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CAMPBELL, J. K. (1964), Honour, family and patronage: A study of institutions and moral values in
a Greek mountain community (Oxford). €€ GILMORE, D. D., ed. (1987), Honor and shame and
the unity of the Mediterranean (Washington, DC). €€ LEERSSEN, JOEP (1995), •Een
omzwerving rond Monte-Cristo: Mediterrane beeldvorming van Byron tot Bogart en
Braudel‚, in Schurken en schelmen: Cultuurhistorische verkenningen rond de Middellandse Zee, ed.
A.M. van Erp Taalman Kip & I.F. de Jong (Amsterdam): 9-24. €€ PERISTIANY, J.G., ed.
(1966), Honour and shame: The values of Mediterranean society (London).
€
HYBRIDITY €Identity/alterity/hybridity
€
IDENTITY/ALTERITY/HYBRIDITY
The word ƒidentity„ derives from Latin idem, ƒthe same„, and fundamentally
denotes a relationship expressing the sameness of a thing with itself,
expressed logically in the formula A = A.
This self-sameness, to the extent this it is not a trivial platitude, is
problematic. Why, for example, does the logical formula have to use two
letters A to describe a single self-sameness? Self-sameness is noteworthy
once it is established across the interval of different moments or functions.
Statements like •the planet Venus is the same as the planet Venus‚ or
•this desk is identical with itself‚ are trivial, but it makes perfect sense to
say that •the evening star is the same as the morning star‚ or •this desk is
the desk at which Walter Scott wrote Waverley‚. In legal proceedings, it is
of paramount importance to establish a certain and continuous chain of
identity for exhibits of proof and for the link between perpetrator and
accused: •this is the man who committed the crime last year‚; •these are
the gloves found on the crime scene‚.
Identity thus involves the meaning of ƒbeing identifiable„, and is closely
linked to the idea of permanence through time: something remaining
identical with itself from moment to moment. In what follows here, the
meaning of ƒpermanence and continuity„ will be discussed first. However,
this older and deeper, diachronic meaning of the notion of identity has
become overshadowed by the more current, synchronic meaning of a
ƒseparate and autonomous individuality„, which will be discussed subsequently. The relationship between these diachronic and synchronic
dimensions of identity has been analysed by Ric…ur (1990); selected
passages from the history of philosophy from Aristotle to Ric…ur have
been selected and commented by Ferret (1998); a more analytical survey
of philosophical discussions is given by Frank (1991).
There is no cognition without recognition; confidence in our place in
the world is impossible if we cannot trust our memories; amnesia destroys
identity. All human affairs presuppose the individual„s permanent and
336
IDENTITY/ALTERITY/HYBRIDITY
continuing identity over time. We anticipate the future by making plans
and promises, and recollect the past by recognizing and comparing words,
deeds and responsibilities.
So too in collective identities the awareness of a shared past is indispensable: what Renan in Qu€est-ce qu€une nation (1882) called •avoir fait de
grandes choses ensemble, et vouloir en faire encore‚. Historical awareness
is at the very root of a group identity, and indeed its conditio sine qua non.
The emancipation of many marginalized groups involved, crucially, the
recuperation, from the amorphous past, of a history † or (where a factbased history was irretrievable) of a myth or might-have-been-history
(witness Macpherson„s Ossian or Alex Haley„s Roots).
The permanence of states originally resided primarily in the dynastic
continuity of the monarchy (Kantorowicz 1957), and also in the €mythical
remembrance of primeval experiences often taking the form of tradition:
the unchanging and persistent presence of the past in the form of
buildings, monuments and ceremonies (Shils 1981). Derived from the
church„s expression of continuous permanence with its relics, liturgies,
buildings and institutions, these are initially dynastic in nature. From the
period of humanism onwards, a more source-critical form of historywriting and antiquarianism began to locate continuity in the recollections
and remains, not just of the church or the dynasty, but also of the nationat-large; from that moment, we see €monuments increase in number and
functional importance, as markers of collective permanence and continuity. In the development towards modern secular states, such lieux de m•moire (Nora 1984-92) become less intimately linked to religion or monarchy: the first public statue to a non-monarchical, secular individual in
Europe was that of Erasmus in Rotterdam. Foundational episodes and
crises in the nation„s past take on mythical meaning; in the permanence of
their €memory they establish a continuity between past and present which
is properly identitarian.
