Abstract

In the last two decades or so, the issue of the "Other" has permeated the turbulent field of Western cultural and literary theories. It seems that the Other discourse can provide discursive space for the articulation of the colonized/marginalized. The underlying hostilities toward foreign/master discourse have thus been erased, and the adaptation of the Other discourse in the cultural periphery turns out to be unprecedentedly widespread and penetrating. However, in this paper, the discourse of the Other is conceived as a similar, if different, kind of master discourse that may disguise the colonizing grand narrative. The colonizer's invasion of territories has transformed into an invasion of cultural and discursive space. The discourse of the Other, if unexamined, will merely, in this line of thought, extend the cultural and discursive border of the grand narrative. While the discursive context secured by the Other discourse is an opportunity for the Other to speak and write back, we cannot afford to forget that the Other discourse is a product of the discursive center in the West. This is exactly the predicament, albeit also the condition, of all practice of the critical Other. In this paper, the predicament of the Other is seen as a problem that has to be examined in the light of professionalization and commodification. The professionalization in the cultural periphery may make room for more and more "otherness machines" that manufacture marginal cultural commodities for customers in the discursive center. This paper tries to examine the complicity between this professionalization and commodification of the "Other" in the cultural periphery. Through such an examination, new discursive space may be established to question the politics of the legitimation of the "Other" discourse in the cultural periphery.

Key Words: commodification , cultural geography , cultural periphery discursive production , grand narrative , Orientalism. , professionalization , the Other discourse