Orientalism

Book by Edward Said

Biography of Edward Said.
Orientalism Book Introduction In Urdu and Hindi
Orientalism Chapter 1 Summary
Orientalism Chapter 2 Summary Summary
Orientalism Chapter 3 Summary
Orientalism Chapters Outline.
Edward Wadie Said was a Palestinian-American professor of literature at
Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic
field of postcolonial studies. Born in Mandatory Palestine, he was a citizen
of the United States by way of his father, a U.S. Army veteran.
Born: November 1, 1935, Jerusalem
Died: September 25, 2003, New York, New York, United States
Education: Harvard University (1964), Harvard University (1960),
Edward Said was an immensely influential literary and cultural critic and one
of the world's foremost public intellectuals. He is a founding figure of
postcolonial studies owing to the extraordinary influence of his germinal
critical study Orientalism (1978).
notable books are The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983), Nationalism,
Colonialism, and Literature: Yeats and Decolonization (1988), Musical
Elaborations (1991), and Culture and Imperialism (1993)
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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. the Orient. Originally published: 1978
Author: Edward Said
Original language: English
Pages: 368
Epigraph and Preface
Introduction [Orient (East) and Occident (West), root word (characteriesters), East in the eye of west
is orientalism ]
Chapter 1 The Scope of Orientalism

Science of Orientalism (White Superior to black or Brown)

West Introduced concept of ours and Thiers,
West define East, East Is Bad and West Is Superior, qualities
East uncivilized, colonized, uneducated, mysterious, lazy, irrational, feminine, unsophisticated, uncivil, black or brown, race is inferior, religion is
bad, born to be ruled, all negative, unable to rule unable to govern, unable to create good literature, Opposite to west so west should govern them.
East need colonization, west studied east, first observe, then rule, then order, transfer culture,
Worked on translation of material and knowledge. Introduced new terms, compare west to east and consider ours superior.
West define our and them.
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Chapter 2 (4 Part ) Orientalist Structures and Restructures
East was defined by west in discourse
East was romanticized by west in discourse
Eastern thoughts, ideology, land, behaviour all were published by west
West find east bad but amusing(entertainment)
West decided to enlighten the east(naive) about governance
East need assistance by west
West created term orientalism (find the issue Then I am the doctor and East is patient)
West is superior in knowledge and Biological as well.
West should rule.
Chapter 3 Orientalism Now
•Orientalism approach is changed in 20 th century
•Start (Observer)
•Mid (Practical, Attack on Islam)
•New (Orientalism shift form Uk to Us, World war ii (Occident suffer), ( going back), (Freedom), (No Orientalism), Created a Frame of
East, Conclusion, East is East and West is West and they will never meet, Although world is a global village we should not put
boundaries --______Afterword