With the rise of modern centralized states after the French Revolution,
the cult of remembrance and national permanence becomes a matter of
state policy. History replaces religion as a core subject in primary school
education; museums, monuments and commemorations are instituted,
names of streets and public spaces recall past events and persons. This
deliberate cultivation of historical continuity has been analysed as the
invention of tradition (Hobsbawm & Ranger 1983); unlike the organic and
spontaneous traditions which feed into the present from the past, this
cultivation of a historical indentity delves into the past from the present.
Literature, too, takes on an explicit role of celebrating the collective past
in fictionalized, novelistic or quasi-epic treatments; literary historiography
emerges as a genre in national history-writing. In all these respects, a
collective sense of identity is derived from a shared historical awareness.
IDENTITY/ALTERITY/HYBRIDITY
337
The identity of a thing, person or group involves the impossibility of
substitution. To identify oneself, e.g. by showing one„s ƒI.D.„, is to prove
that one is who one claims to be, to the exclusion of everyone else. To
identify a single ant within an anthill means to single it out, to see it separate from the amorphous group-as-a-whole; to identify a desk as ƒthe one
at which Walter Scott wrote Waverley„ means to set it apart as such from all
other desks, to give it a unique specificity within its generic class.
In personal terms, the notion of identity as ƒunique individuality„ fans
out to cover a variety of meanings: sentience, self-awareness, self-reflection, self-positioning. These cannot be strictly demarcated, but shade into
each other; even so, they have distinctive features.
At the most fundamental and unreflected level, it denotes the autonomous existence of a sentient subject (the implied ƒego„ in Descartes„
cogito ergo sum). Identity here is the subjective vantage point from which one
surveys and encounters the world. At a more reflected level, this sentience
shades into self-awareness. Again, this self-awareness can manifest itself in
varying degrees of explicitness. Sartre, for instance, distinguishes between
conscience de soi (ƒself-awareness„) and connaissance de soi (ƒself-knowledge„).
At each of these stages, a sense of contradistinction is either implied or
made explicit. As Fichte already observed, even the Cartesian cogito
involves, not just a formulation of the sentient ƒego„, but a distinction
between ego and non-ego. Identity in these terms becomes a continuous
confrontation between the sentient subject and his/her environment, a
negotiated and shifting demarcation between the I and what it encounters
and experiences, the things and phenomena classed as familiar or alien.
In this view, the differentiation between familiar and alien, eigen and
fremd, is a fundamental act of intelligence at the very root of what identity
means. The Fremderfahrung or experience of alterity thus becomes the starting point of any preoccupation with the world„s diversity, and will lie at the
root of any process of stereotyping or ƒothering„ which imagologists will
study.
Much the same obtains in terms of group identity. A group„s identity in
the sense as discussed here (separate and autonomous individuality) involves a collective cohesion which leads group members to suspend a sense
of individual differences in favour of the group„s collective distinctness
from the rest of humanity. Two fundamental comments are in order.
Group identity is at all times the result of a balancing process, where the
internal cohesion and external distinctness of the group outweigh the
group„s internal diversity and its external similarities. This balancing
process is materially determined, as L‡vi-Strauss has posited, by the
distribution of communication density: •A society consists of individuals
and groups which communicate with one another. The existence of, or
lack of, communication can never be defined in an absolute manner.
