Bortom orientalismens gränser : Visuella hierarkier och konstruktionen av den Andre i Orienten och Occidenten

Sammanfattning

Can the idea of “the Other” only be used to describe how Europe viewed non-European peoples? Or did other civilizations also create their own images of outsiders and foreigners? This study examines how “the Other” is represented in Swedish Gustavian-era and Qing Qianlong-era visual culture during the second half of the eighteenth century. Through a comparative analysis of Elias Martin’s Choi Afock, Aurora Taube and Olof Lindahl (1787) and the Qing court painting Wanguo laichao tu (Myriad Nations Paying Tribute), the study explores how images create distinctions between center and periphery, “us” and “them”. The analysis shows that the two visual systems construct cultural hierarchy in different ways. In the Swedish painting, the Chinese merchant Afock is presented through a European fascination with the exotic. In the Qing court painting, Western envoys are instead placed within a Sinocentric tributary order where the emperor appears as the center of the world. The study therefore argues that the construction of “the Other” was not limited to European Orientalism alone. The study combines iconographic and iconological analysis with postcolonial and decolonial theory, especially the theories of Edward Said, Walter Mignolo, and Catherine Walsh. By comparing Swedish Gustavian-era and Qing Qianlong-era visual culture, the thesis challenges a purely Eurocentric understanding of otherness and argues for a more plural perspective on how different societies produced images of foreigners and cultural difference. Much like the question of the chicken and the egg, the relationship between “self” and “Other” cannot be understood as a one-sided invention, since each continually shaped and produced the other.