Orientalism Section 1

meetings

2019-6-13

Notes

• Big ideas:
  • Peter: Orientalism as more than an idea or set of ideas, but is also a power structure.
  • Christine: How Europeans reformulate things through what they know
  • Ohana: Orientalism has a different scope here than how we often think of it today (China/Japan-centric).
    • Said is citing a lot of literary theory and literary works.
  • Hannah: knowledge = power, more knowledge -> more ability to colonize. Also power creates the need for knowledge.
• Knowledge as simultaneously a useful tool but also prescriptive rather than descriptive (and ultimately inaccurate).
  • There's a whole 'nother knowledge = power happening here.
  • Some of it is knowledge as justification for use of power.
  • Another component is knowledge as means to motivate commoners not to resist conscription so that technical legal power can be actualized.
• Arbitrary categories -> polarization -> stuff
  • Division polarizes; polarization creates hostility
• "Domestication" of other cultures (familiarization in service of understanding) is common/okay/universal?
  • Maybe we don't 100% agree with this?
• What's the relationship between overgeneralization and mythologization?
  • Us/them distinction inevitably leads to overgeneralization.
  • Overgeneralization goes hand-in-hand with us/them thinking.
  • Dehumanization is part of this too.
• Ignoring the modern Orient is a really important point.
• Why is Egypt so prominent in our history books?
  • How important exactly was Napoleon's invasion?
  • Contemporary history isn't there, only a particular romanticizeable period.
  • Also true of other colonies.
• Is the idea of capturing culture/people through textual/scholarly descriptions inherently flawed?
  • But is all communication futile?
  • Even reading this book is participating in Orientalism.
  • Communicated knowledge is inferior to direct experience.
  • Are scientific experiments a portable/universal version of direct experience (and an equivalent might not exist for e.g., sociology).
  • High school chemistry labs are a great example of the text being elevated above the experience.
  • If a culture isn't representative of a study you've read about, then you assume that the culture is behaving unnaturally.
• Us/them division also works to pacify the not-actually-rich "us" by dividing them from the "them."
  • Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States"
  • Colonization is highly dependent on patriotism.
    • This comes back to the knowledge is power.
    • Goes beyond patriotism to Eurocentrism.
• Defining knowledge not as "things that are true" but as "beliefs that are held" clarifies things.
• Call of Duty etc.
  • Violence is okay against the right people.
• Games broadly
  • Games literally objectify the other.
  • PC is always the only human (except in multi-player).
  • Games fit right in with the rest of Orientalism.
  • Games unlike more static media can portray action/consequence ideas.
• Islam being demonized because it didn't fit the image of the Oriental as vulnerable/passive.
  • Orientalism mostly happened after Islamic invasion of Europe.
  • Christianity as a unifying cultural element to control reactions to an Islamic invasion.
  • Construction of "Europe" happened in part through Christianity.
  • Christianity becomes a common thread that allows us/them distinctions of today to be echoed into the past.
• Identity in modern media is very closely linked to nations and geography.
  • These identities are very shallow compared to e.g. tribal identities.
• Identity-based justifications of invasions are ...interesting.
• Games and religion?
• There is some respect in Orientalism at least for some of the "great works" in the past of e.g., Egypt.
  • What's the reason that no such respect exists for natives in North America or in Australia?
    • Greeks weren't there?
      • But what about India?
    • Taking over existing institutions vs. genocide?
      • But what about South America?
    • No ability to exile respected objects into the distant past?
    • People vs. land as resource?

Plans

• Keep reading Orientalism?
  • Read something from a Native American perspective or at least a perspective that's left out of Orientalism?
  • Something like this but from a Native perspective?
  • Mechanics of elimination/resource extraction seem more relevant to the North American genocide than to other colonial projects.
  • Keep reading for now; if we do find another source but it's a whole book maybe switch gears.
• Focus on Minecraft?
  • Minecraft generalizes well
  • Operational-logic level analysis of how it implements colonialism.
  • Comparisons to other games that use the same logics.
  • Alternate design ideas.
    • Influence from the start instead of trying to patch from the end.
• Methodology
  1. Detailed analysis of how the game implements/expresses ideas, and what those ideas are.
  2. Brainstorm using inversions of those ideas.
  3. Polish those into design ideas.
• Read critical play/critical design methodology?

TODO

• Get into analysis next week
• Find another reading (by tomorrow?)
• Keep reading Orientalism