in post colonial discourse, was unable to go parallel with the theory of ‘Arts for Arts sake’ and ‘Willing Suspension of Disbelief’. In Kubla Khan,Coleridge is trying to establish the heagemony of Abyssinian Christianity which according to him is more pure and can only be revived by colonizers by the song of Abyssinian maid. These lines make this idea more clear: Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such deep delight ‘twould win me That with music loud and long, I would build that dome within the air! It is showing his hatred of corrupt religion of the East. His desire is to free mankind from political tyranny of tyrannical despots represented in the figure of Kubla. Although Kubla Khan was the conqueror and master of the world ... in Coleridge's view he was really no more than a passing historical representative cast up from the central 'Romantic chasm' . Kubla, a man of military skill and known for his administrative capabilities was called by the Mongols as Setsen Khan (The Wise Khan). He conquered China and established the Mongol dynasty, unifying the nation for the first time since the T'ang regime. Following the teachings of his mother, he tolerated all religions in the area, helping to win...
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...He is constantly being reminded of his “otherness” even though his interracial marriage is being tolerated. An accurate account cited by Comensoli, “Othello is both a fantasy of interracial love and social tolerance, and a nightmare of racial hatred and male violence.” A paradoxical claim, yet a view shared by those within the context of this tragedy. It can be seen that the citizens can’t solidify their views upon Othello because of his legacy as a formidable commander of the Venetian Army, but also as a black...
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