LIT514 - Negotiating the Other

We are unpacking this incredible university seminar syllabus.

It's called Negotiating the Other.

And honestly, if you haven't enrolled in this class yet,

you need to.

Oh, absolutely.

So the syllabus starts with Edward Sade's Orientalism.

Okay, the classic starting point.

Exactly.

It shows how the other isn't some, you know,

biological fact.

It's totally constructive.

It's all about power and language defining the outsider.

So the insider can feel, well, superior.

So it's really about who writes the rules

and controls the narrative.

That's it.

And the syllabus shows this playing out live

in 16th and 17th century London.

I mean, global trade is exploding.

Early colonial ambitions are just starting to kick off.

And society is suddenly just, they're terrified of foreignness.

Oh, because it's also new to them?

Right.

So the theater essentially became this laboratory

to process all those cultural anxieties.

They were negotiating the boundaries

of national identity right there on stage.

Which brings us to Shakespeare.

But wait, I was actually a little confused

looking at this part of the syllabus.

Oh, what part?

Well, it contrasts a fellow with Caliban from the Tempest.

And I'm thinking if they're both marginalized

by European society, aren't they just two sides

of the exact same coin?

Like they're both outsiders, right?

They are, yeah, but the mechanism of their exclusion

is it's completely different.

Yeah, so it's linguistic defiance

versus Othello's tragic internalization.

That makes so much sense.

Okay, so fast forward to the 18th century

and the contradictions get even wilder.

You have the enlightenment.

The whole rise of reason.

Yes.

This massive rise in the philosophy of reason

and human progress, but it's happening right alongside

the brutal expansion of imperial slavery.

It's a massive, massive contradiction.

And that historical paradox is it's perfectly captured

in Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, isn't it?

Oh, 100%.

Crusoe shipwrecks meets an indigenous man

and immediately renames him Friday

and forces him to learn English.

But as the British Empire evolved,

the way they excluded people changed too, right?

Like it wasn't just happening on distant islands anymore.

No, it moved right into their own homes.

Quite literally when you look at Charlotte Brontese Jane Eyre.

Oh, the exclusion gets architectural.

Yes.

The syllabus focuses on Bertha Mason,

the quote unquote mad wife from the Caribbean.

But then society's narrative shifts again,

which leads to what I think is the wildest jump

in this whole syllabus.

We go from a dark Victorian attic

to a bright London train station.

The Paddington Bear Shift.

Paddington enters British society as a migrant outsider,

but unlike Othello or Bertha Mason,

he isn't demonized or violently excluded.

He gets marmalade sandwiches.

Yeah.

The narrative highlights a shift toward multiculturalism,

hospitality and integration.

So the definitions of humanity keep shifting,

but the actual act of defining an other remains.

Always.

That's exactly why you need to enroll in this course.

I mean, unpacking these texts completely changes

how you read the world.

You start seeing the mechanics of inclusion

and exclusion literally everywhere.

You really do.