US and Others

The relationship between the United States and the “Others” can be understood as one of the most significant political, cultural, intellectual, and ideological relationships of the modern world. Although the United States is often presented as a champion of democracy, freedom, modernity, human rights, and individual liberty, its relationship with societies outside the West has also been shaped by unequal structures of power, cultural hierarchy, economic influence, military intervention, and the production of knowledge about supposedly inferior or backward peoples. Therefore, the binary between “US” and “Others” is not merely a geographical distinction between one nation and the rest of the world. Rather, it is a conceptual distinction through which identities are produced, cultures are ranked, histories are interpreted, and power is exercised. In this sense, the phrase “US and Others” can be critically examined through the interconnected perspectives of Orientalism, postcolonialism, culture and imperialism, the relationship between suppressor and suppressed, oppressor and oppressed, and the imperial centre and the marginalized periphery.

To begin with, the concept of the “Other” is fundamental to understanding how dominant societies construct their own identity. A community frequently defines itself not only through what it believes itself to be but also through what it imagines others to be. Thus, the West has historically constructed an image of the East, Africa, Latin America, and other non-Western regions as fundamentally different from itself. The West becomes rational, civilized, progressive, scientific, democratic, and modern, whereas the Other is represented as emotional, irrational, traditional, unstable, primitive, authoritarian, or incapable of governing itself. Consequently, the identity of the dominant becomes strengthened through the representation of the dominated. The “Other” is therefore not simply someone who is different; rather, Otherness is often produced through discourse, institutions, literature, political language, education, media, and cultural representation.

Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism provides one of the most influential theoretical frameworks for understanding this process. In Orientalism, Said demonstrates that the Orient was not merely discovered by the West but was also constructed through Western knowledge. European scholars, travellers, writers, administrators, artists, and colonial officials produced extensive descriptions of Eastern societies. However, these descriptions were rarely neutral. They frequently transformed complex and diverse societies into simplified categories. The Orient was imagined as mysterious, sensual, irrational, despotic, timeless, backward, and incapable of modern political organization. In contrast, the West represented itself as rational, progressive, masculine, scientific, and historically dynamic. Thus, Orientalism created a binary opposition between “Occident” and “Orient,” while simultaneously establishing a hierarchy in which the Occident occupied the position of authority.

Although Said’s original study focused primarily on European Orientalism, the logic of Orientalism can also be applied to the modern cultural and political power of the United States. The United States inherited and transformed many earlier European representations of the non-Western world. As American global influence expanded after the Second World War, the United States increasingly became a major producer of knowledge about the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and other regions. Universities, research institutions, think tanks, media organizations, intelligence agencies, publishing industries, cinema, television, and digital platforms have participated, in different ways and with different intentions, in defining how the “Others” are understood. Consequently, the American gaze has become an important component of contemporary representations of the non-Western world.

This does not mean that every American scholar, journalist, filmmaker, politician, or citizen deliberately seeks to dominate other cultures. Such an interpretation would be excessively simplistic. Rather, the point is that cultural and political systems can reproduce unequal structures even when individuals do not consciously intend to do so. A representation becomes powerful when it is repeatedly reproduced until it appears natural and unquestionable. Therefore, Orientalism should not be understood merely as individual prejudice; it can also operate as a system of knowledge and representation through which certain voices acquire greater authority than others.

Moreover, the relationship between the United States and the “Others” must be situated within the broader history of imperialism. Classical European imperialism operated through direct territorial occupation, political administration, military conquest, and economic exploitation. However, contemporary forms of imperial influence are often more complex. Political pressure, economic dependency, military alliances, technological dominance, international institutions, cultural industries, and global media can produce forms of influence without formal colonial rule. Consequently, imperialism does not necessarily require a colonial flag over a territory. It can operate through the ability to shape the choices, aspirations, institutions, and cultural values of other societies.

This is where Edward Said’s later concept of culture and imperialism becomes particularly important. Culture is not separate from politics and power. Novels, films, newspapers, educational materials, television programmes, travel narratives, and popular entertainment can contribute to the construction of geographical and cultural identities. When a powerful society repeatedly represents itself as the centre of modernity while representing other societies as peripheral, it creates an ideological geography of the world. Some nations appear to be the makers of history, while others appear merely to receive history. Some societies become the subjects who speak, while others become objects that are spoken about.

The distinction between the “US” and the “Others” therefore reflects a struggle over who has the right to speak. The oppressor does not exercise power only by controlling physical resources; the oppressor can also control representation. If a marginalized community is denied the authority to describe itself, others speak on its behalf. Its history is interpreted by outsiders, its culture is classified by outsiders, its political problems are diagnosed by outsiders, and sometimes even its future is imagined by outsiders. In such circumstances, knowledge itself becomes a site of struggle.

