Orientalism by Edward Said

Edward Said and Orientalism 

                                                                              

Edward Said

His full name is Edward Wadie Said. He was born on 1^st November 1935- in Jerusalem. He died on 25^th September 2003.

He was Palestinian American academic, political activist, and literary critic who examined literature in light of social and cultural politics.

He was also a proponent of the political rights of the Palestinian people and the creation of an independent Palestinian state. 

Orientalism

Oriental: a study of East (North Africa, Indians, Negros, Asia, Middle East)

Occident: a study of West (white people)

Orientalism is a term or a book introduced by Edward Said in 1978.

So, in his book ‘Orientalism’ we can see that; “how West represented the history of the East according to their own point of view”. For instance, people observed only such things that the West has presented to them, which means it is like a lens. Thus, the West showed that the East is inferior, irrational, terrible, domestic etc. Therefore, this concept of the West about the East is called Orientalism. Moreover, he tells us how the West has shown people of the East to the rest of the world with the help of their literature. In short, Orientalism refers to the concept that how the West has introduced us according to their own lens especially in their culture, instead of showing how the West has suppressed and colonized the people of the East.

Furthermore, in his book he strongly connected or associated culture with imperialism and interdependence to each other. This means if there is culture then there must be imperialism and vice versa.

Orientalism is a style of thought made between the orient and the occident. It’s a discourse dealing with the orient.

He explains that the term ''Orientalism'' is used in three different ways. One use is an academic designation, wherein ''Orientalism'' is used to designate ''oriental studies'' or all research on the subject of the “Orient”. The other use is as a ''style of thought'' based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ''The Orient'' and (most of the time) “The Occident”. This would include a lot of poets, writers, philosophers, political theorists, economists, imperial administrators etc., whose works/arguments are based on this distinction. The third use of ''Orientalism'' is roughly described as ''the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient''- of describing, disciplining, controlling and representing the Orient.

''Orientalism'' functions as a discourse with internal logic and coherence; a discourse in which the production/structuration of knowledge is interlinked with the project of actual control.

In Said's view, Orientalism operates in the service of the West's hegemony over the East. The East is discursively produced as the West's inferior “other”. Consequently, the West constructs itself as superior in contrast. The distinguishing identities of the East and the West are essentialized through stereotypes. For instance, the East is characterized as voiceless, sensual, feminine, despotic, irrational, backward, liar, lazy and gullible. The West is characterized as masculine, democratic, rational, moral, dynamic, progressive, truthful, active, and logical. Such binary oppositions, as illustrated by Said, exist in wide fields of knowledge like literature, travel books, journalistic writings, political tracts, religious and philological studies etc. Said argues that Orientalism is almost always a European representation. It does not deal with the real orient, but because of its discursive impact, it has a reality of its own.

Parts of His Book

Edward Said’s book has three parts. i.e.

1. Scope of Orientalism

2. Orientalist structure and restructure

3. Orientalism now

1. Scope of Orientalism

It is a science of orientalism as they (white man) introduced as well as the concept of ‘our’ and ‘their’. 

Characteristics – on the basis of which people of the East are passive, black, uncivilized, irrational, colonized, and unsophisticated. So, they called it, ‘their’. While they also introduced the term ‘our’, which means they are active, white, civilized, rational, colonizer, and sophisticated. In short, White men are born to rule.

In order to present the concepts of ‘our’ and ‘their’. They first arrived in the East as a silent man (observers), then they explored the Orients and introduced them to their own culture. Thus, they used the term knowledge is power. As they have knowledge that’s why they could rule over them.     

2. Orientalist structure and Restructure

They said; oriental literature is so romantic as well as so peaceful, so these people are so innocent and they did not know how to rule and how to live like a king. That’s why we will teach them how to live like a king and how to make slaves as well as how to be rational.

But after they became colonizers, they restructured that you are nothing but slaves and we are rulers. Thus, you didn’t introduce us as oriental rather we are occident and we introduced you as the oriental. Just because we are superior and have knowledge also.

3. Orientalism Now

Now occident and observers are now practical and openly attacking Islam (and Africa) because they said. Islam is a mixture of many superstitious Thoughts.

After WWW II Europeans moved to the USA, then because lake of military and destruction many states were free then Eastern states said there was no oriental existence accidentally is just our states of mind.

But not really that they still humiliate them as Terrorists, cruel and attacked them like 9/11, then Edward Said says; East is the East, West the West, Twin shall never meet (“The Ballad of East and West” by Rudyard Kipling).

The methodology adopted by Edward Said

As regards his methodology, Said refers primarily to Michel Foucault’s notion of 'discourse' and Marxism by Antonio Gramsci's idea of 'cultural hegemony' (hegemony- how orientalism served as a system of representation which served to show western authority and supremacy over the east) as his primary theoretical tools for understanding “Orientalism”. He bases his study on texts from various disciplines and fields, primarily in the area of Anglo-French-American experiences of the Arabs and Islam over approximately a thousand years. He utilizes the notion of the ''problematic'' forwarded by Loi Althusser wherein a 'determinate unity of a text, or group of texts… is given rise to by analysis'. Said argues that his principal methodological devices for studying the authority over the ''Orient'' are, a) strategic location and b) strategic formation. Strategic location is explained as a way of 'describing the author's position in a text with regards to the Oriental material he writes about. Strategic formation is explained as a way of analyzing the relationship between texts and the way in which groups of texts, types of texts, and even textual genres, acquire mass, density, and referential power among themselves and thereafter in the cultural large.

Every writer on the Orient assumes some Oriental precedent, some previous knowledge of the Orient, to which he refers and on which he relies. Additionally, each work on the Orient affiliates itself with other works, with audiences, with institutions, and with the Orient itself.

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