338
IDENTITY/ALTERITY/HYBRIDITY
Communication does not cease at society„s borders. These borders, rather,
constitute thresholds where the rate and forms of communication, without
waning altogether, reach a much lower level. This condition is usually
meaningful enough for the population, both inside and outside the
borders, to become aware of it.‚ (L‡vi-Strauss 1963: 296)
Moreover, group identity is changeable in size and coverage over time.
Although the notion of identity tends to connote a categorical fixture,
unchangeable and permanent through time, group identities (even more
than personal identities) are highly volatile. Internal divisions may arise
within a group, mergers with other groups may occur. The same group
name may even cover totally different aggregates from context to context
or from time to time (e.g. ƒAmerican„, ƒFlemish„).
At the individual level, one may at any moment feel to be part of
differently-constituted groups (ƒLondoner„, ƒEnglishman„, ƒBriton„, ƒEuropean„; or, alternatively, ƒmale„, ƒworking class„, ƒsupporter of Tottenham
Hotspurs„). Similarly, while a given text may thematize perceived aspects
of the author„s ƒown„ identity, it is never certain how widely or narrowly
that identity is circumscribed. One of the most complex issues an imagologist can face is the question, not about whom, but for whom does a text
speak? Does Thomas Mann write as ƒa German„ tout court, as a recalcitrant
individual, as a Hanseatic Northerner?
This volatility of the coverage of identity point up the fallacy of identitarian atomism. The notion of identity is often used aprioristically. Individuality is often seen as fixed, homogeneous and self-contained, but this is
in fact a simplification. A group„s identity changes over time and contains
within itself potential or actual diversities. Such diversity, once noticed, is
often perceived to exist between constituent sub-groups (e.g. ƒregions„
within a ƒnation„), which in turn are then credited with precisely that quality
of fixed homogeneity which the larger group lacks. The underlying assumption seems to be that at some fundamental level, there must be idealtypical, constituent sub-groups whose identity is indeed just that: internally
undifferentiated and homogeneous. For that reason, the ultimate locus of
national characters is often sought in small-scale or €regional communities, characterized as such (as the word shows in its Latin root, communis)
by the very quality of shared close-knittedness (cf. also the German term
Gemeinschaft).
On closer scrutiny, again, these identitarian ƒatom-units„ turn out to be
a fata morgana. No matter how small the scale, any aggregate of human
individuals is characterized by diversity, dissent and even conflict; indeed,
the intensity of conflict can be every bit as strenuous at the micro-level as
in large-scale settings, even within villages, or within extended or nuclear
families. There is no elementary, atomic identity-level at which people are
of one mind and one soul. Indeed, even the human individual is internally
IDENTITY/ALTERITY/HYBRIDITY
339
diverse. Many souls can live within one„s breast. In the course of one„s life,
personalities change. Mixed feelings can lead a person to express different
reactions, different opinions, and different attitudes at different moments;
and after Freud the insight has become commonplace that the human
individual is in fact a locus of conflicting emotional and cogitative impulses. That view can be traced back as far as Montaigne: •Nous sommes
tous de lopins et d„une contexture si informe et diverse, que chaque piˆce,
chaque momant, faict son jeu. Et se trouve autant de difference de nous
‰ nous mesmes, que de nous ‰ autruy‚ (Essais 2.1: •De l„inconstance de
nos actions‚).
Over the last century, different schools of thought have in different
ways begun to stress that the experience of alterity is by no means incidental to the autonomous existence of a sentient identity, but in fact constitutive of it. Developmental psychology since Schachtel (1959) and Piaget
(1970) has seen the growth of the human mind in terms of a continuous
attempt to relativize the default state of egocentrism, and has recently
elaborated the concept of a moi-peau: identity as a ƒskin„, which not only
contains and closes off the individual„s body, but also forms a sensory
interface between Self and Outside (Anzieu 1985). The languagephilosophical thought of Davidson (2001) and the political philosophy of
Taylor (1992, 1994), though not uncontested, have led to similar considerations. Hermeneutic analysis, especially in the tradition of L‡vinas
(1991) and Ric…ur (1990), of the relationship between the experienced
world and the experiencing subject tends to see the experience of alterity
as a formative one, where ƒOne becomes I by way of encountering You„.
