In chapter 3 of the book, Edward Said discusses Orientalism Now. He starts off by telling how the geography of the world was shaped by the colonization of the Europeans. As such, the idea of the Orient functions more as an abstract antithesis the West defines itself against than as an accurate descriptor of a region. Orientalist means a person who studies or writes about the Orient. They must share and dialogue with other people groups with the goal of true knowledge of the other and not merely political knowledge. This overwhelmingly paternalistic attitude leads him to the inevitable and logical conclusion of appropriating the Orient under his power. Third, Orientalism is a corporate institution for dealing with the Orient beginning in the eighteenth century. In short, Orientalism is a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient. Moreover, it is a way of coming to terms with the Orient (the East) that is based on the Orients special place in European Western culture and experience. Orientalism is a hegemonic discourse for Said: these essentialist assumptions of Western superiority over Eastern cultures serve the ruling world powers and are manifested throughout all forms of discourse including literature, research and conversation both due to, and in order to, perpetuate the power of these dominant groups. means a person who studies or writes about the Orient. . He says that this thought process was deliberately created by the colonizers in the minds of western society to justify their act of colonialism. One of these occurred during a 1979 trip in which I presented Edwards ideas to the members of the Israeli Oriental Society. . For a listing of MEI donors, please click here. In his book, Edward Said clearly stated that Orientalism was not the product of colonial rule. The four central claims that Saids book makes are as follows: In summation, Said outlined a theory where Orientalism arose out of a need for the West to define itself as the opposite of a counterbalancing entity. Think of those who argued that the Shia population could be lured into playing an anti-PLO, anti-Syrian role in South Lebanon. It does not engage in advocacy and its scholars opinions are their own. The very purpose of Orientalism is to take control of the Orient and take away from it any ability to speak for itself. Explanation of Key Terms used in Edward Saids Orientalism, 1.2. Said deplores that the modern Orient has fallen for the bait and is participating in its own Orientalizing. It is a mirror image of the inferior, the alien (, is a noun-form which means an individual or people of the Orient. PDF | Edward Said remained a little-known scholar both in the West and in the Arab World until the publication of his major work, Orientalism, in 1978,. Said himself acknowledged this. Orientalism. Edward Saids Discussion of Orientalism, 4.5. He provided a clear example of this interaction by discussing Lord Balfours speech to the House of Commons in 1910. The West uses the word in its relation to the East. Thus, what is necessary is for each people group to speak for itself and create discourses of its own history. Local interests are Orientalist special interests, the central authority is the greatest interest of the imperial society as a whole.if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[468,60],'elifnotes_com-banner-1','ezslot_10',159,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-elifnotes_com-banner-1-0'); Through the enabling of the Orientalist, the colonial power was and is able to transform the subjugated people, the subalterns, into mere raw materials that the empire consumed. They claimed that the aim of colonization was to civilize the uncivilized people of the East. ' Orientalism' by Edward Said is a canonical text in which he challenges the concept of Orientalism and the difference between east and west. And this, Said stresses, is how Orientalism sustains its power: through repetition. Portrayals in popular culture influence the framing of news about Southwest Asia and North Africa, and vice versa. Edward Said agrees with Disraeli who said that East is something more than just an idea without corresponding reality. The vision of Orient, Said stated that, existed as far back as the ancient Greeks. Related: A Brief Summary of Orientalism by Edward Said. What I hoped for was a new way of reading the separations and conflicts that had caused hostility, wars and the emergence of imperialist control. Orientalists often describe parts of Southwest Asia and North Africa with the intention of representing the entire Orient, and a wide range of moral attitudes, religions, languages, cultures and political structures are folded into one. He focuses on how American, English, and French scholars have approached the Arab societies of the Middle East and North Africa. Given the fact that this dangerous person Edward Said appeared well-versed, if not in the social sciences then in post-structuralism and in what was soon to become post-colonial studies, meant that the motley band of persons identified as Saidians could all be tarred regardless of what they actually said, regardless of what they actually taught with the same brush as being purveyors of politically motivated, trendy, and ideologically dangerous gibberish. the Orient.Societies and peoples of the Orient are those who inhabit the places of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East.Said argues that Orientalism, in the sense of the Western . Orientalism is 'a manner of regularized (or Orientalized) writing, vision, and study, dominated by imperatives, perspectives, and ideological biases ostensibly suited to the Orient.' It is the image of the 'Orient' expressed as an entire system of thought and scholarship. Orientalism, while also extending its breadth to all that is not considered West (The Middle East, India, Russia, etc.). Said also claimed a subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic people and their culture. He says that with the spread of colonization, Europeans came in contact with underdeveloped and undeveloped countries of the east. They contrast themselves with the others, the orientals. 