It is at this point in time, the early decades of the 19th century, when the West was actively changing the West, Lewis wrote, In the West, democracy developed within a religion that, even when it when it was the dominant religion, elaborated a distinction between what was God’s and what was Ceasar’s. Thanks! The Orient was constructed along the lines of other conquered territories, as “inferior”, as “feminine”, as “uncivilized”, as “barbaric”, and as the Other. Prior to the war, it was assumed that the Orient was in "need of Western enlightenment" and "domination." Orientalism is a 1978 book by Edward W. Said, in which the author establishes the eponymous term "Orientalism" as a critical concept to describe the West's common, contemptuous depiction and portrayal of "The East," i.e. This Orient is a European idea and invention, not, as Said warned, essentially an idea with no correspondence in reality. This land, Holy to Christian and Muslim, this territory that was an eternal historical battleground trod over by many civilizations was the starting point for Said who turned the intellectual tables on the West. Foucault dated the habit of Western Othering from the post-Medieval substitution of the leper with the mad person as the Other in society. Said pointed out, (Find a price that suits your requirements), The Research paper on English As A Lingua Franca, Revd William Gilpins Influence On English Watercolour, Conceptualization of Culture and Language in Post Colonial Literature, Spread Of English As An International Language. His well-known book, Orientalism was published in 1978 and is probably the often utilized structural analysis of Post-Colonial theory. The Orient is penalized for being outside the system of Western Christianity’s morality. (Find a price that suits your requirements), * Save 10% on First Order, discount promo code "096K2". Then Edward Said goes on to talk about two other scholars Massignon and Gibb. I INTRODUCTION hile conversations between law and postcolonialism … The Orient is insinuating and dangerous; and Western rationality is undermined by Eastern excesses. Few people, except for hard core historians and literary theorists have ventured much beyond his introduction and most readers probably find his later work, Culture and Imperialism (1993) more interesting to read. Said pointed out. The Orient is divided into two spaces: the Near East and the Far East, but this Orient is but a stage where the East is confined. If the Orient could represent itself, it would; but it cannot, and therefore, it is the task of the Orientalist to represent the silenced culture. He pointed out that the practice of Western representation of the East, from the “exterior” is done on the assertion that if the East could represent itself it could and since it cannot, the West must do this task of representation. This is also shown in Said’s memoir ‘Out of Place’, when he lets go of the delusion of being English and succumbs to his Arab nature; he develops unforeseen powers and bests his classmates in a contest of swimming and a wrestling match; where he at first seemed to be losing but then gave in to his Arab-self. the Orient.Societies and peoples of the Orient are those who inhabit the places of Asia, North Africa, and … When the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East began to weaken, the Europeans, led by the French under Napoléon, began to encroach upon northern Africa. That doesn’t exist in any other religion. ..Orientalism is not a mere political subject matter or field that is reflected passively by culture, scholarship, or institutions; nor is it a large and diffuse collection of texts about the Orient’ nor is it representative and expressive of some nefarious “Western” imperialist plot to hold down the “Oriental” world. The idea of the Orient was “appropriated” both artistically and scientifically by the all conquering Europeans. It is at this point in time, the early decades of the 19th century, when the West was actively changing the West, Lewis wrote, He also lived long enough to watch the American invasion of Iraq in March of 2003, an invasion predicated “Oriental” perfidy and the need of backward peoples to be rescued by democracy. In 1963 Edward Said (1935- 2003) was made Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature, at Columbia University [email protected]. People had always lived in territories that had a Muslim history but in order for these groups to be elucidated they had to be discursively constructed–named and studied and controlled. Labels: book summary, Edward Said, Orientalism, postcolonialism. If the Orient could represent itself, it would; but it cannot, and therefore, it is the task of the Orientalist to represent the silenced culture. Then we had the age of discovery. The Orient was constructed along the lines of other conquered territories, as “inferior”, as “feminine”, as “uncivilized”, as “barbaric”, and as the Other. He noted that Henry Kissinger based his policy