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This chapter discusses the direct and indirect psychological harms of oppression. Direct psychological harms are intentionally inflicted by dominant on subordinate groups. These include terror and psychological trauma, humiliation and degradation, objectification, religion, ideology, and cultural domination. Indirect psychological harms occur when the beliefs and values of the privileged or oppressor groups are subconsciously accepted by the subordinate and assimilated into their self-concept or value/belief scheme. Indirect forces thus work through the psychology of the oppressed to mold them and co-opt them to result in choices and decisions that harm the oppressed while benefiting the privileged. These include shame and low self-esteem, false consciousness, and deformed desire.

This introductory chapter discusses several iterations of militarized Orientalism and the function that it has continued to serve in military zones of rapid cultural translation. Such instances not only show how brazen the connection between power and knowledge has become in our culture, but also evince how profoundly the modalities for understanding have become instruments of power. The chapter briefly traces the genealogy of this view in the early years of the Cold War and describes the formidable structures and conjunctures of cultural domination, as well as the cultural mechanisms by which the United States rearticulated the discourse of British colonialism through the institutions and discourses of anticommunism.

This chapter explores globalization and resistance to globalization from the perspective of postcolonial theory. It argues that resistance to cultural domination occurs through transformation of those influences rather than simple opposition, citing Bollywood as the most powerful example of ‘transformative cultural resistance’ as well as of ‘alternative modernities’. Bollywood can be disengaged from its subordination to Hollywood by viewing it as a transformation of the institution and technology of cinema to create a total, internally consistent entertainment form with new forms of film narrative and visual styles. The chapter contests the idea of the demise of the idea of the nation in the wake of globalization, and proposes the concept of ‘transnation’ or a nation that is deeply rooted in its past and yet crosses borders, with Bollywood as the prime example.

As a main proponent and significant practitioner of propagating “Native Place Literature” in Manchukuo, Shan Ding’s literary proposal and practices profoundly influenced Chinese literature's appearance and course of development during the period. This chapter elaborates upon the formative process of “native place literature” and demonstrates the awakening of cultural identity amongst writers such as Shan Ding, uniquely marked by their historical time period and place. It additionally reveals writers’ psychological motivations when implementing historical motives via literature. The Green Valley is a representative novel by Shan Ding that reflects interventions by Japanese colonial culture's domination over the creative environment, writers’ mentalities, and the publishing business under foreign occupation.

This chapter explores the discursive processes and language ideological debates through which linguistic diversity is dissimulated and subordinated. Linguistic diversity is rendered invisible through the territorial principle, which sets some speakers up as legitimate members of a society while excluding others. Those who are being excluded, delegitimized, and subordinated are usually mobile speakers whose ties to a territory are contested because they result from migration. One discourse about language that is central to their subordination is the construction of language learning as a matter of personal responsibility, where language learning is conceived of as a relatively easy undertaking, and failure to measure up to an imaginary linguistic norm regarded as a sign of laziness or self-isolation. Subordinating ways of speaking always means subordinating speakers. The injustices of cultural domination that are apparent in these processes are compounded in inflexible communicative spaces that institute the inequality between dominant and subordinated speakers.