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1.1. Explanation of Key Terms used in Edward Said’s Orientalism
In Orientalism, Edward Said has used various derivatives of the word Orient which literally means the East,
the direction from which the sun rises. Geopolitically Orient signifies the Middle East, Asia and the Far East,
territories that were once a part of one or another European Empire. 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. The West uses the word in its relation to the East. It is a mirror
image of the inferior, the alien (other) to the Occident (West).
‘Oriental’ is a noun-form which means an individual or people of the Orient. As an adjective the word
qualifies anything belonging to the East e.g. Oriental landscape, literature, attitude, etc.
‘Orientalist’ means a person who studies or writes about the Orient.
‘Orientalism’ is used academically to signify Western doctrines and theses about the Orient.
Said also makes it clear that he is not attempting to cover the whole area. He focuses on how American,
English, and French scholars have approached the Arab societies of the Middle East and North Africa. The
period he covers in his book extends from the late eighteenth century to the present.
1.2. The Concept of ‘Other’ and ‘Alter Ego’ in Said’s Orientalism
Edward Said’s starting point in Orientalism is that the existence and development of every culture impels the
existence of a different and inevitably competitive “other” or “alter ego.” Therefore, Europe, in attempting to
construct its self-image, created the Middle East (the ‘Orient’) as the ultimate “other.” The Middle East (the
‘Orient’) and the West (the ‘Occident’) do not correspond to any stable reality that exists as a natural fact, but
are merely
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2. Orientalism: Definition and Explanation
Edward Said put forward several definitions of ‘Orientalism’ in the introduction of his book Orientalism. Some of these are:
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. Second, Orientalism is a field of academic research that includes everyone who teaches, investigates,
and writes about the Orient. 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 Orient’s special place in European Western culture and
experience.
In the light of this perception, the Middle East is static, unalterable, and can’t define itself. Therefore, through Orientalism, the
West took it upon itself to represent the Orient and by doing so opened it to exploitation. The very purpose of Orientalism is to
take control of the Orient and take away from it any ability to speak for itself. Said maintained that it is the stereotypes and
prejudices that determine the Western representation of the Orient.
2.1. Edward Said’s Definition of ‘Orientalism’ as a Discourse
Edward Said also described ‘Orientalism’ as a discourse, a definition he takes from the French philosopher and historian,
Michel Foucault. Foucault defined discourse as a system of thought that governs the knowledge obtained by a person. This
knowledge is a paraphrase of preconceived notions and ideas. So, a discourse is the product of interaction between power and
knowledge interconnected in a never-ending circle. In Foucault’s view, knowledge is power and also the way of gaining power.
Edward Said, following the ideas of Foucault, focused on the relationship between power and knowledge. He argued that
without examining Orientalism as a discourse, one can’t comprehend the hugely systematic discipline by which European
culture was able to manage—and even construct—the Orient politically, militarily, sociologically, scientifically, imaginatively
and ideologically during the post-Enlightenment period.
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3. Edward Said’s Orientalism: Summary
In Orientalism, Edward Said builds up his argument and analysis in three (3) long chapters. Here is a brief summary of
all three chapters in Edward Said’s Orientalism:
3.1. Chapter I: The Scope of Orientalism
‘The Scope of Orientalism’ covers all the dimensions of the subject, both in terms of historical experiences and time
period. Moreover, it also covers the subject in terms of political as well as philosophical themes. Said provides a review
of pre-18th century writing on the Muslim near East, and socio-political impact of Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in
1798. According to him, the East was viewed as a textual universe for the West. The European Orientalists had keen
interest in classical rather than contemporary periods of the Eastern culture.
3.2. Chapter II: Oriental Structures and Restructures
In this chapter, Said traces the development of modern Orientalism by presenting a broadly chronological description.
He also attempts to trace it by describing a set of devices usually common to the works of popular artists, poets, and
scholars. Said presents a review of the French and English traditions of the study of Muslim Near East during the 19th
century and further up to the world war I. For this purpose, his major focus is on the works of French Orientalists, such
as Sylvester de Sacy, and works of English Orientalists like Edward Lane’s Account of the Manners and Customs of the
Modern Egyptians (1836).
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. 3.3. Chapter III:
Orientalism Now

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This chapter of Orientalism begins at the point where its predecessor had left off. It means around 1870. This period is
characterized with great colonial expansion into the Orient, culminating in the second world war. The last section of
this chapter characterizes the shift from British and French to American hegemony. It presents the current social and
intellectual realities of Orientalism in the USA.
Said begins this chapter with a discussion of Orientalism in the 1920’s and 1930’s. For this purpose, he reviews the
careers of leading Islamicists of that time like French scholar Lovis Massignon and the English historian Hamilton
Gibb. Edward Said takes note of the lectures of Humilton Gibb as director of the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at
Harvard University specially his views on the Arab Mind and the ‘aversion of the Muslim from the thought process of
rationalism,’ referring to Islam as Mohammedanism.
Under the subtitle The Last Phase, Edward Said reviews Post-War II Orientalism as the United States came to be the
center of activity with regard to the East. In this latest phase, the highly qualified American ‘area specialists’ took the
lead replacing the earlier philologists. Edward Said examines the role of these ‘area specialists’ of the East. According
to him, they helped to perpetuate the dynamics of Orientalism in their representation of Islam and Arabs in four
categories. These four categories are:
Popular Image and Social Science Representation
Public Relations Policy
Merely Islam
To See the Orient as an Imitation West.

