Darwinist premise in the Orientalist construction of the “Other” - JPCS

Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and Societies
ISSN No. 1948-1845 (Print); 1948-1853 (Electronic)
“Othering” is a systematic discipline that goes hand in hand with the Western epistemology
and cultural discourse. “Otherness” is due less to the difference of the “Other” than to the
point of view and the discourse of the person who perceives the “Other” as such. Opposing
“Us”, the Self and “them”, the “Other” allows humanity to be divided into two groups: one
that embodies the norm and whose identity is valued and another that is defined by its faults,
devalued and susceptible to discrimination. In short, Otherness is the result of a discursive
process by which a dominant group constructs one or many dominated groups by
stigmatizing a difference – real or imagined – presented as negation of identity and thus a
motive for potential discrimination (Staszak 1). Saeed A khan has also found that “Western
thought has used science to promote racial difference and superiority”. He adds, “Western
thought has for centuries denied the “Other” as different, inferior, and worthy of subjection to
colonialism”. (1)
This is actually the backbone idea of Orientalism as a corporative, institutional Western
discipline in which the asymmetry in power relationship is central to the construction of
“Otherness”. This trend of thought was very much dominant during the colonial era and
acted as supportive scientific and scholastic evidence to the Orientalist/colonialist project.
The “Orient” was created as a stigmatic “Other” which represents the savage race,
barbarianism, and inferiority. Based on these and other evolutionary empirical data, a form of
institutionalized colonial geography was established, “geographers (European discoveries)
sought to document the particularity of the physical environment and tropical societies”
(Staszak 2).
The Hegelian concept of universal progress allows societies to be organized hierarchically
from the primitive “Other” to the civilized European. Hegel claims that “[T]he History of the
World travels from East to West, for Europe is absolutely the end of history, Asia the
beginning” (qtd. in Macfie 3). Darwin’s theory in this regard offers a coherent scientific
framework to explain species diversity through natural selection. In doing so, Darwin’s
theory offers a hierarchy of different environments and societies and implemented certain
differences as principles of exclusion (4).
The Darwinian theory of evolution was also an underpinning element of literature. One sees
in British colonial fiction from Defoe’s Robison Crusoe to Haggard’s imperial romances a
sort of savage native behavior particularly cannibalism. In his essay ““The Eucharist of
Hell”; Or, Eating People is Right: Romantic Representations of Cannibalism”, Peter Kitson
argues that “Cannibalism … is the most notorious process of colonial “Othering”, both as an
alleged practice and as a critical construct”. For example, Kurtz’s infamous dictum
“exterminate all the brutes” which is equal to Kipling’s view of “the Whiteman’s burden”
echoed the notorious idea of European expansion as a biological necessity. The eighteenthcentury
natural historian Buffon accounted for human variety in terms of a process which he
called degeneration and which he described as occurring through the influence of climate and
environment – Humanity was originally white with European features but it degenerated into
‘Darwinist premise in the Orientalist construction of the “Other”,’ Mohamed Hamoud Kassim Al-
Mahfedi and Venkatesh P
JPCS Vol 3, No 1, 2012
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