ORIENTALISM BY EDWARD SAID

When Edward Said's "Orientalism" was first published in 1978 it

drew heavy attention and controversy due to its attack on not only
the ground assumptions of the academic field of oriental studies,
but on the whole manner in which East and West are portrayed.
Said's Orientalism deals with the Western structuring of the orient
as "other". Said analyses central Western texts in order to account
for the way the conception of The East was crystallized. This
conception, according to Said, prepared the ground for the political
and cultural occupation of the non-Western regions by the West.

Said's analysis in Orientalism relies heavily on the thought

of Michel Foucault and especially his thoughts on the concept
of discourse and the knowledge/power equation. Another
intellectual influence found in Orientalism is the concept of
hegemony derived from the philosophy of Antonio Gramsci. Using
this terminology Said shows how Orientalism served as a system
of representations which served to consolidate the West's authority
and supremacy over the East, and not just to reflect or describe it.
Like Foucault, Said ties images, ideas and texts to actual practices
of government and subjection employed in order to control millions
of people in the non-white world.

One of the main implications of Said's work is that even and

maybe especially scholarly research about the orient (naively
called Oreintalism before Said) is in fact deeply political in being an
essential part of the imperialist mechanism of control and
exploitation.

The main importance of Said's Orientalism is in pointing out the

even though colonialism is allegedly over, the systems of thinking,
talking and representing which form the basis of colonial power
relations still persist. Said's book became a central text of post
colonialism since it seeks to expose the fundamental principles
and structures of colonialism embedded within different systems of
knowledge and representation.
Summary: Introduction to Orientalism by Edward Said
Edward Said opens his introduction to Orientalism by arguing that
"The Orient was almost a European invention" (Orientalism, p.1).
He goes on to explain that "the Orient has helped to define Europe
(or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality,
experience" (ibid, p.1-2). Said claims that Orientalism is a man-
made discourse, alluding to the Foucaultian influence on his book.
The fact that Orientalism is a discourse does not mean it is a lie
that would simply disappear by pointing out the truth. It is rather a
construction of reality which is embedded in very factual
mechanism of reality ranging from politics and military through law
and economics all the way to literature and cinema. All these rely
on what Said calls "an ontological and epistemological distinction
made between "the Orient" and (most of the time) "the Occident"
(ibid, p.2)

Said's Orientalism analyses mostly texts, but he strongly holds that

there is no separation between ideas, images and representations
and actual material reality. Therefore he uses his analysis of texts
to show how Orientalism has formed as a highly powerful system
of control due to the combination of actual institutions of power and
discursive ones. Both military and literary excursions, both political
and cultural endeavors, both administrative and anthropological
practices and theories all served together to establish Europe's
superiority over the Orient.

Said continues to blame contemporary research in being

Eurocentric by not recognizing its own bias position and the
political nature of its so called "pure" knowledge. Said
demonstrates how a "canon" of knowledge was crystallized to
serve as the basis for everything that could be written by the West
about the East (and even if an Eastern person were to write about
himself, he would also have the abide by these premises in order
to be heard and considered).

In the final part of his introduction to Orientalism Said states his

own personal dimension and biographical interest in his subject of
study, acknowledging their political influence on his research.

Summary: Orientalsim / Chapter 1: The Scope of Orientalism

Chapter 1 of Edward Said's Oreintalism describes how the science

of orientalism developed as a system of knowledge in modern
times. According to Said, the Western Orinetals structured the
world as made of two opposing elements, ours and theirs. These
were not just geographical divisions but more importantly
epistemological ones. The West and East were to be cultural
distinctions, differences in civilization or lack of it. In Western eyes
orients were incapable of taking care of themselves, they were
lazy, lustful, irrational and violent but also exotic and mysterious.
The self-proclaimed superiority of the West over the East also led
Western scholars to think that they are more apt to understands
the orients than the orients themselves, thus "orientalizing" them
and subjecting them to Western standards which did not favor
them.

According to Edward Said researchers and men of administration

took a very Eurocentric and therefore biased and selective
approach to understanding the Orient and the orients. All accounts
of the Orient according to Said were prone to generalizations,
attributing collective significance to acts of individuals. The West
also used its own terminology to define and analyze the Orient,
applying terms were unknown to their subjects. This is how
concepts of the Orient were developed by Western eyes and for
Western eyes.