848 Words. These four categories are: In this category, Said discusses the popular images and social science representations of the East. However, prior to the colonial era, Orientalism was a literary discourse bound in a tradition of writers, texts, research, and conceptualizations. Just as important, as he explained to me, he had come to the end of his year at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Palo Alto tired out by writing Chapters 1 and 2 and in such a hurry to finish that he raced through Chapter 3, Orientalism now, without either thinking through his argument as far as the relationship between Orientalism and the modern centers of modern Middle Eastern studies was concerned, or paying much attention to the alternatives which he left, clearly and specifically, to others. One is Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetile-Duperron and the other is William Jones. Edward Said Orientalism Essay. His theories and methods have tremendously influenced American academic circles especially with regard to literary theory and cultural studies. Therefore, they had to be dealt with by maintaining the power of choice. This condition was timeless according to the Europeans. Europeans claimed that they were a superior race to the people of the east. Said saw this as a grave error. These policies often involved the domination of those that the specialist studies and thus demonstrated Said and Foucaults conception of knowledge as power. Though there is an extensive body of scholarship on the operation of xenophobic discourses in literature, theoretical approaches are invariably indebted to the work of Edward Said, whose study of Western construction of the Orient concluded that Orientalism, as a hegemonic discourse, was a means by which the Oriental Other could be dominated. They found their cultures exotic and full of queerness. Nevertheless, Said stated that, it is fairly recent that Orientalism has become a science or an extended body of knowledge and tradition. 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. It presents the current social and intellectual realities of Orientalism in the USA. is that knowledge about the East is generated not through actual facts, but through imagined constructs. Required fields are marked *. The people of the Orient themselves have had little agency in the creation of Western narratives about them. MEI welcomes financial donations, but retains sole editorial control over its work and its publications reflect only the authors views. The author himself, his reasons for writing the book, his genuine offense at the way Arabs and Muslim are objectified in such a reductionist way, is powerfully present in the text. As he puts it in the books rushed, last few pages: in conclusion, what of some alternative to Orientalism? Political and social ideas that were manipulated and implanted by the British mainly dominating the East during colonization. According to Said, the knowledge or understanding gained through the Orients scientific study leads directly to control and power over the Orient. The West exploited these representations to justify their imperialist policies in the Middle East. Geopolitically Orient signifies the Middle East, Asia and the Far East, territories that were once a part of one or another European Empire. According to Said, the key insight is that Orientalism does not reflect objective truth. He says that with the spread of colonization, Europeans came in contact with underdeveloped and undeveloped countries of the east. Its important to note that, for Said, Orientalism isnt just a set of myths. Seeing the links between culture, knowledge and power is fundamental to understanding the reach of Orientalism. Friday essay: how the West betrayed Syria. What keeps Orientalism flourishing and relevant is its consistent and active traffic between a variety of fields. This knowledge is a paraphrase of . By calling them so, they defined themselves as rational, civilized, hardworking and refined. They did not know how to deal with the cruel world. 1. But as a group of related disciplines Orientalism was, in important ways, about Europe itself, and hinged on arguments that circulated around the issue of national distinctiveness, and racial and linguistic origins. Firstly, "Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between 'the Orient' and (most of the time) 'the Occident.'" Said argued that his distinction emphasized the supremacy of the Occident versus the inferiority of the Orient. The earlier orientalists were silent observers but the new orientalists took part in the routine day to day life of the orients. The book won him universal recognition for innovative and provocative explorations of the interrelationship between textsliterary and otherwise. It was a completely western term to define Muslims in their own way. Edward Saids Definition of Orientalism as a Discourse, 3.2. It challenges the assumption that oriental studies only served to To justify these claims, they put forward Darwins theory of Evolution. Here is a brief summary of all three chapters in Edward Saids, In this chapter, Said traces the development of modern Orientalism by presenting a broadly chronological description. Here, TikTokers collaboratively satirise features commonly found in Hollywood films about the Middle East, such as Beirut (2018), American Sniper (2014), and Argo (2012).