1. Seminar week 4 – Whiteness and
Racialised Other
Race as cultural construction; Racial
fetishsism; Otherness

2. Fetishism – An overview
• Origin from colonialist times:
The Portuguese ‘feitico’ was used to describe African
ritual objects (XV and XVI Century)
Etymologically deriving from Latin ‘facticius’ – denotes
the artificiality of the objects used by so-called
‘savages’, ‘primitives’ in their rituals.
(Sullivan, 2003: 175)
• Discourse as a means of exercising power: the term
continued to be used by European travelers and writers
to refer to ‘infantile’ and ‘primitive’ cultures and
religions; a threat to the truth of Christianity and the
advanced Western Civilisation

3. Racial fetishism
• Karl Marx: ‘commodity fetishism’
• Frantz Fanon: colonial commodity fetishism in the
metropolis: ‘By projecting their alienation within the
capitalist system onto the colonized identity and, in
turn, confining the colonized to a merely biological
existence, the colonizers transcend the bounds of
economic oppression through their colonization of the
native selfhood.’ (Crowell, 2012)
• Homi Bhabha: the fetish / stereotype "gives access to
an ‘identity’ . . . predicated as much on mastery and
pleasure as it is on anxiety and defence" (1983: 26)

4. Kobena Mercer – Reading racial
fetishism
• Is the effect on the viewer – on the way you
read the images – the same? If not, what is
the difference?

5. Kobena Mercer – Reading racial
fetishism
• Which of Mercer’s two readings of fetishism in
Mapplethorpe’s work do you find most
persuasive?
• Ambivalent fetishism
a) Black individuals perceived as being
worthless, ugly, not human
b) Black individuals perceived from the point of
view of the Ancient Greek ideal; white gaze in
awe of the sculptural and even threatening
perfection of the black body

6. Race as a social construct
• How do you explain the
fact that individuals with
ethnic origins from the
West Indies and Africa
are put together in the
same racial category?
• How do you explain that
some individuals classed
as ‘white’ can have
darker skin tones than
individuals classed as
‘black’?

7. Otherness
• Otherness is the result of a process of
discourse ‘by which a dominant in-group
constructs one or many dominated out-groups
by stigmatising a difference - real or imagined
– presented as a negation of identity and thus
a motive for potential discrimination’
(Staszak, 2008: 2)
• Can only function by means of binary
oppositions

8. Stereotyping
• In the reading of Homi Bhabha, stereotyping is
an effect of racial fetishism, which serves a
defensive purpose.
• Difference between ‘me, myself, mine’ and
‘the (threatening) other’ has to be perpetually
reaffirmed : disavowal
(Hook, 2005: 22)

9. Why is this person white?
• http://www.youtu
be.com/watch?v=
owGykVbfgUE
• What stereotypes
can you find in
the video that
don’t normally fit
with the concept
of whiteness?
• Discuss in groups

10. Why is this person black?
• What characteristics
can you find in the
video that reinforce the
black stereotyping?
• What comes to mind
when you think of Old
Spice?
• Discuss in groups

11. Otherness • http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=5PSNL1qE6VY
in Avatar
•Look at Avatar and
find examples of:
•Stereotypes
•Race as social
construction
•Otherness
•Racial fetishism
•Power structures
Discuss in groups

12. Further Reading
• An Overview of Fetishism
• http://science.jrank.org/pages/7703/Fetishism-in-Literature-
Cultural-Studies.html
• Summary of Homi Bhabha ‘The Other Question’
• http://www.rlwclarke.net/courses/LITS3304/2009-
2010/08ABhabhaTheOtherQuestion.pdf
• Nikki Sullivan – A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory (Chapter 10
only)
• http://www.scribd.com/doc/93444918/Nikki-Sullivan-A-Critical-
Introduction-to-Queer-Theory
• Orientalism in Avatar
• http://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/2010/02/avatar-recasting-
the-veil-with-special-effects.html