An (other) ‘story’ in history

Please cite this article in press as: Munshi, D., et al. An (other) ‘story’ in history: Challenging colonialist public relations

in novels of resistance. Public Relations Review (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2017.02.016

ARTICLE IN PRESS G Model

PUBREL-1585; No. of Pages9

Public Relations Review xxx (2017) xxx–xxx

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Public Relations Review

Full Length Article

An (other) ‘story’ in history: Challenging colonialist public

relations in novels of resistance

Debashish Munshi a,∗, Priya Kurianb, Jordi Xifrac

a Department of Management Communication, University of Waikato, Hamilton, 3240, New Zealand b Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand c Department of Communication, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Received 14 August 2016

Received in revised form 12 January 2017

Accepted 21 February 2017

Available online xxx

Keywords:

Critical public relations

Postcolonial theory

Subaltern publics

Historical fiction

Hayden White

a b s t r a c t

This article extends the scholarship in critical public relations by charting an alternative

historiography of public relations. It opens up a radically different methodology for study￾ing the history of PR by looking to contemporary works of historical fiction as compelling

sources that speak about the interplay of dominance and resistance in the strategic com￾munication interactions of colonial times. The nuanced critical reinterpretation of the past

in novels, depicted through the eyes of fictional characters, provides a fresh perspective on

the ways in which public relations was deployed by colonial political and business estab￾lishments and, more significantly, how subaltern publics used their own communication

strategies to fight back. The analysis illustrates alternative ways of looking at PR that are as

relevant today.

© 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Critical public relations (CPR), as the recent Routledge Handbook of Critical Public Relations (L’Etang, McKie, Snow, & Xifra,

2016) comprehensively demonstrates, is beginning to provide a broader vision of public relations which not only looks

at the interests and aspirations of a variety of publics beyond corporate ones but also challenges limited mechanistic and

propagandist approaches to understanding public relations. Alongside this broader vision is a growing acknowledgement

that the history of public relations goes back a long way before the term public relations began to be used (Lamme & Russell,

2010; Watson, 2015). Building on Russell and Lamme’s (2016) theorizing of public relations history based on “both strategic

intent” and “human agency” across place or time, we further expand the discursive space of public relations by tracking

insights in works of fiction. These contemporary insights into the past give us an opportunity not only to critically examine

the overt as well as covert public relations strategies used by colonial powers to assert their political and cultural superiority

but also to show how colonized peoples used their own forms of public relations to resist colonialist practices and rally

subaltern publics together.

Exploring fiction opens up a fresh window into history and provides an opportunity to reassess as well as critique

mainstream versions of history (De Groot, 2016). In his wide-ranging tome on Remaking History, De Groot (2016) shows

how “(F)ictions challenge, ‘pervert’, critique, and queer a normative, straightforward, linear, self-proscribing history” (p. 2)

and suggests that they offer innovative models of understanding the past. There is indeed a symbiotic relationship between

∗ Corresponding author.

E-mail addresses: [email protected] (D. Munshi), [email protected] (P. Kurian), [email protected] (J. Xifra).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2017.02.016

0363-8111/© 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.