Because it is a just cause, a noble ideal, a moral quest for equality and human rights.. However, prior to the colonial era, Orientalism was a literary discourse bound in a tradition of writers, texts, research, and conceptualizations. He shows how these researchers fashioned their highly selective, biased observations into supposedly scientific findings, thus positioning themselves as objective authorities on Southwest Asia and North Africa. He also attempts to trace it by describing a set of devices usually common to the works of popular artists, poets, and scholars. The first is that we need the social sciences in Middle East studies not just for their own sake, but also to be able to continue to make use of works by persons we regard as Orientalists, though without falling prey to their assumptions and reductionism. Edward Said uses the term in three interdependent senses: 1) Orientalism as a scholarly discipline, 2) Orientalism as a mode of thought based on the essential East-West divide, and 3) Orientalism as a political ideology. Given that the field of modern Middle East Studies is only some 50 years old, that it had to extract itself from the hold of a first generation of scholars who still saw the Middle East in very reductionist, ahistorical terms, and that it takes time to build up a core of experts versed in language, history, local knowledge, and the social sciences, we finally have a set of praiseworthy scholars. He argued that without examining Orientalism as a discourse, one cant comprehend the hugely systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manageand even constructthe Orient politically, militarily, sociologically, scientifically, imaginatively and ideologically during the post-Enlightenment period. This created a certain fixed images about the orientals in the European minds. You might hear the plucking of an oud, or a haunting voice singing in a double harmonic scale. Portrayals in popular culture influence the framing of news about Southwest Asia and North Africa, and vice versa. He was a German Orientalists who entertained an almost virulent dislike for Islam. Orientalism - Hamilton College This invasion set in motion [processes] that still dominate our contemporary cultural and political perspectives.. The central premise of Orientalism is that the Orient is a fundamentally different, exotic, dangerous, unchanging, and other place. It is this policy, by which, he says that contemporary scholars try to perpetuate the traditions set by European Orientalists. He tells the readers that the greater understanding of the topic can help in the unlearning of the processes of cultural domination and prejudiced stance. Edward Saids Orientalism: Introduction, 1.1. He provided a clear example of this interaction by discussing Lord Balfours speech to the House of Commons in 1910. In this latest phase, the highly qualified American area specialists took the lead replacing the earlier philologists. The political knowledge of the Orientalists gave traction to the power of the subjugators. Inevitably, this alternative project proved to be much more difficult for reasons Edward himself could not anticipate and for which his own critique shares a small part of the blame. Edward Said examines the role of these area specialists of the East. It was Saids hope that his work would help break the bonds that Orientalism has held and is holding over the subaltern world. Said sometimes uses it as a substitute for racism or imperialism, but more often for . The Idea of Orientalism by Edward Said - HubPages 848 Words. "Orientalism is a rethinking of what has been considered an impassable gulf between East and West for centuries. As a hardcore literary lover, I am pursuing my dream by writing notes and articles related to Literature. And certain passages are more easily read as political and polemical rather than as scholarly and academic, even if this was almost certainly not Edwards original intention. Its important to note that, for Said, Orientalism isnt just a set of myths. In this chapter, Said traces the development of modern Orientalism by presenting a broadly chronological description. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Indeed, the Orient doesnt have a stable set of geographical bounds. Orientalism: Edward Said's groundbreaking book explained The original cover art of Edward Said's book was this Orientalist painting by Jean Leon Gerome: Le charmeur de serpents. The West exploited these representations to justify their imperialist policies in the Middle East. Probably none of us also understood how the presence of the book would complicate our new task, even though there were many indications of the problems and difficulties that lay ahead. Still, he employs them because this is how the argument has been framed by the Orientalists. Edward Said uses orientalism to mean the way that people in Western cultures imagine and interpret the differences between themselves and people of Eastern cultures. This identity was typically expressed as one of superiority and dominance over the Orient, which Western writers, travelers, and, later, imperialists reduced to a series of crude and reductive stereotypes and generalizations. 