More radically, the influence of Derrida (1967) has done much to discredit
the ƒmetaphysics of identity„, and to give primacy instead to the notion of
diff•rance: the idea that the world consists of an unbounded and limitlessly
varied web of differentiations which it would be reductive to collapse into
oppositional relations between constitutive ƒidentities„.
In this view, identity is not a given but something which is articulated:
it comes into being as a result of being conceptualized and verbalized, as
a discursive hinge between the developing, changing subject and its diverse, changing experiences. In the postmodern climate, this widespread
de-centering of the subject has led to a paradox. Identity as an ontological
category is rejected, and instead the values of marginality, exception,
difference and hybridity are celebrated; yet, at the same time, this has given
rise to identity politics, where self-discovery and self-realization are
considered necessary and justified pursuits. Much of what one does in the
world is done on the basis of what one is and how one wishes to express
oneself. That paradox is of particular urgency among emerging identities
which until recently were unrecognized, stigmatized, denigrated or marginalized: e.g. women, homosexuals, non-white races, and variations or com-
340
IDENTITY/ALTERITY/HYBRIDITY
binations of these. Here, the debate is still how to claim one„s own voice
(ƒidentity„) without buying into an underlying assumption of identity as a
fixed, autocentric category.
Identity as a concept is much more complex than appears at first sight;
in occulting its own complexity in what seems a self-evident a priori
notion it can easily mislead. Identity can never be an explanatory factor of
human history or human attitudes, at best provides the framework for
other explanations, and in most cases is itself the explicandum. In most
current usage, identity stands for processes of (self-)identification, which
are themselves subject to many complex, and variable, factors and circumstances. Identity is not about one„s given place, but about one„s position,
imposed or chosen.
For imagological research, the two dimensions of identity discussed
here, diachronic and synchronic, will naturally gravitate towards two (overlapping and complementary, yet distinct) approaches. Diachronic identity,
the sense of permanence and continuity in time, is basically a self-image,
and can usually be analysed as such. To be sure, the functional role of
foreign foes and alien challenges in a nation„s historical conscience will, of
course, bring the relevant hetero-images concerning other nations into the
analysis.
Synchronic identity, the sense of a separate and unique individuality in
the world, will predominantly address the distinction between Self and
Other, and will therefore gravitate towards the analysis of hetero-images
and imaginated contradistinctions. The degree of explicitness of a given
self-image (conscience de soi, connaissance de soi), silhouetted and brought into
relief as it is by distinguishing it from that kicking-off point called alterity,
remains to be assessed from case to case. A self-image may be the tacitly
implied standpoint from which judgements are formed considering foreign
cultures; that judgement of such €foreign cultures may be tacitly or explicitly used to reflect back on one„s domestic presuppositions and culture.
Such cross-national comparisons and oppositions may ultimately be reified
into a fully explicit characterological or even €anthropological notion of
one„s own cultural identity: e.g. the German-French oppositions between
Kultur and civilisation, or between Geist and esprit.
In such cases, identity and alterity, auto- and hetero-image, mirror each
other: each determines the profile of the other, and is in turn determined
by it. However, in terms of chronological development, it may be assumed
as a working hypothesis that subaltern nations tend to develop a sense of
identity and a self-image while under foreign rule, and as a result have their
initial self-image thrust upon them, to be negotiated in the second instance
by processes such as internalization, rejection, adaptation or avoidance.
This may be peculiar to the subaltern condition, and has been analysed
more deeply by €postcolonial theorists. Powerful nations with a long-
IDENTITY/ALTERITY/HYBRIDITY
341
standing history of independence may, while they cannot fully control the
imagery they project abroad, in any case reflect upon their identity autonomously.
