by rachael dowling - Thursday, 28 February 2008, 06:04 PM
Orientalism refers to the imitation or a representation of aspects of Eastern Cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, and can also refer to a sympathtic stance towards the region by a writer or other person.
'The Orient' signifies a system of representations framed by politcal forces that brought the orient into western learning, western consciousness, and western empire. The orient exists for the West, and is constructed by and in relation to the West. It is a mirror image of what is inferior and alien (other) to the West.
'Edward Said' a Palestinian American literary theorist, cultural critic, political activist, and an outspoken advocate for a Palestinian state, wrote a book in 1978 on Orientalism where he uses the term to describe a tradition, both academic and artistic, of hostile and deprecatory views of the East by the West, shaped by the attidudes of the era of European imperialism in the 18th and 19th Centuries. When used in this sense, it is often implies essentializing and prejuced outsider interpretations of astern cultures and people. One of Edward Said's ideas is that knowledge about the East is generated not through actual facts but through imagined constructs that imagined 'Eastern' societies as being all fundamentally similar, all sharing crucial characteristics that are not possessed by 'Western' societies.
Said's orientalism created the field of postcolonial studies by teaching us to 'read for the gap', placing texts in broad politcal contexts. Said's book completely neglects China, Japan and South East Asia, and it has very little to say about India. Although the book is a study how the West treats the East, the book talks alot about the Middle East.
In the book it said:
Orientalism is an orientalist text several times over, and in two ways commits the major error involved with the idea of 'the Other'. First, it assumes that such projection and its harmful political consequences are something that only the West does to the East rather than something all societies do to another.
Said contended that Europe had dominated Asia politically so completely for so long that even the most outwardly objective Western texts on the East were permeated with a bias that even most Western scholars could not recognise. His contention was not only that the West has conquered the East politically but also that Western scholars have appropriated the exploration and interpretation of the Orient’s languages, history and culture for themselves. They have written Asia’s past and constructed its modern identities from a perspective that takes Europe as the norm, from which the "exotic", "inscrutable" Orient deviates.
Said concludes that Western writings about the Orient depict it as an irrational, weak, feminised "Other", contrasted with the rational, strong, masculine West, a contrast he suggests derives from the need to create "difference" between West and East that can be attributed to immutable "essences" in the Oriental make-up.
Edward Said's Orientalism remain a major work. Why do you think this?
Edward Said 'Orientalism' 1978
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Re: Orientalism
by Julian Bryant - Wednesday, 5 March 2008, 07:29 AM
Be careful about attribution - as it stands it looks like this is supposed to be your work, rather than an embedded quote from a student at Emory University. Do this on IRP and you'll get canned!
Do you agree with the points being made, and does it fit with your experience of Asian culture? Said is controversial, and even some commentators from an Asian background think his work simplifies things to the point of caricature.
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Picture of Ceri Payne
Re: Orientalism
by Ceri Payne - Thursday, 13 March 2008, 12:34 AM
'The orient exists for the West, and is constructed by and in relation to the West. It is a mirror image of what is inferior and alien (other) to the West.'
Does this mean the term or the reality behind the term?
Also is this your opinion?, or is it Said's?
I feel a view like this could almost be called if not xenophobic, then narrow minded.
Eastern culture, specifically middle eastern which i believe your talking about here in said's book, are not inferior or a mirror of the west, much of it is fascinating and it turns the west's cultural ideas upside down - Even if i believe in some respects, mainly religous and political they could be seen to be behind the west, but only because of if anything, money, power and the circumstances many foreign cultures and countries find themselves in.
I feel may have missed the point, please correct if i have Rachel, i know very little about this subject, or of Said's work, but i am, as always, intrigued!
Orientalism refers to the imitation or a representation of aspects of Eastern Cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, and can also refer to a sympathtic stance towards the region by a writer or other person.
'The Orient' signifies a system of representations framed by politcal forces that brought the orient into western learning, western consciousness, and western empire. The orient exists for the West, and is constructed by and in relation to the West. It is a mirror image of what is inferior and alien (other) to the West.
'Edward Said' a Palestinian American literary theorist, cultural critic, political activist, and an outspoken advocate for a Palestinian state, wrote a book in 1978 on Orientalism where he uses the term to describe a tradition, both academic and artistic, of hostile and deprecatory views of the East by the West, shaped by the attidudes of the era of European imperialism in the 18th and 19th Centuries. When used in this sense, it is often implies essentializing and prejuced outsider interpretations of astern cultures and people. One of Edward Said's ideas is that knowledge about the East is generated not through actual facts but through imagined constructs that imagined 'Eastern' societies as being all fundamentally similar, all sharing crucial characteristics that are not possessed by 'Western' societies.
Said's orientalism created the field of postcolonial studies by teaching us to 'read for the gap', placing texts in broad politcal contexts. Said's book completely neglects China, Japan and South East Asia, and it has very little to say about India. Although the book is a study how the West treats the East, the book talks alot about the Middle East.
In the book it said:
Orientalism is an orientalist text several times over, and in two ways commits the major error involved with the idea of 'the Other'. First, it assumes that such projection and its harmful political consequences are something that only the West does to the East rather than something all societies do to another.
Said contended that Europe had dominated Asia politically so completely for so long that even the most outwardly objective Western texts on the East were permeated with a bias that even most Western scholars could not recognise. His contention was not only that the West has conquered the East politically but also that Western scholars have appropriated the exploration and interpretation of the Orient’s languages, history and culture for themselves. They have written Asia’s past and constructed its modern identities from a perspective that takes Europe as the norm, from which the "exotic", "inscrutable" Orient deviates.
Said concludes that Western writings about the Orient depict it as an irrational, weak, feminised "Other", contrasted with the rational, strong, masculine West, a contrast he suggests derives from the need to create "difference" between West and East that can be attributed to immutable "essences" in the Oriental make-up.
Edward Said's Orientalism remain a major work. Why do you think this?
Edward Said 'Orientalism' 1978
Edit | Delete | Reply
Picture of Julian Bryant
Re: Orientalism
by Julian Bryant - Wednesday, 5 March 2008, 07:29 AM
Be careful about attribution - as it stands it looks like this is supposed to be your work, rather than an embedded quote from a student at Emory University. Do this on IRP and you'll get canned!
Do you agree with the points being made, and does it fit with your experience of Asian culture? Said is controversial, and even some commentators from an Asian background think his work simplifies things to the point of caricature.
Show parent | Edit | Split | Delete | Reply
Picture of Ceri Payne
Re: Orientalism
by Ceri Payne - Thursday, 13 March 2008, 12:34 AM
'The orient exists for the West, and is constructed by and in relation to the West. It is a mirror image of what is inferior and alien (other) to the West.'
Does this mean the term or the reality behind the term?
Also is this your opinion?, or is it Said's?
I feel a view like this could almost be called if not xenophobic, then narrow minded.
Eastern culture, specifically middle eastern which i believe your talking about here in said's book, are not inferior or a mirror of the west, much of it is fascinating and it turns the west's cultural ideas upside down - Even if i believe in some respects, mainly religous and political they could be seen to be behind the west, but only because of if anything, money, power and the circumstances many foreign cultures and countries find themselves in.
I feel may have missed the point, please correct if i have Rachel, i know very little about this subject, or of Said's work, but i am, as always, intrigued!
Last modified: Thursday, 7 June 2012, 2:15 PM