POSTCOLONIAL “OTHERNESS”

Abstract

In this paper the category of Otherness has been concerned for those who occupy the subordinate position in society, which have been presented as inferior in terms of knowledge and abilities, which implies that they need the leadership of those who are, by definition, more capable, more educated, more advanced, more civilized, more merciful, etc. On this way, the hierarchy of representations is established, thus justifying the existing ones power relations in society as well as the unequal treatment of those who are represented as inferior. The concept of Otherness within the framework of postcolonial criticism is used to describe the rest of the world, i.e., everything that does not fall within the scope of Europeans, as one homogeneous mass characterized by ugly features. Otherness in postcolonial criticism refers to colonized peoples who are marginalized by the imperial and identified by their difference from the center. Any area that is not part of European soil is considered inferior, dangerous and less valuable. However, in the understanding of the Other, a duality is also noticeable, since he is sometimes considered wild, harmful and mysterious, and sometimes harmless. Hybridity, mimicry, ambivalence are terms which are used in postcolonial analysis. The colonizers tried to categorize the colonized population, and the formation of hybrid patterns prevented that process, since new cultural forms were emerging that no longer corresponded to the descriptions of the colonizers. Colonizers have been the part of Occident and the colonized nations are the Orient or the Others or the category of Otherness. Sharing the same space, Orient and Occident influenced each other, which resulted in the transfer of elements from one culture to another. The fruit of this is the emergence of an intermediate space and a hybrid identity, which is characterized as a simultaneous affection for two or more different and opposing identity patterns, but does not fully belong to any of them.