This relationship between knowledge and power is central to postcolonial theory. Postcolonialism questions the assumption that Western categories are universally applicable and challenges the idea that Western history represents the inevitable model of human progress. It asks whose history has been preserved, whose literature has been canonized, whose language has become prestigious, whose knowledge has been considered scientific, and whose worldview has been marginalized. In doing so, postcolonial criticism attempts to expose the unequal structures that survived the formal end of colonialism.

Indeed, political independence does not necessarily eliminate colonial patterns of thought. A country may achieve independence from colonial rule while continuing to depend economically, intellectually, technologically, or culturally upon powerful countries. Its educated elite may continue to value foreign standards above indigenous knowledge. Its universities may privilege Western theories while ignoring local intellectual traditions. Its media may reproduce foreign images of success. Its citizens may internalize the idea that progress means becoming more like the dominant West. Therefore, colonialism can survive psychologically and culturally even after it disappears institutionally.

This phenomenon can be described through the idea of internalized inferiority. When a society is repeatedly described as backward, its members may eventually begin to believe that description. The colonized subject can become divided between admiration for the dominant culture and resentment toward domination. The language, dress, education, institutions, and lifestyles of the colonizer may acquire prestige, while indigenous traditions are associated with backwardness. Thus, colonial power can penetrate the consciousness of the colonized. The most successful form of domination is perhaps not the domination that requires constant physical force but the domination that persuades the dominated to accept the values of the dominant as universal.

At this point, the distinction between oppressor and oppressed becomes complicated. The oppressor is not always a single individual or government, and the oppressed are not always completely powerless. Power operates through institutions, discourses, economic systems, social structures, and cultural practices. Moreover, marginalized people frequently resist, reinterpret, and transform dominant representations. Therefore, the relationship between oppressor and oppressed should not be understood as a simple and permanent division. It is a dynamic struggle in which domination and resistance constantly interact.

Frantz Fanon’s work is particularly significant in this regard. Fanon demonstrates how colonialism affects not only land and political institutions but also the psychology of the colonized. Colonialism establishes a racial and cultural hierarchy in which the colonizer is associated with humanity, civilization, and authority, while the colonized is associated with inferiority. The colonized person may consequently experience alienation from his or her own identity. Language becomes especially important because speaking the language of the colonizer can provide social prestige while simultaneously creating distance from one’s indigenous culture. Thus, language is not merely a communication system; under colonial conditions, it can become an instrument of social hierarchy.

The same issue remains relevant in the contemporary global order. English, for example, has become an international language of education, science, business, diplomacy, technology, and global communication. Its global significance provides enormous opportunities, and it would be simplistic to describe English only as a tool of domination. Nevertheless, its unequal distribution of prestige demonstrates how linguistic power can intersect with economic and cultural power. A person who possesses highly valued varieties of English may gain educational and professional advantages, whereas those who lack access to such forms may experience linguistic marginalization. Consequently, language can simultaneously function as a bridge and a barrier.

Furthermore, American popular culture has acquired extraordinary global influence. Hollywood films, television series, music, advertising, fashion, social media, and digital platforms circulate American images and values across national boundaries. These cultural products can be creative, entertaining, liberating, and genuinely admired by audiences worldwide. However, their dominance also raises questions about cultural homogenization. When one cultural system possesses disproportionate power to define beauty, success, modernity, romance, masculinity, femininity, family life, and individual achievement, other cultural systems may gradually be perceived as less desirable.

This is where the concept of cultural imperialism becomes relevant. Cultural imperialism refers broadly to situations in which the culture of a powerful society becomes disproportionately influential over the cultures of less powerful societies. Such influence does not always involve coercion. In fact, cultural power can be most effective when people willingly consume and enjoy the dominant culture. A young person may choose foreign music, films, clothing, or language because these things are attractive rather than because anyone forces them to do so. Yet the larger question remains: why do certain cultural products possess greater global visibility, financial resources, distribution networks, and symbolic prestige than others?

The answer is connected to material structures of power. Cultural influence does not exist in isolation from economic and technological power. A multinational entertainment corporation with enormous financial resources can distribute its products across the world more easily than a small local film industry. Similarly, an international publishing industry can determine which authors receive global recognition. Digital algorithms can amplify particular forms of content while leaving other voices relatively invisible. Therefore, cultural dominance is often reinforced by economic and technological structures.

