Logos, deconstruction-writing, ideology and the false social construction of meaning and representation of the "other" from the perspective of John 1:1
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Authors
Hendricks, Gavin P
Issue Date
2012-08
Type
Article
Language
en
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
This article focuses primarily on meaning and representation of the “other”. The
collective memory of primarily oral cultures about the ways in which knowledge about
them was collected, classified and then represented in various ways to the West, and seen
through the eyes of the West, and then mirrored back again to those that had been
colonised, remains imperative in the discursive discourse of the “other”. Smith refers to
this process as a Western discourse about the “other” which is supported by institutions,
vocabulary, scholarship, imagery (bewitchment of imperial language), doctrines, even
colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles. This process has worked partly because of the
constant interchange between the scholarly and the imaginative (false consciousness - or
sophistry) construction of ideas about primary oral cultures. The whole idea of the
“other” is linguistically and ideologically constituted by the West and can be seen as a
social construct which is in need of deconstruction. In this example, the “other” has been
provided with a name, a face and a particular identity, and is represented by the
indigenous people. According to Boemher, a post-colonial theorist who refers to the
colonised as the colonial “other” or simply the “other,” the concept of the “other” is built
on the ideas of inter alia Hegel and Sartre who signify it as that which is unfamiliar to
the dominant subjectivity or which is against the authority of the dominant class.
Description
Peer reviewed
Citation
Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae, vol 38, Supplement, pp 153-179
Publisher
Church History Society of Southern Africa
License
Journal
Volume
Issue
PubMed ID
DOI
ISSN
10170499