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First Category: Popular Image and Social Science Representation
In this category, Said discusses the popular images and social science representations of the East. 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.
Said asserts it is the academic studies that support these negative images. These images are actually
the negative caricatures of Arab and Islamic culture.
Second Category: Public Relations Policy
In the second category of misrepresentation of the Arabs and Islam, Said takes on the American
public relations policy. It is this policy, by which, he says that contemporary scholars try to
perpetuate the traditions set by European Orientalists. For example, the racist discourse and dogmas
of Earnest Renan in the 1840s. He bases his argument on the work of Gustave von Grunchbaun. He
was a German Orientalists who entertained an almost “virulent dislike for Islam”. Said finds the
following dogmas implicit in the works of Grunchbaun and other such Orientalists:
Absolute difference between the Occident (rational and superior), and the Orient (aberrant and
inferior).
The superiority of abstractions regarding the Orient against direct evidence from the contemporary
Orient itself.
The recognition that the Orient is to be feared and controlled.
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Third Category: Merely Islam
Said labels the third category of contemporary Orientalist representations as ‘Marely Islam’.
He attacks the allegedly inherent inability of the Muslim near Orient to be as richly human as
the West. He also cites the view of a prominent political scientist. According to this view, the
Muslim mind is capable of only four out of eight human thought processes. To this he adds the
presumption of the president of the Middle East Studies Association that “since the Arab
language is much given to rhetoric, the Arabs are consequently incapable of true thought.”
Fourth Category: Orient is an Imitation West
In the fourth category, Edward Said places and takes on the contemporary western Orientalists’
presumption that “Orient is an imitation west”. He also highlights their efforts to encourage the
Easterners to judge themselves by Western criteria and to work for achieving the Western
goals. Said deplores that the modern Orient has fallen for the bait and is participating in its
own Orientalizing.
Edward Said winds up his discussion of Orientalism by briefly addressing the positive side to
the problem of reliable scholarship in the field of Orientalism. He hopes that the honest work
on the Arabs and Near Orient is likely to be done by scholars “whose allegiance is to a
discipline defined intellectually and not to a ‘field’ like Orientalism defined either canonically,
imperially or geographically
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4. Edward Said’s Handling of the ‘Concept of Orientalism’ in his book, Orientalism
In his book, Edward Said clearly stated that Orientalism was not the product of colonial rule. But, as a pattern of knowledge, it preceded
colonialism. The vision of Orient, Said stated that, existed as far back as the ancient Greeks. However, prior to the colonial era, Orientalism was
a literary discourse bound in a tradition of writers, texts, research, and conceptualizations. Said pointed out The Persians by Aeschylus as an
example of early attempts to create an Orient.
Nevertheless, Said stated that, it is fairly recent that Orientalism has become a ‘science’ or an extended body of knowledge and tradition. He
mentioned two 18th century intellectuals who spearheaded the transition of Orientalism from literary to scientific knowledge. One is Abraham
Hyacinthe Anquetile-Duperron and the other is William Jones. These two scholars took Orientalism out of its literary roots and supplanted it
with a seemingly scientific and objective one. Their emphasis was no longer on the description of the exotic but rather on the comprehension of
it.
According to Said, the knowledge or understanding gained through the Orient’s scientific study leads directly to control and power over the
Orient. He provided a clear example of this interaction by discussing Lord Balfour’s speech to the House of Commons in 1910. In this speech,
Lord Balfour clearly justified Britain’s presence and involvement in Egypt. So, in a very basic sense, knowledge is power. It is powerful since it
is privileged only to the European and not to the Oriental itself.
The basic assumption is that the Orientalist ‘knows’ the Orient better than Orientals do themselves. This overwhelmingly paternalistic attitude
leads him to the inevitable and logical conclusion of appropriating the Orient under his power.
4.1. Edward’s Said’s Ideas of Orientalism
One of Edward Said’s 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. Thus, this ‘a priori’ knowledge set up the Orient as the antithesis of the West. Said argued that such knowledge is built
through literary texts and historical records which are often limited in terms of their understanding of the authenticity of life in the Middle East.
Said also claimed a subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic people and their culture. He further said that a long
tradition of false and romanticized images of Asia and the Middle East in Western culture has served as an implicit justification for Europe and
America’s colonial and imperial ambitions. Also, Said denounced the practice of Arab elites who internalized the American and British
orientalists’ ideas of Arabic culture. Although he restricted his discussion to academic study of the history and culture of Middle Eastern Africa
and Asia, Said clearly asserted that “Orientalism is, and does not merely represent, a significant dimension of modern political and intellectual