Nevertheless, it would be intellectually inadequate to portray the “Others” merely as passive victims. Postcolonial societies have developed powerful forms of resistance and cultural creativity. Writers, poets, filmmakers, intellectuals, activists, and ordinary communities have challenged Western representations by telling their own stories. They have appropriated dominant languages and transformed them into instruments of resistance. They have taken English, French, Spanish, and other colonial languages and reshaped them according to local experiences. In this process, the language of the colonizer can become the language of the formerly colonized.

Chinua Achebe’s literary response to colonial representation is an excellent example. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe challenges the stereotypical representation of Africa as a continent without history, civilization, social organization, or intellectual traditions. By presenting Igbo society from within, Achebe demonstrates that African communities possessed complex political, religious, economic, linguistic, and cultural systems before European colonial intervention. His work therefore contests the authority of narratives that portray Africans merely as objects of European civilization.

Similarly, postcolonial literature has repeatedly questioned the assumption that history has a single centre. Salman Rushdie, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Derek Walcott, Gabriel García Márquez, Arundhati Roy, Nadine Gordimer, and numerous other writers have demonstrated that the so-called margins can generate alternative forms of knowledge and historical imagination. Their literature reveals that the periphery is not intellectually empty. On the contrary, the marginalized can challenge the centre by producing counter-narratives.

Consequently, the concept of the “imperial centre” and the “marginalized periphery” should also be examined carefully. The centre possesses greater economic resources, political influence, technological capacity, military strength, and symbolic authority. The periphery, by contrast, is often positioned as dependent and less influential. Yet the centre requires the periphery for its own identity. Without an “Other,” the centre loses one of the foundations through which it defines itself. The supposedly marginal therefore occupies a paradoxical position: it is excluded from power but remains essential to the identity of the powerful.

This paradox is visible in contemporary global politics. Powerful nations frequently define themselves through contrast with countries represented as threats, failures, unstable regimes, authoritarian societies, or humanitarian crises. Such representations can sometimes describe genuine problems, but they can also become selective. Similar actions may be interpreted differently depending upon whether they are committed by a powerful state or a weaker one. Thus, the language of international politics can reproduce unequal standards. The powerful may present their actions as security, intervention, stabilization, or humanitarianism, while similar actions by weaker states may be labelled aggression, instability, or irresponsibility.

The issue becomes even more complex when military power is involved. The language of liberation and democracy can coexist with military intervention, civilian suffering, displacement, and political instability. From a postcolonial perspective, therefore, it is necessary to ask who defines liberation, who decides when intervention is legitimate, and whose lives are considered politically significant. Such questions do not require rejecting democracy or human rights. Rather, they demand that universal principles be applied consistently rather than selectively.

At the same time, criticism of American power should not become an excuse for romanticizing all non-Western societies. Postcolonial criticism is not a simplistic argument that everything Western is bad and everything non-Western is good. Non-Western societies contain their own systems of oppression involving class, gender, ethnicity, religion, caste, language, and political authority. A serious postcolonial perspective must therefore criticize domination wherever it occurs. The objective is not to replace one hierarchy with another but to challenge the logic of hierarchy itself.

In this respect, the relationship between the oppressor and oppressed is more complicated than a simple geographical division between America and the rest of the world. There are oppressed communities within powerful nations, just as there are powerful elites within marginalized nations. A marginalized country may itself contain privileged groups that oppress minorities, women, workers, indigenous communities, or linguistic groups. Therefore, postcolonial analysis must recognize multiple and intersecting forms of power. The “Other” can exist within the centre, while a form of “centre” can exist within the periphery.

Furthermore, globalization has made the distinction between “US” and “Others” increasingly unstable. People, ideas, languages, technologies, and cultural products now circulate across borders at unprecedented speed. American culture is influenced by the cultures it encounters, just as non-American societies appropriate and transform American cultural forms. Hip-hop, for example, has been adapted into numerous local contexts. English has developed diverse World Englishes. Films and literature increasingly move across cultural boundaries. Consequently, cultural exchange is not always a one-way process from centre to periphery.

This process can be understood through hybridity. Cultural identities are not fixed containers. They are continuously negotiated through contact, migration, translation, adaptation, resistance, and appropriation. The contemporary individual may simultaneously possess local, national, regional, religious, linguistic, and global identities. Such hybridity challenges the idea that cultures exist in pure and isolated forms. Therefore, the encounter between the United States and the “Others” is not simply a relationship between two fixed cultural blocks. It is a continuous process of interaction in which identities themselves are transformed.

However, cultural hybridity should not lead us to ignore unequal power. Two cultures may interact, but they do not necessarily interact on equal terms. A powerful media industry may have much greater capacity to circulate its representations than a small local community. A wealthy country may possess greater influence over international institutions than a poor country. A dominant language may provide greater access to global employment than a minority language. Therefore, cultural exchange and cultural inequality can exist simultaneously