towards the Orient upon the very binary relations that Orientalists had been constructing for centuries. The basic assumptions that underly the book include the historical fact of European colonial domination and imperialist exploitation that put European scholars in the position to gaze upon the exotic other and to study this alien otherness for European purposes. It is rather a distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, historical, and philological texts; it is an elaboration not only of a basic geographical distinction (the world is made up of two unequal halves, Orient and Occident) but also a whole series of “interests” which, by means as scholarly discovery, philological reconstruction, it not only creates but also maintains; it is rather than expresses, a certain will  or intention to understand, in some cases to control, manipulate, even to incorporate,what is a manifestly different (or alternative and novel) world; it is, above all, a discourse that is by no means in direct, corresponding relationship with political power in the raw, but rather is produced and and exists in an uneven exchange with various kinds of power.. Said wrote that the Western writers had a strategic location, or a location of power, from which s/he writes texts that become part of a strategic formation or a discourse where the “oriental studies” reside. Summary. Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the human consequences of the control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. Thank you. According to Said’s arch intellectual enemy, Bernard Lewis, Professor Emeritus at Princeton, the Middle East had deliberately made the collective cultural decision to eschew Western scientific modernism and thus “missed” the Enlightenment at a crucial moment. None of these precedents exist anywhere else. Orientalism was a collective European notion of European superiority with the West having the upper hand. The East is a European construction that facilitates a very real relationship of power and domination between West and East. The post colonialism mainly explores ... of the English muse with ... influenced by Gramsci’s notion of hegemonic culture ... their ambiguous place in ... can be viewed as ... that also feels and “ ... ... English speakers are from diverse culture backgrounds and are deeply influenced by their indigenous culture. In a more informal context, Orientalism is a way of thinking about the Orient when contrasted with the Occident—the West. By the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, the Orient was but a shadow of its former self. The Western imagination was fevered by thoughts of the depravity of the East and, although Said did not discuss art, by the second decade of the nineteenth century, Ingres was painting his many paintings of the legendary harems and Delacroix actually paid a visit to the secluded ladies of Algiers. ..Orientalism is not a mere political subject matter or field that is reflected passively by culture, scholarship, or institutions; nor is it a large and diffuse collection of texts about the Orient’ nor is it representative and expressive of some nefarious “Western” imperialist plot to hold down the “Oriental” world. For centuries a parity was reached when the demarcation between religious territories was sealed by the Austro-Hungarian empire, but, after two world wars in the 20th century, the wound was reopened and laid bare. Europe is powerful and articulate; Asia is defeated and distant. Said’s approach is the first fully developed analysis of Post-Colonialism that is impersonal, intellectual, and yet in the tradition of engaged scholarship. For Said, “Orientalism” or the Western construction of the “imaginary Orient” was fashioned by Europeans through practices of writing, which had the effect of representing the Other, the East. The Orient is not a fact of nature but an idea that has a history with its own vocabulary and its own imagery. Some centuries earlier, the Islamic Middle East had led he world in science and technology, including devices for measuring time. With the now-expected antecedents of Hegelian logic embedded in critical theory, it was possible for Said to build on the foundation of previous scholars. Perhaps the most influential and widely read Post-Colonial critic was the late Edward Said  (1935 – 2003) a Palestinian intellectual who was born in Jerusalem and died in exile in America. The European encounter with the alien culture was not only a cultural clash but also a meeting between unequals. The Orient is insinuating and dangerous; and Western rationality is undermined by Eastern excesses. Individual elements within the view were interpreted according to the overall composition. European culture gained in strength and identity be setting itself up against the Orient, so, as Said stated, the two geographic entities support and reflect each other–as opposites in a mirror. People had always lived in territories that had a Muslim history but in order