In all of these cases, the pivotal first-person ƒwe„ is never to be taken
uncritically at face value. The usage of a collective first-person plural needs
to be critically scrutinized as regards the historical time-span, the size of
territory and the human aggregate it claims to cover.
The mutually-determining contrastive nature of identity and alterity has
itself been queried and blurred in recent decades. It has been argued that
the moral or cultural profile of persons or cultures (their ƒidentity„ in the
looser sense of the term) is not a lapidary and undifferentiated whole, but
a mix of different influences and strands, and that otherness is not only
resisted or marked off, but also incorporated and internalized. The
intertwining of identity and otherness is now a generally current concept
under the appellation of ƒhybridity„. That term itself is rooted in nineteenth-century genetic research, denoting a mixture of species or €races
(or, metaphorically, of styles), and thus the opposite of ƒpurity„. In the
context of €postcolonial thought, it was realized that in a situation of
colonial domination, a primordial cultural authenticity was irrevocably
compromised and unattainable, and that a sense of identity among the
subaltern group would always involve the traces of the exoticism that the
hegemonic colonizers had imposed. This fundamental imagological insight
† in uneven power relations, the subaltern group„s auto-image is often a
form of •auto-exoticism‚ (Leerssen 2006), the internalization of imperial
exotic ethnotypes † was taken one step further when the condition of
hybridity came to be seen, not as a flawed falling away from authenticity,
but as a fundamental property of human culture in general. As was
recognized by theorists from Brazil (Freyre„s tropicalismo) to Senegal
(Senghor„s m•tissage), culture will of its nature tend to interact, cross
borders, and mingle, and consequently all culture is €creolized, a result
and conglomerate of different and even opposing traditions of selfhood
and otherness. In this light, identity and alterity are no longer seen as polar
opposites, but as ingredients capable of interpenetrating and mingling.
Critics characteristically are ambivalent in their attitude towards hybridity;
while some hail it as an escape from €colonial anxiety and as an
empowering deconstruction of the fetishization of purity and authenticity,
others have pointed out that hybridity may also be a euphemism for
cultural globalization, a •blanding‚ rather then •blending‚ of cultures.
Joep Leerssen
ACHILLES, J. & C. BIRKLE, eds. (1997), (Trans-)formations of cultural identity in the Englishspeaking world (Heidelberg). €€ ANZIEU, DIDIER (1985), Le moi-peau (Paris). €€
BHABHA, HOMI (1992), The location of culture (London). €€ BREGER, C. & T. DŠRING,
eds. (1998), Figuren der/des Dritten: Erkundungen kultureller Zwischenr‚ume (Amsterdam). €€
342
IMAGE
BRONFEN, E. et al., eds. (1997), Hybride Kulturen: Beitr‚ge zur anglo-amerikanischen Multikulturalismusdebatte (T‹bingen). €€ DAVIDSON, DONALD (2001), Subjective, intersubjective, objective
(Oxford). €€ DERRIDA, JACQUES (1967), De la grammatologie (Paris). €€ FERRET,
STŒPHANE, ed. (1998), L€identit• (Paris). €€ FRANK, MANFRED (1991), Selbstbewusstsein
und Selbsterkenntnis: Essays zur analytischen Philosophie der Subjektivit‚t (Stuttgart). €€ GLISSANT, EDOUARD (1995), Introduction ƒ une po•tique du divers (Paris). €€ ID. (2005), Ethnicit•
d€aujourd€hui (Paris). €€ HAMANN, C. & C. SILBER, eds. (2002), R‚ume der Hybridit‚t:
Postkoloniale Konzepte in Theorie und Literatur (Hildesheim). €€ HOBSBAWM, E.J., & T.