1. The Orientalist enabled the transformation of people into materials by inscribing onto them essential qualities. According to him, the East was viewed as a textual universe for the West. The study of orientalism is a part of colonial domination of Europe over the Eastern countries. Said admits that his understanding of orientalism is based on personal dimension as he had witnessed the prejudices of the Westerners towards the orient. Said uses the word, to signify a system of representation framed by political forces that brought the, or the East into Western Empire, Western learning and Western consciousness. This knowledge is a paraphrase of preconceived notions and ideas. They drew imaginary geographical line to demarcate them. This is the more significant as our own thinking contains either unexamined assumptions from the Orientalist period or, at the very least, questions which we cannot help students to answer properly because we do not know how to frame them or where to look for answers. Several enormously important implications follow. is used academically to signify Western doctrines and theses about the. What keeps Orientalism flourishing and relevant is its consistent and active traffic between a variety of fields. Explanation of Key Terms used in Edward Saids Orientalism, 1.2. It is distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, historical and philological texts. Orientalism is a system of thought and a way of seeing of 'the East' from the colonial gaze of 'the West' as mysterious, intriguing, and exotic, while at the same time primitive, despotic, and savage. They romanticized the oriental land and their behavior. Realities & Myths, Reactionary Socialism: Responses to the Bourgeoisie, Just Following Orders: Corruption in the Soviet Gulag System, Invention of Writing: Created to Record Data, Help the Brain, How Western society invented the concept of Orientalism, Why "the Orient" was thought of as a different, exotic, and dangerous place, How Orientalism was central to European colonialism. It also is worth noting that the personal tone of the book helped to make things even worse. According to this view, the Muslim mind is capable of only four out of eight human thought processes. Edward Said also described 'Orientalism' as a discourse, a definition he takes from the French philosopher and historian, Michel Foucault. Analysis of Edward Said's Orientalism - Literary Theory and Criticism Third, points one and two are produced and reinforced by viewing the Orient as a homogenous group. Id love to hear from you. For this purpose, his major focus is on the works of French Orientalists, such as, , and works of English Orientalists like Edward Lanes Account of the, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. Thus they justified colonization and colonialism. During this period, transformation took place relating to philology and social science. Edward W. Said's Orientalism introduces the concept of Orientalism, a force that has shaped Western (Occidental) academic scholarship, cultural imagination and production, and public policy concerning the space known as the Orient. In "Orientalism," published two decades into a conventional academic career, Said unexpectedly described himself as an "Oriental subject" and implicated almost the entire Western canon, from. Edward Said himself was well aware of what we were attempting via our Review of Middle East Studies having had his attention drawn to it by Fred Halliday, a very important figure in my story. Orientalism is a constant one, and since the late eighteenth century there has been a considerable, quite disciplined-perhaps even regulated-traffic between the two. Edward Said, following the ideas of Foucault, focused on the relationship between power and knowledge. Said pointed out The Persians by Aeschylus as an example of early attempts to create an Orient. You might envision a sparse landscape, the air warped by heat and yellowed with flurries of sand. PDF In his introduction to the term "Orientalism," Edward Said begins by In Foucaults view, knowledge is power and also the way of gaining power. It is detailed work that makes a tremendous influence on modern thinking and outlook about the orient. They often see the. For example, the religion of Christ was Christianity, so they called Islam as Mohammadism. Edward Said's Definition Of Orientalism - 848 Words | Bartleby Said suggests that the orient does not mean the same to American as it does to the European countries, Said says that orientalism refers to academic interpretation. By the same token, it allows those who still practice some version of an Orientalist approach to insulate themselves, and their students, from a powerful, alternative, point of view. The construction of the Orient portrayed a negative inversion of the Western culture. Said then explained the role of Orientalism in the above process: The specialist does the immediate translation of mere Oriental matter into useful substance: the Oriental becomes, for example, a subject race, an example of Oriental mentality, all for the enhancement of the authority at home. While media literacy about Orientalism is increasing, these tropes remain as relevant as ever in the Western popular imagination. One of Edward Saids central ideas in Orientalism is that knowledge about the East is generated not through actual facts, but through imagined constructs. These constructs imagined Eastern societies as fundamentally similar and sharing the characteristics that are not possessed by Western societies. He also cites the view of a prominent political scientist. The superiority of abstractions regarding the Orient against direct evidence from the contemporary Orient itself. Geopolitically Orient signifies the Middle East, Asia and the Far East, territories that were once a part of one or another European Empire. Orientalism Summary and Study Guide | SuperSummary They did not know how to deal with the cruel world. The West uses the word in its relation to the East. Download Free Re Orientalism And Indian Writing In English Pdf File This was another example of knowledge as power. Keep reading for Edward Said's answer to the question: what is Orientalism? Disney Buys Lucasfilm: The Fight for Creative Control, The Origin of Mankind: How Our Bodies Evolved, Holly Whitakers Quit Like a Woman: Overview, What Is Stoic Philosophyand What Isnt It? For example, they attributed the qualities like laziness, irrationality, uncivilizedness and crudeness to Orientals. It has been influential in about half a dozen established disciplines, especially literary studies (English, comparative literature), history, anthropology, sociology, area studies (mainly Middle East studies) and comparative religion. . In the fourth category, Edward Said places and takes on the contemporary western Orientalists presumption that Orient is an imitation west. The West (by which we refer primarily to Europe and North America) in turn forged its historical identity against the foil of the East or Orient.