. Chapter II: Oriental Structures and Restructures, 4. The study of orientalism is a part of colonial domination of Europe over the Eastern countries. These images are actually the negative caricatures of Arab and Islamic culture. The European Orientalists had keen interest in classical rather than contemporary periods of the Eastern culture. Related: A Brief Summary of Orientalism by Edward Said. While the Orientalist scholars were the seers, the observers, the students, and the subject. 842 Words4 Pages. These two scholars took Orientalism out of its literary roots and supplanted it with a seemingly scientific and objective one. The western people thought of orientals as feminine, weak and yet strangely dangerous because they pose a threat to white, western women. This essentialist thinking was a false way of viewing people groups and their culture. that artists are by definition free spirits, and (b) that it is uncommon to read Shakespeare as an historian of Rome. Said finds the following dogmas implicit in the works of Grunchbaun and other such Orientalists: Said labels the third category of contemporary Orientalist representations as Marely Islam. The last section of this chapter characterizes the shift from British and French to American hegemony. For them, colonization was a blessing for the orientals. Nevertheless, for a number of reasons, while Edward could commend us for working, as he put it, in disciplines not fields, I do not think he had any real understanding of what practicing these disciplines actually involved. 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 . 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. This means reading Orientalism as carefully as its author would wish and then being able to understand its role as the first part of a project which required the construction of alternative methodologies as its complement. The Orient became the seen, the observed, the studied, and the object. The basic idea behind imperialism was that the people of east are uncivilized and they cannot govern . Educated in British colonial schools and elite US universities, Said linked the experience of being at once an insider and an outsider to the disparity he felt between his own identity as a Palestinian Arab and how Arabs are represented by the West. In his seminal work, Orientalism, Edward Said, a Palestinian scholar essentially posits that Western (i.e. He also attempts to show the extent to which these representations permeate the Western culture. Said carefully examines what he calls 'Orientalism' in an attempt to show how different cultures view each other . Required fields are marked *. The vision of Orient, Said stated that, existed as far back as the ancient Greeks. This, for me, is a curious construct and one which Said may well have adapted as necessary or as beneficial for his use while being aware that this contains a . One is Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetile-Duperron and the other is William Jones. Edward Saids Orientalism: Introduction, 1.1. Edward Said was a great scholar and an important figure in Post-Colonial studies. Said also proposes a third definition of orientalism using an analysis in historical context. Europeans thought that they were biologically superior to orientals. The vision of Orient, Said stated that, existed as far back as the ancient Greeks. Since it was almost impossible for any scholar in the West to break free of these bonds, how can one learn of other peoples groups? is the multiple relationships between the act of writing and cultural politics, language, and power. Edward Said also described 'Orientalism' as a discourse, a definition he takes from the French philosopher and historian, Michel Foucault. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Lastly, the Orientalist scholars are the product of the system they come from. Edward Saids Handling of the Concept of Orientalism in his book, Orientalism, 4.1. For Said, as it was for Foucault, knowledge is power. . Saids central concern in if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'elifnotes_com-large-leaderboard-2','ezslot_5',160,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-elifnotes_com-large-leaderboard-2-0');Orientalism is the multiple relationships between the act of writing and cultural politics, language, and power. It was also true of colleagues such as Fred Halliday, who argued that Orientalism could easily be read as creating an irreconcilable division between East and West, thereby undermining one of the basic features of our universalistic approach. Europe found this counterbalancing entity in the crusades to be the Orient. This overwhelmingly paternalistic attitude leads him to the inevitable and logical conclusion of appropriating the Orient under his power. . Here is a brief summary of all three chapters in Edward Saids Orientalism: The Scope of Orientalism covers all the dimensions of the subject, both in terms of historical experiences and time period. It has been translated into 36 languages. In this speech, Lord Balfour clearly justified Britains presence and involvement in Egypt. Said was born in Jerusalem. Think of expert authorities like Gabriel Baer, who assured me, in the mid-1970s, that Egypt would never make peace with Israel. Said uses the word Orient to signify a system of representation framed by political forces that brought the Orient or the East into Western Empire, Western learning and Western consciousness. Said begins this chapter with a discussion of Orientalism in the 1920s and 1930s. They projected the orientals to the Western World in romantic and mythological manner. Furthermore, in this chapter, Edward Said endeavors to demonstrate how Orientalism has influenced and affected the Western perceptions of the Arab Middle East and Middle Eastern perceptions of themselves. He understood it as an interconnected system of institutions, policies, narratives and ideas. He bases his argument on the work of Gustave von Grunchbaun. The recognition that the Orient is to be feared and controlled. Said asserted, No scholar, not even a Massignon, can resist the pressures on him of his nation or of the scholarly tradition in which he works. Said, in step with his rejection of essentialism, did go on to say that one must allow for the possibility of an individual genius transcending ones situation. An example of pure knowledge is basic math. The superiority of abstractions regarding the Orient against direct evidence from the contemporary Orient itself. His theories and methods have tremendously influenced American academic circles especially with regard to literary theory and cultural studies. This is certainly true of Orientalism How does Edward Said define the concept? Orientalism peels back the supposedly neutral veneer of scientific interest and discovery attached to such projects. Many scholars note that Saids lived experience offered him a unique perspective in writing Orientalism. Said argued that Orient and Occident worked as antithetical terms. 