“I'd like to re-learn Chinese history here in a culturally free country, and I feel that the knowledge I'll gain from this class will fill the gap left by my previously one-sided knowledge acquired from China.” When I, as a TA, asked Chinese international students why they were taking the Chinese civilization course here at UCLA, this was one of the most common responses I received. Actually, their responses did not surprise me because the myth of academic tolerance[i] as a transformation of racism has been thoroughly embedded in both sides’ educational systems.[ii] Why did Chinese international students assign themselves an “English” nickname, write their legal names in the order of Western tradition, be willing to major in STEM rather than humanities/social science, and so on? All of these seemingly random and spontaneous actions are actually manifestations of cultural hegemony, and both the victim and the perpetrator may be unaware of it. As David J. Hudson asserted, while racial narratives have been fundamental to modern colonialism, the criteria of racial differentiation have not always been consistent.[iii] Thus, this article argues that covering with the cloak of "neutrality" is actually a racist whitewashing of cultural hegemony. This article asserts, based on Michelle Caswell's postcolonialism approach, that we as LIS scholars should stop working on "one-size-fits-all" solutions based on the false assumption that LIS is the utopia for neutrality; at the same time, I would like to bravely suggest that we should be critical of any so-called neutral things and always embrace the existence of “differences.”
Before we begin, there is one critical point I'd want to clarify: I will use the terms "majority-word" and "minority world" offered by Hudson's piece.[iv] Meanwhile, while most of my argument/theoretical analysis is founded on agreement with Edward William Said's criticism of Orientalism, I disagree with the terms he uses in his piece. More precisely, terminology like "Third World," "Orient," and "the West" in Said's article have negative connotations. As a result, this paper would like to dispel prejudices about the majority world as a poor group, beginning with less-negative-connotated phrases.
True Knowledge?
As Said argued, the Orient is not an inert fact of nature but a created consistency that regular constellation of ideas as the pre-eminent thing about the orient.[v] The so-called “true knowledge” that the general liberal consensus suggests should be fundamentally non-political is the largest lie that the minority world uses to mask their aim for cultural hegemony.[vi] Firstly, as Said asserted, it is impossible to separate an individual scholar from the circumstances of life, social ties, and political situations. If we accept the minority world's apolitical definition of "true knowledge," we will continue to overlook the political implications of literary works. Neglecting the political significance of "knowledge" is a form of delusion that only helps to give opportunities for cultural hegemony. As stated in the article, different negative stereotypes of Oriental imagery can be found in great literature and paintings about Arabia, India, and other places. Unfortunately, those negative images caused by cultural hegemony are still interiorized in both the minority world and the majority world.
Second, the liberal consensus on apolitical "true knowledge" is a totally minority ideology that has been whitewashed as a shared norm. Despite the fact that, according to Said's definition, China is not the major subject of Orientalism, it is undeniably one of the most influenced victims of Orientalism, and I'll use the Chinese culture as an example to prove my case here. Humanities studies have always been intertwined with politics in Chinese history. For example, when researching the Classic of Poetry, the first anthology of poems in Chinese history, researchers must consider its political context in order to provide a comprehensive interpretation. Another example is that during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), Chinese scholars argued that the goal of literature is to convey the Dao, which refers to Confucian intellectual and moral concepts and is the foundation of Chinese government and society. As a result, when the minority world promotes apolitical true knowledge, is this behavior political in and of itself?
A standardized library system for whom?
The library is commonly portrayed as an egalitarian institution that provides equal access to information to all.[vii]However, under cover of neutrality, there are also many hidden cultural hegemonies in the current Eurocentrism[viii]library system. As an international student, I've seen that many of the established "rules" do not apply to Chinese-language collections, such as the issue of current retrieval systems' incompatibility for non-Romanized scripts. More specifically, in Eugene W. Wu's The Development of East Asian Libraries in North America, the entire text adopts an overhead approach to emphasize that there are still a lot of opportunities for East Asian collections to be integrated into the American library system.
while general American research libraries were seriously exploring in the 1960s and the 1970s the use of technology to improve operations, East Asian libraries were still occupied with the more mundane problems of cataloging standards and how to build or strengthen collections.[ix]
Even though some of the descriptions are true, development becomes a story of teleological majority-world progress toward a purportedly universal standard represented by the minority world.[x] In other words, I believe that there are many different sorts of non-Romanized scripts, and that they, like Chinese/East Asian collections, must deal with several incompatibilities. So, why should we presume to design our library system in accordance with the minority?
Conclusion
Anything seemingly neutral is the deceptive cover; however, when the profit of the minority world has been damaged, the cover will be taken off by themselves. For example, when there is less profit conflict between the minority and majority worlds, the label "model minority" might be used to describe Chinese international students who work and study diligently all the time. However, when the international situation changes, Chinese international students are labeled as cultural spies[xi] for no reason. In any case, these labels are true cultural hegemony employed by the minority to exert dominance over us. Thus, when cultural hegemony takes the guise of neutrality, oppression becomes more invisible, and the suffering caused by it becomes more severe. There is no denying that different races, cultures, and even individuals are distinct; therefore, when we begin to be skeptical of everything that appears neutral and welcome all "differences," it appears that we are at the start of a cultural hegemonic uprising.
[i] The myth of academic tolerance refers to a common perception that Western universities are post-racial, progressive and inclusive institutions populated by open-minded people. Hence, both sides appear to agree on the authority of Western academic standards. However, this paper contends that the fact is that anything outside of the Western academic system is devalued in a biased manner.
[ii] Leon Moosavi “The Myth of Academic Tolerance: The Stigmatisation of East Asian Students in Western Higher Education.” Asian Ethnicity, February 2, 2021, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/14631369.2021.1882289.
[iii] David J. Hudson “On Dark Continents and Digital Divides: Information Inequality and the Reproduction of Racial Otherness in Library and Information Studies.” Journal of Information Ethics, 25, no. 1: 67.
[iv] David J. Hudson “On Dark Continents and Digital Divides.” 65.
[v] Said, Edward W. Orientalism. 1st ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978, 5.
[vi] Ibid., 10.
[vii] Todd Honma, “Trippin’ Over the Color Line: The Invisibility of Race in Library and Information Studies,” InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, no. 1(2) (June 21, 2005), 2.
[viii] In terms of the concept of Eurocentrism, this study will utilize Quijano's definition: a way of thinking about things that emerged in Western Europe before the middle of the seventeenth century, but its origins are undoubtedly considerably earlier. […]It does not apply to all kinds of knowledge, all Europeans, or all periods of history. Instead, it is a certain rationality or viewpoint of knowledge that has become worldwide hegemonic, invading, and defeating other earlier or distinct conceptual forms, both in Europe and beyond.
[ix] Eugene W. Wu, “The Development of East Asian Libraries in North America,” in Library and Information Sciences, ed. Chuanfu Chen and Ronald Larsen (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2014), 163, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54812-3_11.
[x] David J. Hudson “On Dark Continents and Digital Divides.” 68.
[xi] In 2020, the president issued an order prohibiting and canceling visas for Chinese students having military ties. First, in a party-dominated country, it is impossible to differentiate which universities have military ties and which have strictly non-military ties. Second, most Chinese international students, whether they major in STEM or not, are self-funded and have no political links to any parties or states.
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