RANGER, eds. (1983), The invention of tradition (Cambridge). €€ KANTOROWICZ, ERNST
(1957), The king€s two bodies: A study in medieval political theology (Princeton, NJ). €€ KRAIDY,
MARWAN (2005), Hybridity: Or the cultural logic of globalization (Philadelphia, PA). €€
LEERSSEN, JOEP (2006), •The downward pull of cultural essentialism‚, in Image into identity:
Constructing and assigning identity in a culture of modernity, ed. M. Wintle (Amsterdam): 31-52.
€€ LEGGEWIE, CLAUS (2000), •Hybridkulturen‚, Merkur 54: 878-889. €€ LŒVINAS,
EMMANUEL (1991), Entre nous: Essai sur le penser-ƒ-l€autre (Paris). €€ LŒVI-STRAUSS,
CLAUDE (1963), Structural anthropology (orig. Anthropologie structurale, 1958; trl. C. Jacobson
& B. Grundfest; New York). €€ NEDERVEEN PIETERSE, JAN (2004), Globalization and
culture: Global m•lange (Oxford). €€ NORA, P., ed. (1984-92), Les lieux de m•moire (7 vols.;
Paris). €€ PIAGET, JEAN (1970), Psychologie et •pist•mologie (Paris). €€ RIC•UR, PAUL
(1990), Soi-m„me comme un autre (Paris). €€ SCHACHTEL, ERNEST G. (1959), Metamorphosis:
On the development of affect, perception, attention, and memory (New York). €€ SHILS, EDWARD
(1981), Tradition (London). €€ STEFFEN, T., ed. (1999), Crossover: Cultural hybridity in
ethnicity, gender, ethics (T‹bingen). €€ TAYLOR, CHARLES (1992), Multiculturalism and …the
politics of recognition€ (Princeton, NJ). €€ ID. (1994), The ethics of authenticity (Cambridge,
MA). €€ YOUNG, ROBERT J.C. (1995), Colonial desire: Hybridity in theory, culture and race
(London).
€
IMAGE
[This entry offers terminological clarifications as an adjunct to the introductory articles.]
The mental or discursive representation or reputation of a person,
group, ethnicity or ƒnation„. This imagological usage is not to be confused
with the generally current meaning of •pictorial or €visual depiction‚.
Nor is an image tantamount to anything that can or has been said
concerning a certain person, country or group. Factual report statements
which are empirically testable (e.g. •the French, unlike the Germans, have
direct presidential elections‚) are not part of image-formations. Images
specifically concern attributions of moral or characterological nature (e.g.
•Spaniards are proud‚); often they take the form of linking social facts and
imputed collective psychologisms (e.g., •Paris is the capital of French
elegance‚, •the Dutch love of liberty derives from a tradition of local
government and resisting foreign dominations‚). To the extent that a
discourse describing a given nationality, country or society relies on
imputations of national character rather than on testable fact, it is called
imaginated.
Images can vary according to their €perspective. A fundamental distinction is the one between auto-image (or ƒself-image„) and hetero-image: the
referring to a characterological reputation current within and shared by a
IMAGE
343
group, the latter to the opinion that others have about a group„s purported
character. Thomas Mann writing, as a German, about German culture expresses a German auto-image; Madame de StaŽl„s De l€Allemagne expresses
an outside view or hetero-image. Since images tend to invoke generally
current commonplaces and reduce the complexity of historical contingency to the invariance of ingrained €topoi and €clich‡s, they are often
considered a form of €stereotype. In practice, images are mobile and
changeable as all discursive constructs are. (For this reason, some scholars
have preferred, in the past, the term imagotype to that of ƒstereotype„.) The
image of Germany as developed by Madame de StaŽl, although conceived
in a specific French-German polarity, has been exported as far and as wide
as Madame de StaŽl„s fame and writings have spread, and has influenced
the image of Germany in countries other than France. It has been observed that in some cases countries have exported their self-image and that
these have been adopted abroad as hetero-images; or, in other cases, that
countries have imported the hetero-image from hegemonic foreign
sources and interiorized them as auto-images. There is reason to suspect
that the direction of these processes is determined at least in part by power
relations.