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. What Is Orientalism? Interesting to Know: Orientalism & Technology: A Primer on the Techno-Orientalism Debate. The West found itself in positions of political and military power over what it saw as the Orient and subsequently used this power to subjugate it. Edward Said's most prominent work 'Orientalism (1978)' which set the foundation for post-colonial theory, focuses mainly on The Middle East and Arab nations. What is Orientalism? Al-Azm was to make the same point only a few years later. He died on 25 September, 2003 in New York at the age of 67. (Occident is the Latin-derived term for the Western world, the counterpart to the Eastern Orient.) These concepts reduce the complexity of diverse human societies, languages, cultures, and histories into near-meaningless generalities that ultimately serve to obscure the humanity of the people to whom they refer. The term Oriental was often used to describe any person or group of people east of Europe, usually from Arab and/or Islamic countries. But, as a pattern of knowledge, it preceded colonialism. Said notes that there has been a fair amount of interchange over the last few centuries over these two theoretical fields of coming to terms with the Orient. He seems to be motivated by Foucaults notion of a discourse. The Oriental is the person represented by such thinking. One of Edward Saids central ideas in Orientalism is that knowledge about the East is generated not through actual facts, but through imagined constructs. 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. These four categories are: Popular Image and Social Science Representation. He focuses on how American, English, and French scholars have approached the Arab societies of the Middle East and North Africa. The very purpose of Orientalism is to take control of the Orient and take away from it any ability to speak for itself. It is this policy, by which, he says that contemporary scholars try to perpetuate the traditions set by European Orientalists. Said is often credited with founding the field known as postcolonial studies, and his work has significantly influenced fields across the humanities: including cultural studies, anthropology, comparative literature and political science. Consequently, the geographical vagueness of the Orient works to conflate a vast and diverse array of landscapes, peoples and cultures into a single, unchanging unit. 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. 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. In the light of this perception, the Middle East is static, unalterable, and cant define itself. This period is characterized with great colonial expansion into the Orient, culminating in the second world war. Orientalism is a 1978 book by Edward W. Said, in which the author establishes the term "Orientalism" as a critical concept to describe the West's commonly contemptuous depiction and portrayal of The East, i.e. This knowledge is a paraphrase of . 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. 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. This viral TikTok video captures just how salient these tropes are in our collective awareness and in popular media. Besides being the Founder and Owner of this website, I am a Government Officer. Once a tradition of superior values of the West and a static view of the Orient developed, the tradition crystalized. As a hardcore literary lover, I am pursuing my dream by writing notes and articles related to Literature. The theme that Said spent the most time developing and producing examples in Orientalism was the idea that Orientalism was not the objective field of study it claimed to be. Oriental landscape, literature, attitude, etc. Drop me a line anytime, whether its about any queries or demands or just to share your well-being. When it comes to the immediate reception of Edwards work, it was not only many Orientalists, or near-Orientalists, who were upset but also many well versed in what they regarded as a progressive science of society. As an adjective the word qualifies anything belonging to the East e.g. Besides, a field can change so entirely, in even the most traditional disciplines like philology, history or theology, as to make an all-purpose definition of subject matter almost impossible. The knowledge of the Orient, though flawed, provided the power base from which the colonizers set about their mission. Write an article and join a growing community of more than 160,500 academics and researchers from 4,573 institutions. Nevertheless, viewed from the perspective of modern Middle East studies, the present and the future look surprisingly good, with the ever expanding production of highly skilled graduate students around the world well-supplied with the tools not just to make use of whatever data the field contains but also to use their knowledge of the various social science disciplines to challenge the conventional wisdom and the old paradigms which continue to stand in the way of a proper understanding of how Middle Eastern societies, economies, and political systems really work. The West uses the word in its relation to the East. One without the other is no longer enough and is no longer seen to be enough. His family was exiled from Mandate Palestine during the 1948 Nakba, and he went on to live