ABSTRACT
Colonialism persists as a cultural, economic, political and psychological process. Colonial legacies embedded in Europe’s landscapes of colonial memory continue to shape how individuals and groups are perceived and positioned in present-day intergroup relations. Schools and textbooks reproduce these legacies, making it essential to examine how they represent the colonised Other and construct power relations. This study investigates how images related to colonialism in Finnish school textbooks construct identity and power. Drawing on the social representations approach (SRA) and employing visual rhetorical analysis (VRA), 484 images from 52 textbooks were analysed to identify constructions of identity through subject positions and power through ego–alter pairings. The analysis identified four visual rhetorical strategies—oppressing, agentic, chaotising and eye-gazing—and addressed four subject positions of the colonised Other: subjugated, autonomous, wreckable and spectacular. The findings demonstrate how images construct and circulate collective memories and group identities, revealing how colonial hierarchies are maintained through imagery in the educational context. Empirically, the study provides new insights into how the colonised Other is visually represented in school textbooks. Theoretically and methodologically, it introduces the ego–alter framework to visual analysis, demonstrates the utility of VRA for uncovering the power of imagery, contributes to postcolonial social psychology and provides tools to foster critical visual literacy and challenge colonial legacies.