Much as images are mobile, so too they are changeable, both in valorization and in substance. Many images of denigrated €savages (e.g., indigenous inhabitants of Europe„s colonies, or the Irish) were revalorized in
the sentimental climate of the decades leading up to Romanticism: the
Noble Savage is still bereft of the refinements of civility and proper
manners, but this lack is now given the positive connotation of authenticity, intuitive honesty, moral forthrightness and closeness to nature.
Conversely, the image of the refined Frenchman acquires pejorative
connotations around the same time: those of artificiality, pretentiousness,
untrustworthiness. Such changes (which are often driven by a complex
combination of cultural taste and political circumstance) can also affect the
very substance of the characteristics imputed to a given nation: over time,
images may spawn their very opposite counter-images. Thus, in the image of
England, the eighteenth-century type of the choleric, suicide-prone
Englishman triggers, in the nineteenth century, the type of the phlegmatic,
imperturbable dandy with the ƒstiff upper lip„. Sometimes history witnesses
a succession of counter-images: The image of Germany switches from that
of unrefined boors (seventeenth century) to that of abstruse, artistically
inclined romantics (early nineteenth century) to that of soulless, obedient
implementers of ruthless systematics (twentieth century).
In practice, these successive counter-images do not abolish each other
but accumulate. As a result, in most cases, the image of a given nation will
include a compound layering of different, contradictory counter-images,
with (in any given textual expression) some aspects activated and domi-
344
IMAGE
nant, but the remaining counterparts all latently, tacitly, subliminally
present. As a result, most images of national character will boil down to
a characteristic, or quasi-characterological, polarity: passion and arrogance
in the Spaniards, refinement and immorality in the Italians, gaiety and
rationalism in the French, suaveness and pugnaciousness in the English,
otherworldliness and ebullience in the Irish, contemplativeness and sensuality in the Flemings, etcetera. The ultimate €clich‡ about any nation is
that it is ƒa nation of contrasts„. An imageme is the term used to describe an
image in all its implicit, compounded polarities.
There is also reason to suspect that the images which nations form of
each other often involve an imputation of images. Work done by Millas
(2004) on the mutual perception of Greeks and Turks has shown that the
most deep-rooted points of enmity and mistrust lay, not in the heteroimage Greeks had of Turks, or Turks of Greeks; nor in the auto-image
that Greeks had of themselves in relation to Turks, or Turks of themselves
in relation to Greeks; but rather in the suspicions Greeks had about the
Turks„ hetero-image concerning them, or Turkish suspicions as to Greek
attitudes to Turkey (•Do they think we„re savages?‚). Such meta-images
(how a nation believes it is perceived by others) have been used in texts
like Montesquieu„s Lettres persanes, G.B. Shaw„s John Bull€s other island and
E.M. Forster„s A passage to India, often to €ironic effect, and present one
of the most challenging and promising perspectives for future investigation.
Joep Leerssen
DYSERINCK,HUGO (1980), •Die Quellen der N‡gritude-Theorie als Gegenstand komparatistischer Imagologie‚, Komparatistische Hefte 1: 31-40. €€ ID. (1991), Komparatistik: Eine
Einf†hrung (new ed.; Bonn). €€ ID. (2002), •Von Ethnopsychologie zu Ethnoimagologie:
•ber Entwicklung und m•gliche Endbestimmung eines Schwerpunkts des ehemaligen
Aachener Komparatistikprogramms‚, Neohelicon 29.1: 57-74. €€ LEERSSEN,JOEP (1988),
•ƒThe cracked lookingglass of a servant„: Cultural decolonization and national
consciousness in Ireland and Africa‚, in Europa und das nationale Selbstverst‚ndnis: Imagologische
Probleme in Literatur, Kunst und Kultur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. H. Dyserinck & K.U.
Syndram (Bonn): 103-118. €€ ID. (1992), •Image and reality † and Belgium‚, in Europa
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