The West and the Rest in Formations of Modernity

Stuart Hall
The West is a historical not geographical construct. Almost synonymous with modern capitalist, urbanised, secular, developed, industrialised etc. As a concept/idea it functions in the
following ways: (p.277)
1. Its a tool to think with. It sets a certain structure of thought and knowledge in motion
2. Its an image(s). The verbal and visual language it represents functions as part of a
system of representation
3. A standard/model of comparison
4. Criteria of evaluation against which to judge other societies
The West didn't just reflect an already-established western society but was essential to the very
formation of that society. Moreover, once this idea was produced it had real effects - it became an
organising factor in a system of global power relations and the organising concept in a whole way
of thinking and speaking (p.287)
In order to function at all we seem to need distinct positive concepts, many of which are sharply
polarised towards each other. Binary oppositions, and difference in general play an important role
in the production of meaning (p.279)
Chapter focuses on the role of the Rest in forming the idea of the West
The West and the Rest is a system of representation which represents the world as divided
according to a simply dichotomy. Crude and simplistic and constructs an oversimplified
conception of difference (p.280)
European Expansion
Europeans fought over territory discovered in the New World in C16th (e.g. Treaty of Tordesillas
(1494) divided the unknown world\ between the Spanish and the Portuguese but England also
wanted a part of the spoils) (p.284)
Landmark of great psychological and political importance - Europeans claimed to themselves all
undiscovered lands and peoples. Knowledge is power, and the knowledge won by the first
systematic explorershad opened the way to the age of western world hegemony (John
Roberts, p.285)

By C18th main European players (Portugal, Spain, England, France and Holland) were fully
involved in bringing far flung civilisations into the orbit of western trade and commerce and
exploiting their wealth, land, labour and natural resources for European development. Imprinted
culture and customs on new worlds (p.287)
Combination of internal cohesion and external challenge and conflict (from Islam) -> western

Europe increasingly began to see itself as the West (p.289). Note that concepts Europe and
Christendom were virtually identical for centuries and that this religious aspect is what made
Europe distinct. The West has never really lost its touch with Christian roots and coming into
contact with difference reinforced this new identity

Discourse and Power

 Discourse - a particular way of representing the West, the Rest and the relations between
them. A group of statements which provide a language for talking about a particular kind of
knowledge about a topic. When statements about a topic are made within a particular discourse,
the discourse makes it possible to construct the topic in a certain way and also limits the other
ways in which the topic can be constructed. About the production of knowledge through language
(p.291)
The very language we use to describe the so-called facts interferes in this process of finally
deciding what is true (p.292)
Discourses aren't reducible to class interests but always operate in relation to power - they are part
of the way power circulates and is contested. When a discourse is educative it is called a regime
of truth (p.295)
Representing the Other
This discourse drew on an archive of other discourses:

Classic knowledge

Religious and biblical sources

Mythology
Travellers tales

Underlines conflation of fact and fantasy that constituted knowledge (p.297-299)

The Rest became the subject of the languages of dream and Utopia - object of a powerful fantasy
(p.300). Sexuality was a powerful part of this fantasy. Sexual innocence, experience and
domination play out dance of West and the Rest. Language of exploration, conquest and
domination were strongly marked by gender distinctions and drew much subconscious force from
sexual imagery (p.302)
Lack of civilisation (government, civil society, and economy) -> Europeans to think that these
structures were wholly absence (p.304)

Two discourses operated simultaneously - Paradise could simultaneously turn into barbarism .
Both were exaggerations founded on stereotypes - each required each other even though they
were in opposition
Europeans increasingly tended to see (America) as an idealised/distorted image of their own
countries onto which they could project their own aspirations and fears, their self confidence and
guilt ->> idealisation; the projection of fantasies of desire and degradation; the failure to

recognise and respect difference; the tendency to impose European categories and norms and to
see difference through the modes of perception and representation of the West (p.308)
Underpinned by stereotyping - (1) many characteristics -> one simplified figure which represents
the essence of people and (2) stereotype is split into two halves - its good and bad sides
The question of how nations of the New World should be treated was directly related to the
question of what sort of people and societies they were. These, in turn, dependent on the Wests
knowledge of them, on how they were represented (p.309)

 Greeks had argued that man was a special creation endowed with special gift of reason and
Church taught that Man was receptive to divine grace
The noble vs ignoble savage
The W and the R discourse greatly influenced Enlightenment thinking by providing the framework
of imagines in which Enlightenment social philosophy matured. These thinkers believed there
was one path to civilisation and social development and societies could be ranked on this scale
Idea of universal criterion of progress modelled on the West became a feature of the new social
science which the Enlightenment gave birth to
This represented a key shift from mythological and religious etc to clearly material causes of social
evolution (economic etc.); produced idea that the history of mankind occurred along a single
continuum divided into a series of stages (p.313)
Enlightenment aspired to being a science of man - became the language in which modernity
first came to be defined. Without the Rest the West wouldn't have been able to recognise and
represent itself as the summit of human history