Looking back and forth through world's polarity

“No need to hear your voice when I can talk about you better than you can speak about yourself. Only tell me about your pain. I want to know your story, I want to know your story and tell it back in a new way. Tell it back to you in such a way that It has become mine, my own. Rewriting you I will rewrite myself anew. I m still author, authority. I’m still colonizer , the speaking subject”.

This is a quote by Bell Hooks(popular postcolonial writer) in his effort to demonstrate the binary opposition of we –they , where in the one extreme position stands the Europeans and generally the West culture and in the other the East or the Orient, respectively.

Using this argument as a starting point, we’ll try to investigate briefly the roots and the influence of Eurocentric perception when making accounts or speak about the different cultures of the world.

Firstly, it is essential to examine the connection of politics and theory and theory here, stands for literary criticism, the language of the most popular books we read and teach, the discourse used by the university teachers, the material chosen to be presented in the class, the language of mass media etc. There is a widely admitted view that wants theory and especially the academic theory “as the realm of culturally and socially privileged”. Such an assumption is damaging, as it keeps theory and politics separated from each other, thus isolated from reality. The act of writing should be treated and viewed as a highly political activity, as an inseparable unity, because theory is always ideologically motivated and charged. Consequently, it is important to overcome any kind of binary fixity and investigate the possibility of a cultural politics that avoids politics of polarity and questions the established categorization. Moreover we need to erase the popular binarism between Orient (east) and Occident (west) world in terms of culture as it’s not only ahistorical but also intentional. It is intentional because the academic language is used as another mean of power producing a discourse of the “Other” reinforcing even more the disportionate influence of the West. What’s our response to H.Bhabha’s question “Are the interests of Western theory necessarily collusive with the hegemonic role of the West as a power bloc?”. And differently worded, what is at stake in the naming of theory as Western?

The response is obvious, by doing so, institutional power and ideological Eurocentricity immediately occur. No matter that many writers acknowledge and respect eastern cultures , many times they fail to confront the “other” as the active agent of articulation. They treat it as the periphery rather than the centre. The voice of the these people may be quoted or cited but it’s always considered secondary, valuable for comparisons, contradictions or when needed to point the differences. So, once again it’s a matter of vital importance to overcome the fixed opposition of the either-or and pass to both-and, whenever we speak about another culture or people from other countries. The East cultures have so many things to present in terms of history, philosophy, art, civilization and it is our responsibility to let them speak about themselves, because they know better and more. Let’s stop for a while and let them define themselves and their own identities instead of perpetuating predefined irrational ideas. The Western thinking underestimates the value of Orient and the only way to be heart is to be hidden in a western costume expressing opinions in English. The European-American discourse inevitably brings the colonizer’s perspective.

Undoubtedly, during the colonizing times and the initial explorations of the East and the New World , Europeans brought back and disseminated to their metropolis stories of savage people, they channel led these reports into the discourse of time, thus influenced the writers, who influenced the readers for centuries until present days. Consequently, in the melting pot of time Europeans came to consider themselves superior, taking forgranded their cultural supremacy. Inevitably, the Western dominance got more and more empowered leaving no space for any other culture to flourish and jeopardizing the future world knowledge too. As a chain reaction , the thoughts became words in the mouth of colonizer , the words gave rise to practice and practice turned into prejudice ,that has the tendency to remain unchanged, even in case of contradictory information. These views were adopted by military and economically dominant cultures ,portraying the East inferior and Other. So, what is to be done? What we can do in order not to think about ie. India as just a place with nice carpets ? The reexamination of history, the rereading of the 18^th and 19^th c.writers adopting a critical view and of course the creation of culture from a luminal space from the in between space. A hybrid culture that will be free from Colonizer and Colonized. We need to understand that there is no pure culture in the world, simply because any culture can’t stand in isolation , unaffected and sufficient enough to define itself without taking characteristics of any other tradition. The emergence of new culture concepts without oppressor and oppressed ,dominant and embedded culture can stop the monolithic interpretations . This way we “may elude the politics of polarity and emerge as the others of our selves”.