for these groups to be elucidated they had to be discursively constructed–named and studied and controlled. Orientalism as a practice of writing was mainly a British and French enterprise due to the particular closeness of these nations with the “Orient.” Another way of expressing this “closeness” is to point to the long history of colonialism and imperialism by these two nations in the Middle East. As was noted in an earlier post, the European concern with the East can be traced back as far as the religious clash between Christianity and Islam that began in the seventh century and continues today. A critical analysis of the history, culture, literature and modes of discourse on the Third World countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean Islands and South America, postcolonialism concerns itself with the study of the colonization (which began … The British imbibed the drug as a “medicine” and the Queen herself used hashish for menstrual cramps.). Orientalism became a textual grid through which “The Orient” was filtered into Western consciousness.In saying that the West was a prevailing ideology, Said borrowed the concept of hegemony or prevailing “cultural form” from a new influence on Post-Colonial theory, Antonio Gramsci (1891 – 1937) and his odd assortment of Prison Notebooks from 1929-1935 . Orientalism Summary and Study Guide. Thanks a lot, Mr. Singh Very helpfu. If you have found this material useful, please give credit to He also lived long enough to watch the American invasion of Iraq in March of 2003, an invasion predicated “Oriental” perfidy and the need of backward peoples to be rescued by democracy. Then we had the Enlightenment. Through historical circumstances, it was the Western regions who “advanced” technologically faster than the East and thus it was the Europeans who took it upon themselves to name the regions, “The West” and “The East,” “The Occident” and The Orient.” Today to merely use these terms is Eurocentric–Europe is at the center of the world and all other regions relate to it–a totally imperialist position. Globalization and Culture. The Oriental is “irrational, depraved, fallen, childlike, different”, while the European is “rational, virtuous, mature, normal”. The technological gap between East and West was signaled by the stunning victory of Napoléon over the Egyptians in 1794 (where his army discovered marijuana. Edward Said lived long enough to witness September 11th an event that elevated Bernard Lewis to a consultant to the Bush administration. A generation after that of Albert Memmi and Aime Cesaire and Frantz Fanon, Said was more of a New Yorker than a colonized individual and belongs to the postmodern phenomenon of the global diaspora. With the changing world situation especially after … The Orient was contained and represented within the dominating framework. The Reception (1873) Now customize the name of a clipboard to store your clips. His distinct negative view of colonialism and post-colonialism and hence partially of western culture, stems from his theory of a “binary social relationship” wherein western culture misrepresents the “oriental world” as inferior and irrational and portrays their own culture as superior, rational and civil. The Orient is penalized for being outside the system of Western Christianity’s morality. The East is a European construction that facilitates a very real relationship of power and domination between West and East. Said begins Orientalism by explaining how Orientalism is defined within three different contexts. This “knowledge” was a resistance to the strangeness of the Orient. “It hardly needs to demonstrated again that language itself is a highly organized and encoded system, which employs many devices to express, indicate, exchange messages and information, represent and so forth.” As a result of this “representation,” regardless of the century, the Orient is always fixed in time and place in the mind of the West and the represented “history” of the “Orient” is conceived of as a series of responses to the West which is always the actor and judge of Oriental behavior. Foucault’s impact can be discerned clearly in traces: the repeated exhortations as to what Said is not saying and the long meandering sentences with endless pauses with semi-colons. The imperialist stance and language is part of the discourse of Orientalism, which is an example of how the powerful represent the powerless. Said, following Foucault, stated that “Orientalism” is a discourse, a whole network of interests. These cultural discourses are ” not ‘truth’ but representations. Here you can order a professional work. In his later work, Discipline and Punish, he linked “voir” (to see) with “savoir” (knowledge) and “pouvoir” (power). Europe is powerful and articulate; Asia is defeated and distant. In other cases, it offers a good selection of longer texts for undergraduate classes, like those by Aijaz Ahmad, Cesaire, and Said. Then we had the Enlightenment. E-mail … Holy