culture.”
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4.2. Edward Said’s Discussion of Orientalism
Edward Said limited his discussion of academic Orientalism to late 19th and early 20th century scholarship. The first
‘Orientalists’—the 19th century scholars—translated the writings of ‘the Orient’ into English. These translations were actually
based on the assumptions that a truly effective colonial conquest required knowledge of the conquered people. This notion of
knowledge as power and authority is present throughout Said’s critique. By knowing the Orient, the Occident came to possess
it. The Orient became the seen, the observed, the studied, and the object. While the Orientalist scholars were the seers, the
observers, the students, and the subject. The Orient (East) was passive; the Occident (West) was active.
Said argued that Orient and Occident worked as antithetical terms. The construction of the ‘Orient’ portrayed a negative
inversion of the Western culture. It is because of Orientalism that the Orient was not (and is not) a free subject of thought or
action.
4.3. Orientalism and Domination
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. Rather, it created a space in which justifications of the Occidental’s political
and cultural domination could be imposed on the Orient. He attempted to ‘show how Orientalism came into being as the
doctrine and corporate institution for exercising Western domination of the Orient.” The way in which the Orientalists
accomplished this was to brand what they termed as Orientals as essentially inferior in culture and personhood to their
European counterparts. The political powers picked up this thread and used it to justify their colonial expansion.
Said’s Distinction Between Pure Knowledge and Political Knowledge
For Said, as it was for Foucault, knowledge is power. The knowledge of the Orient, though flawed, provided the power base
from which the colonizers set about their mission. Here Said made a distinction between pure knowledge and political
knowledge. An example of ‘pure knowledge’ is basic math. It was and is hardly possible for 2+2=4 to enable the domination of
another group. Political knowledge, on the other hand, lent itself handily from specialist to policy. Said demonstrated how
policy makers seek out the specialist, in this case the Orientalists, to shape their policies. These policies often involved the
domination of those that the specialist studies and thus demonstrated Said and Foucault’s conception of knowledge as power.
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Said’s first example of this was Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1978. This invasion “set in motion… [processes]… that still dominate our contemporary cultural and
political perspectives.”
Said further described the process and ultimate goal of colonization:
“What the machine (the colonial power structure) branches feed into it in the East—human material, wealth, knowledge[…]—is processed by the machine and then
converted into more power.”
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. “Local interests” are Orientalist special interests, the “central authority” is the greatest interest of the
imperial society as a whole.”
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. This was another example of knowledge as power. The political knowledge of the Orientalists gave traction to the power of the subjugators.
Interesting to Know: Orientalism & Technology: A Primer on the Techno-Orientalism Debate
4.4. Orientalism and Essentialism
The Orientalist enabled the transformation of people into materials by inscribing onto them essential qualities. These essential qualities were static, unchangeable and
inferior to European qualities. Said quoted Paul Valéry as representative of this idea. Valéry said that while Europe owed its “heritage of the arts” and knowledge to the
Orient, they were still “monsters”. Therefore, they had to be dealt with by “maintaining the power of choice.” This condition was timeless according to the Europeans.
Said saw this as a grave error. Said stated this clearly in the afterword of Orientalism:
“…human identity is not only natural and stable, but constructed, and occasionally even invented outright.”
Said noted that no one would dare form essential qualities of “the Negro mind” or “the Jewish personality,” however it was acceptable to form essential qualities of “the
Islamic mind,” and “the Arab characters.” Such an essentialist view of the Orientals, of the Arabs, of the Semites, of Islam, therefore, is tantamount to racism. Even
though the colonizers often thought they were bringing enlightenment to the uncivilized people, this paternalistic attitude was still as racist as the other forms of
dominative theoretical frameworks.
4.5. Functionalist Racism and Said’s Solution
The false essentialism of Orientalism was and is inescapable for any scholar from the West. 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 one’s situation. However, this appeared to be highly unlikely, as no scholar had been able to do this so far. This subtle racism, like the
violence claimed by the revolting peasants in Monty Python’s Holy Grail, is inherent in the system.
Since it was almost impossible for any scholar in the West to break free of these bonds, how can one learn of other people’s groups? Said’s reply to this conundrum and to
Spivak is that the subaltern could indeed speak. It was Said’s hope that his work would help break the bonds that Orientalism has held and is holding over the subaltern
world. These bonds were to be broken by new studies of each culture’s history and experience by the respective cultures.
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5. Edward Said’s Major Claims In Orientalism

