Stuart Hall Theories of representation 1

1. Stuart Hall:Theories of representation 1

2. Stuart Hall: Racializing the “Other”
• Read the pages 239-245 of text provided:
Hall, Stuart. Stereotyping as a Signifying Practice from Representation: Cultural
Representations and Signifying Practices. London, Thousand Oaks : Sage Publications Inc.,
1997
• Extract the main ideas:
1. What were the three major historical moments in the creation of the
racialised representations (representations of racial difference)? Explain your
answer.
2. What sort of representations were created? What stereotypes were created?
3. How were these representations made popular? How were they distributed to
the public?
4. What does Stuart Hall mean by “commodity racism”?

8. The editorial cartoon 'The White Man's Burden' (Apologies to Rudyard Kipling) shows John Bull (Great Britain) and Uncle Sam (U.S.) delivering
the coloured people of the world to civilization. (Victor Gillam, Judge magazine, 1 April 1899)

9.  "TheWhite Man's Burden" (1899), by Rudyard Kipling, is a poem about the Philippine–AmericanWar (1899–
1902) that exhorts the United States to assume colonial control of the Filipino people and their country.[1]
 Originally written to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of QueenVictoria (22 June 1897), the jingoistic poem was
replaced with the sombre "Recessional" (1897), also a Kipling poem about empire.
 The imperialist interpretation of "TheWhite Man's Burden" (1899) proposes that the white race is morally
obliged to civilise the non-white peoples of planet Earth, and to encourage their progress (economic,
social, and cultural) through colonialism:[12]
 The implication, of course, was that the Empire existed not for the benefit — economic or strategic or
otherwise — of Britain, itself, but in order that primitive peoples, incapable of self-government, could, with
British guidance, eventually become civilized (and Christianized).[13]
 Kipling positively represents imperialism as the moral burden of the white race, who are divinely destined to
"civilise" the brutish, non-white Other who inhabits the barbarous parts of the world; to wit, the seventh and
eighth lines of the first stanza misrepresent the Filipinos as "new-caught, sullen peoples, half-devil and half-
child."[14] Despite the chauvinistic nationalism that supportedWestern imperialism in the 19th century, public
moral opposition to Kipling's racialist misrepresentation of the colonial exploitation of labour in "TheWhite
Man's Burden" produced the satirical essay "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" (1901), by MarkTwain, which
catalogues theWestern military atrocities of revenge committed against the Chinese people for their anti-
colonial Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901) against abusiveWestern businessmen and Christian missionaries.[15]

16. In mainstream media and particularly in Hollywood films, black people (until
very recently) have been either excluded or systematically misrepresented
through the traditional negative stereotypes inherited from the
colonial/slavery period (poor, ignorant, cheeky, lazy, sexually promiscuous,
representations related to servitude or slavery, etc...)
Both these exclusion and the
stereotyped misrepresentations
have traditionally deprived black
audiences of the celebrity status,
the heroic charisma, the glamour,
and the pleasure of identification
reserved for white audiences.

17. How do these newspaper front covers relate to the idea of “The White Man’s Burden”?
Is this a stereotypical representation of race or a counter typical representation of race?

18. How do these newspaper front covers relate to the idea of “The White Man’s Burden”?
Is this a stereotypical representation of race or a counter typical representation of race?

19. Stuart Hall: Stereotyping as a signifying practice
• Read the pages 257-261 of text provided:
Hall, Stuart. Stereotyping as a Signifying Practice from Representation: Cultural Representations
and Signifying Practices. London, Thousand Oaks : Sage Publications Inc., 1997
• Extract the main ideas:
1. Definitions: Type (archetype) vs. stereotype
2. Three points on stereotyping. Provide at least one example for each of
them.
3. Representation and power:
 What is Symbolic power?
 How does this symbolic power operate?