Trinity of Postcolonialism Robert Young in his Colonial Desire (1995) calls Edward Said along with Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak Chakravarthy “the Holy Trinity” of Postcolonialism. The tropes of Orientalism were collections of free-floating fragments that were accumulated into units of knowledge. The network of discursive structures was put in place by European scholars over time with the intention to understand (to produce knowledge) in order to control and manipulate a very different world: the Orient. His expertise on the subject also stems, besides his first-hand experience in British schools, from his analysis of the works of Balzac, Baudelaire and Lautréamont. John Frederick Lewis,. It is obvious that “culture” is neither nature nor natural, but how is culture made and for what purposes? In the privileged precincts of Columbia University, Said joined the “cultural turn,” in which literary theory and Foucauldrian discourse became methodological tools through which to view culture. meet characters who are struggling with their identities in the wake of colonization According to Said’s arch intellectual enemy, Bernard Lewis, Professor Emeritus at Princeton, the Middle East had deliberately made the collective cultural decision to eschew Western scientific modernism and thus “missed” the Enlightenment at a crucial moment. © Art History Unstuffed. | Site designed by, Le Corbusier: The Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau. Forty years later and two invasions of Iraq later, Orientalism was still one of the best known books, widely read in theory but completely ignored in practice. According to Said’s arch intellectual enemy, Bernard Lewis, Professor Emeritus at Princeton, the Middle East had deliberately made the collective cultural decision to eschew Western scientific modernism and thus “missed” the Enlightenment at a crucial moment. According to Gramsci certain cultural forms or representational discourses have dominance over others and reflect cultural leadership. It should be rewritten to ensure and promote a peaceful diversity of cultures, a world where differences are not shunned but welcomed and celebrated. “It hardly needs to demonstrated again that language itself is a highly organized and encoded system, which employs many devices to express, indicate, exchange messages and information, represent and so forth.” As a result of this “representation,” regardless of the century, the Orient is always fixed in time and place in the mind of the West and the represented “history” of the “Orient” is conceived of as a series of responses to the West which is always the actor and judge of Oriental behavior. In other words, Kissinger assumed that the experience of the Enlightenment is necessary for “civilization”. Orientalism as a European textual construction is implicated with colonial authority and is a product of exteriority in which the Orientalist is the one who represents the Orient as the other. Orientalism was a collective European notion of European superiority with the West having the upper hand. Edward Said died in exile, never wavering from his position that Israel was a colonial entity established by imperialist powers and imposed illegitimately upon a people that were considered to have no claim to territory or to identity. His assumptions were based upon the supposed superiority of Western—Newtonian—scientific, rational thinking that produced “superior” technological society. Some centuries earlier, the Islamic Middle East had led he world in science and technology, including devices for measuring time. Free Samples and Examples of Essays, Homeworks and any Papers, Filed Under: Essays Tagged With: colonialism. Blog. postcolonial theory has been used increasingly as a methodology to re- 42 search issues dealing with the nature of cultural identity, gender, race, so- cial class, ethnicity, and nationality in postcolonial societies. Diana Bryden's Postcolonialism(846). In “Orientalism” he redefines the term ‘orientalism’ as the prejudice against Arabo-islamic peoples from a Eurocentric point of view. According to Gramsci certain cultural forms or representational discourses have dominance over others and reflect cultural leadership. Orientalism is ‘a manner of regularized (or Orientalized) writing, vision, and study, d… Despite the harsh colonial oppressors Said became an accomplished writer and critique. The tropes of Orientalism were collections of free-floating fragments that were accumulated into units of knowledge. If the Orient could represent itself, it would; but it cannot, and therefore, it is the task of the Orientalist to represent the silenced culture. [email protected]. In Lacanian language, the Orient is the narcissistic reversal of the fictional Self of the Occident or the “idea” of Europe. It is at this point in time, the early decades of the 19th century, when the West was actively changing the West, Lewis wrote. 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