The four central claims that Said’s book makes are as follows:

First, while Orientalism presents itself as an objective field of study, it was used to
justify the political domination of the East by the West.
Secondly, Orientalism was actually more about defining itself through the mirror of the
East rather than it was about objectively studying it.
Third, points one and two are produced and reinforced by viewing the Orient as a
homogenous group. This essentialist thinking was a false way of viewing people groups
and their culture. Edward Said also rejects the validity of the terms Orient and Occident.
Still, he employs them because this is how the argument has been framed by the
Orientalists.
Lastly, the Orientalist scholars are the product of the system they come from. Due to
this, they can’t help but to misrepresent the ‘Other’. Therefore, what we need is for the
subaltern to speak for itself. www.bseln.com for free notes PDF
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6. Orientalism by Edward Said: In a Nutshell

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. Europe found this
counterbalancing entity in the crusades to be the Orient. 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. Developing alongside this power, giving
legitimacy and traction, was the scholar of the Orient, the Orientalists. Once a tradition
of superior values of the West and a static view of the Orient developed, the tradition
crystalized. And it was and is nearly impossible to break free for any scholar inside the
tradition. However, ‘[humans] make their own history” and every society is in a
constant state of flux and development.

Thus, what is necessary is for each people group to speak for itself and create
discourses of its own history. They must share and dialogue with other people groups
with the goal of true knowledge of the other and not merely political knowledge.
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What is Edward Said's main idea in Orientalism?
He argues that Orientalism is “a style of thought based upon an ontological and
epistemological distinction between 'the Orient' and 'the Occident' (2003: 2). In
this way, Orientalism tends to rely on a binary opposition between the West and
the East that most of times is misleading and destructive.
What are the three characteristics of Orientalism?
The most important aspect of orientalism was that the Europeans defined
themselves by defining orientals. For example, they attributed the qualities like
laziness, irrationality, uncivilizedness and crudeness to Orientals. By calling
them so, they defined themselves as rational, civilized, hardworking and refined
What is the book Orientalism about?
A groundbreaking critique of the West's historical, cultural, and political
perceptions of the East that is—three decades after its first publication—one of
the most important books written about our divided world.
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