On the Issue of Otherness

I have found myself trolling the internet for this class an awful lot, an activity which has yielded an equal amount of both sites dedicated to the discussion of alien literary terms as sites that have aided my understanding of the complex concepts I've attempted to understand this semester. As I was searching for essays or articles on the subject of ethnic and post-colonial criticism, I came across an interesting little page from a Brock University professor discussing some issues in post-colonial theory.

Of the issues raised in the essay, I found the concept of otherness to be the most intriguing. John Lye, the professor who wrote the essay, asserts that post-colonial theory is "built in large part around the concept of otherness," an issue that raises such compex questions as whether or not the concept of otherness reduces numerous cultures to a single identity, as well as whether this concept of otherness portrays the Western world as orderly and rational, while the "oriental" world (to borrow Lye's term) is chaotic and irrational. In addition, Lye questions whether the use of the term otherness attempts to reclaim a fragmented past, an activity which is, in Lye's view, futile.

I found Lye's essay to be compelling for a number of reasons. As I've mentioned in a previous post, I think it's difficult to boil down issues like colonization and race into a neat package through which we can examine other texts. It's dangerous to put anything in black and white terms, especially ethnicity and issues of post-colonization. This concept of otherness, which Lye feels is so central to the argument of post-colonial criticism, is particularly difficult to deal with because it forces a number of different cultures and ethnic identities to be placed under one label. I think that it's important to respect the various identities of those who have been under colonial rule, and that includes avoiding broad labels to define post-colonial critics.

Post-colonial criticism is particularly interesting to me because of all the complexities that make up the term. Who or what writing is considered post-colonial? What does post-colonization look like in literature, or in criticism? Is it wrong to view texts through a post-colonial critical lens?

I don't claim to have all the answers, and I'm okay with that. I don't know that it's possible to ever arrive at a definitive conclusion for such complex issues, but I will continue to enjoy being challenged by such difficult concepts as otherness, whatever otherness actually means.