Imperial Eyes: Rhetorics of Empire Building in the Movie Robinson Crusoe

Essay from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Comparative Literature, grade: manque, Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University (Faculté des lettres), course: Anglais/ Cultural Studies/ Postcolonialism, language: English, abstract: In this paper I analyze the movie Robinson Crusoe to understand the rhetoric of empire building and to stand at instances of appropriation that push the west to cherish superiority over the 'other'. I focus on the discursive strategies used by the west to inferiorize the other race and to reduce them to cruel creatures. I start by dwelling on the representation of the 'other' and the landscape and I focus on the production of knowledge as a tool used to inferiroize them. At the end I stop at some paradoxes within the colonial discourse that create ruptures in the western empire. I do that by questing signs of resistance that break the discourse of empire building and that reveal the ambivalent nature of the colonial discourse. Keywords: Robinson Crusoe - Colonial Discourse - Empire Building - Orientalism - Film Studies

Omar Moumni is a professor of English and Cultural Studies at Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah University, Faculty of Letters and Human sciences, Dhar el-Mehraz- Fez. Morocco. He is the author of Ruptures in the Western Empire: White Female captives and Cinematic orientalism (Newcastle: 2012) and Postcolonial Matters (Sarrebruck: 2013). He has a number of published articles and has contributed in international conferences.