in Lebanon, Egypt and the United States. Said admits that his understanding of orientalism is based on personal dimension as he had witnessed the prejudices of the Westerners towards the orient. The basic assumption is that the Orientalist knows the Orient better than Orientals do themselves. The West exploited these representations to justify their imperialist policies in the Middle East. Edward Said also rejects the validity of the terms Orient and Occident. Whats more, these justifications contain the central assumption Said critiques in his book: that Southwest Asian and North African peoples need to be saved from themselves. According to Said, Orientalism is a "created body of theory and practice" which constructs images of the Orient or the East directed toward those in the West. Said claims that his analysis is quite objective and neutral. | Find, read and cite all the research . Reading and thinking about Orientalism when it was first published I, and some but not many of my colleagues, experienced a great sense of relief. Despite his success, Said always had a keen awareness of his identity as an Oriental. His book Orientalism is his exploration of the origins, development, and implications of this manufactured otherness that he experienced so deeply. 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. Given the vast changes in the world in the 1960s and the great desire to liberate ourselves from the world views of race and empire, it was only natural that young persons like me should have turned to the new fields of economic development, social history, sociology, and, particularly, social anthropology for our alternatives using them, as best we could, to re-read, and then re-shape and re-use, major modern era texts like Gibb and Bowens Islam and the West, Halil Inalciks articles worrying at the notion of Ottoman decline, and Albert Houranis own work on the so-called Islamic city., Given the temper of these times, it was also natural that those early social science critics of Orientalist scholarship should band together in workshops around joint projects designed to employ what we identified as the German-style 19th century critique both to expose the lack of real explanatory value in traditional Orientalism and to begin to provide what we took to be a more useful way of studying the modern Middle East. He was also famous as an activist in Middle Eastern politics. Like the Orient, this term reduces a variety of peoples to a discrete set of traits and temperaments. But Orientalist perceptions didnt simply disappear after the colonial period. They regarded the orientals as backward, uncivilized and violent. Gabriel Baers response was that the name of the Society would be changed over his dead body. Shimon Shamirs response was that the book represented the ravings of a deranged Palestinian. is that knowledge about the East is generated not through actual facts, but through imagined constructs. Edward Said substantially invented both the term Orientalism and the field of postcolonial studies. By calling them so, they defined themselves as rational, civilized, hardworking and refined. In 1993, he published his most comprehensive works on Post Colonial study Culture and Imperialism and Representations of The Intellectual. This was totally illogical artificial distinction. Said (1935-2003) had the intellectual framework of Orientalism impressed upon him from birth. The volume emphasizes the need to move beyond the prejudice and stereotyping tied to the context of colonial exploitation. This notion of knowledge as power and authority is present throughout Saids critique. Satisfactory Essays. Edward Said's Definition of 'Orientalism' as a Discourse. This academic discipline, in Said's view, was primarily an expression of colonial domination. He also attempts to trace it by describing a set of devices usually common to the works of popular artists, poets, and scholars. Think of those who created and managed the Palestinian village leagues. Think of those who supported policies to encourage Hamas during the first Intifada. He argues that the treatments of Arabs and Islam by the area specialists are predictably and routinely negative as they derive from the transference of the popular anti-Semitic animus from Jews to Arabs. 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. This means reading Orientalism as carefully as its author would wish and then being able to understand its role as the first part of a project which required the construction of alternative methodologies as its complement. The construction of the Orient portrayed a negative inversion of the Western culture. The Western people think that all Eastern societies are fundamentally similar sharing quite different and exotic characteristics. Orientalists might write about countries as varied as Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq with little distinction. As challenging the idea, that differences involve hostility, a frozen and reified set of essences in opposition, and the whole polemical knowledge built on this basis. Sign up to receive the latest publications, event invitations, and our weekly newsletter delivered to your inbox. It was Saids hope that his work would help break the bonds that Orientalism has held and is holding over the subaltern world. 1. It means around 1870. 2018 Middle East Institute All Rights Reserved | Accessibility Policy |Built by Social Driver. The central premise of Orientalism is that the Orient is a fundamentally different, exotic, dangerous, unchanging, and other place. Said further described the process and ultimate goal of colonization: What the machine (the colonial power structure) branches feed into it in the Easthuman material, wealth, knowledge[]is processed by the machine and then converted into more power.. Friday essay: 5 museum objects that tell a story of colonialism and its legacy. In its broadest sense, Orientalism is the framework through which Western writers, policymakers, and the general public have interpreted and defined the Orient (the eastern part of Asia). Seeing the links between culture, knowledge and power is fundamental to understanding the reach of Orientalism.