Orientalism for Said was fundamentally a system of self projection.

The Orient served as a mirror for the West who wanted to see
himself as superior. By describing the oriental as uncivilized the
West attempt to proclaim its own civilization. Said also employs the
Freudian mechanism of projection, arguing that Europe projected
everything it didn't want to acknowledge about itself onto the Orient
(including sexual fantasies). The point of Said's chapter 1 of
Orientalism is that Western Knowledge of the East was never
neutral since it was always involved with a political and cultural
.agenda

Summary: Orientalism / Chapter 2: Orientalist Structures and

Restructures
In chapter 2 of Orientalism Eward Said describes a shift in
Western attitude towards the Orient in modern times. According to
Said Orientalism as a field of knowledge romanticized the non-
Western world for Western viewers. The shape and content of the
Orient was devised by Western eyes for western eyes. The Orient
was to become the exotic, a land of sunshine and romantic
fantasies.

Said explains that the Orient as the West's "other" in the 19th
century took on a new modern shape which saw it as an
"unspoiled" and innocent form of human existence compared with
the highly civilized, therefore complicated and even "unnatural"
Western world. This does not mean that Westerners saw the
Orient as superior to them, on the contrary, the purity of the
Orientals made them inferior to the sophisticated West. The
Orient's innocence was cause for the West to justify controlling
them, even for their own sake.

Another justification provided by Orientalism for the rule of the

West over the East was a form of social Darwinism which pointed
to the fact that the West developed faster than other parts of the
world as proof of the Westerners as biologically superior. The
higher development rate of the West led to Westerners
"discovering" others and not the other way around. This was seen
as additional proof of the West's evolutionary advantage.

Chapter 2 of Orientalism also includes an analysis by Said on the

works of dominant Orientalists in the 19th century (like Silvestre de
Sacy and Ernest Renan). Said shows the bias and prejudice
inherited in their works and offers a genealogy of their
development. Finally, in the final part of chapter 2 of Orientsalism
Said describes how the image of the Orient was a cause for
pilgrimage making excursions to visit and receive inspiration for it
while protecting themselves from "its unsetting influences"
(Orientalism, p.166)
Summary: Orientalism / Chapter 3 : Orientalism Now
The third and final chapter on Edward Said's "Orinetalism" is
devoted to exploring the most recent (for Said's time)
developments in Orientalism and the manner in which the Orient
was perceived and treated by the Occident.

Said opens chapter 3 of "Orientalism" by describing how European

colonialism was the geographical basis of Orientalism, both in geo-
political and cultural aspects. Orientalism and colonialism were
both driven by a quest for knowledge and power and their results
and products were knowledge and power (see Foucault on
knowledge and power).

Said then moves on to talk about 20th century politics and change
in the relationship between East and West. One of the main
differences in the 20th century is that Orientalists became much
more involved in the everyday lives of Orientals, unlike their
predecessors who were uninvolved observers. People studying
non-Western cultures attempted to live with them and integrate
with them (like Lawrence of Arabia for example). This was not
driven by a wish to resemble the Orients but rather by a wish to
gain more knowledge about them and to rule them better.

Like in chapter 2 of "Orientalism", Said explores works by

important Orientalists (like Massignon and Gibb) that now take on
a more liberal position, but without losing their bias and prejudice.
The main attempt was to portray Islam as a weak and inferior
religion.

Said holds the center of Orientalism shifted from Europe to the US

following World War 1. Orientalsim in the US was related to social
sciences (unlike linguistics in Europe). Orientalism as a field of
study was aimed to assist the government in finding ways to
control non-Western societies. Decolonization processes following
World War 2 did not mean the end of Orientalism which was made
implicit instead of explicit. Even in the age of globalization and
higher interaction between East and West Arabs are all terrorists
while all Japanese know Karate.

Said concludes "Orientalism" by arguing that Orientals should get

a less passive position in the construction of their own image. He
also warns about the practice of making generalizations in human
sciences.