Cultural Encounters examines how 'otherness' has been constituted, communicated and transformed in cultural representation. Covering a diverse range of media including film, tv, advertisements, video, photographs, painting, novels, poetry, newspapers and material objects, the contributors, who include Ludmilla Jordanova and Ivan Karp, explore the cultural politics of Europe's encounters with Brazil, India, Israel, Australia and Africa, examining the ways in which visual and textual art forms operate in their treatment of cultural difference. The opening section considers how certain narrative forms support notions of cultural and historical unity and difference, focusing on the European representation of 'otherness'. The ways in which images are contested and subverted in art, cinema, and visual media is then explored in different social contexts. The second section turns to processes of cultural representation in museums and wider social and political arenas. Contributors examine how museum collections and displays have operated as markers of 'otherness', organising and privileging certain forms of knowledge, and consider recent challenges to traditional museum practices.
Talal Asad, Professor of Anthropology, City University, New York * Rangan Chakravarty, University of Sussex, UK * Nandini Gooptu, Lecturer, Oxford University, UK * Elizabeth Ha