Edward Said on 'Orientalism'

 Welcome Readers,

Why everything depends upon the approval of someone? 

Why do we represent the culture different from ours as stereotypically backward and also assumes that it demand reformation? 

Is it possible that it may be our biased perception or opinion for the people who are different than us? 

            Here judgement plays a very vital role. Western civilization thought that the eastern countries needed reformation. Just because of the Western's distaste, without ever understanding the different one, confirms that their perspective is correct. Betraying the different perspective, these European countries without ever understanding, assumed it 'deviated' by assuming themselves as superior! 

                    To know more about this process of superior formation, colonizing the race who were subjugated, continue reading this blog on Edward Said's 'Orientalism'. This blog is a part of my Postcolonial studies- a course offered in Master Degree. This is a task assigned to us by professor Dr Dilip Barad Sir. Click Here to navigate to the blog titled - Edward Said On Orientalism. 

👉Edward Said

Let us know about the author first, Edward Said - 

                    One of the most important cultural figures of the late 20th century- Edward Said was a Palestinian American academic and a literary critic who examined literature in light of social and cultural politics. He made the term 'Orientalism' popularized by his 1978 book 'Orientalism'. Said discusses Orientalism as a Western-style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient’. (Ashcroft, Griffiths, Tiffin) Orientalism revolutionized the study of the middle east. It totally introduced a new and unbiased field of study. 

👉Orientalism

Refer to Said's interview on Orientalism with Sut Jhally, University of Massachusetts- Amherst attached below-

                   

                            'Orientalism' tries to answer all the question of preconceived notions of the West towards East by concluding that these indifferent notions are formed based on skin colour or way of expression, etc. As mentioned in the video, Said argues that the way the West, Europe and the U.S. looks at the countries and peoples of the Middle East is through a lens that distorts the actual reality of those places and those people. In Sut Jhally's words, Orientalism asks 'how do we come to understand people, strangers, who look different to us by the colour of their skin?'

                        The 'Orient' is the stage where all the east is confined beginning from Arab countries to China and the person who studies or writes about this canvas is orientalism. The notion of looking at other people creates deep-rooted distinctions which play a significant role, unknowingly, by developing a knowledge of knowing myself as superior to others. Positioning oneself in a superior position is one of such notions. 

Said says, 

"The fact that those representations of the Orient had very little to do with what I knew about my own background in life. So I decided to write the history of that."

                Orientalism was a style of thought based on ‘the ontological and epistemological distinction between the “Orient” and the “Occident”’ (Said). The Orient is the East and the Occident, the West. This distinction can be understood by pondering deep into the study of knowledge and studying the existence of this knowledge. The Orient also didn't want security, they just wants to be possessed. Edward Said' book remarks how the Europeans perceived the eastern as inferior, uncivilized, barbaric and around weird and at the same time establishing the westerns as supeiors and civilized. The term orient comes from the rising of the sun in the east -Latin - oriens. This is the streotying of the east. 

👉The Repertory of Orientalism:

                            The West has always portrayed the East as something exotic and the world of marvels. 

And Said examines the eastern constructions of the Orient, particularly Islam. 

"And it seemed to me that there was a kind of repertory of images that kept coming up: The sensual woman who is there to be sort of used by the man, the East as a kind of mysterious place full of secrets and monsters, you know, “the marvels of the East,” was a phrase that was used. And the more I looked the more I saw that this was really quite consistent with itself. It has very little to do with people who had actually been there. And even if they had been there, there wasn't much modification. In other words, you didn't get what you could call realistic representations of the Orient, either in literature or in painting or in music or any of the arts."

                        This creates an image of the Orient outside the history that of something placid and still and eternal. This is obviously going to erase the original image, the actuality and the real picture because of such misconceptions. The video also has insights on Orientalism and Empire, American Orientalism, Orientalism today, Stereotype towards Islamic countries.

  

👉Orientalism and Empire:

                         Edward Said locates the construction of Orientalism within the history of Imperial conquest. Said belives that the process of imperialism has had changed the perspective of looking at the natives. They (the imperial) invaded the land with enormous armies of soldiers and also brought the scientists, botanists, architects, philologists, biologists, historians who recorded the land of Egypt as per their perceptions. The bulky books and great literature are infact the perceptions, the way of looking at the Egyptians are in fact "their" and not of the original natives. 

"They are a meter square. And all across them is written the power and prestige of a modern European country that can do to the Egyptians what the Egyptians cannot do to the French. I mean there's no comparable Egyptian survey of France."

                            Hence, one has to have power to produce knowledge and shall have knowledge so to be in power! and thus, the imperialists not only ruled militarily but ideologically also. 

👉American Orientalism:

"The differences between different kinds of Orientalisms are in effect the differences between different experiences of what is called the Orient."

                                 The Britain and France had colonies in the orient, so they produce the archive of actual experiences. This is direct  orientalism. Whereas, the American never had colonies so their perceptions are abstract then the British and hence, their account are more indirect. 

                The  creation of Jewish state in the middle of the Islamic Oriental world has made an effect. 

👉Orientalism Today:

                         The portrayal of Muslim in Popular Culture today seems to be very much problematic. The Demonitization of the orient and the reading of all the Muslims in same way was in a way a regressive notion of the world. The image of Osama Bin Laden had impacted a lot, those who were looking like him were also been treated as if they are belonging to a terrorist group. They were attacked in America- one of the film which was inspired by this incident is a 2012 film - The Reluctant Fundamentalist. 

 

                After 9/11 the American realized that Islamic terrorism is terrible and is the threat to the world. After this the renage of representation of Islam changed enormously. And in this electronic postmodern world, the streaotypes have been justified by all the attacks done by some Muslim troops. As mentioned in the above mentioned video- 

"Said recognizes that terrorism exits, as a result of the violent, political situation in the Middle East. But he argues that there is a lot more going on there that is misunderstood or not seen by the peoples of the West. The result of the media's focus on one negative aspect alone means that all the peoples of the Islamic world come to be understood in the same negative and paranoid way, that is, as a threat."

....

"Is the Arab world full of terrorists?"

.....

"So you have to have threat. And the result is it's very hard to find words that are sympathetic to the Arabs and Islam. Islam is seen as the enemy of Christianity and the United States sees itself as a Christian or a Judeo-Christian country, in affiliation with Israel and that Islam is the great enemy."

(Said)

Hence, doings of a few fanatic people affected the whole sect.  

Israel-Palestine issue

                            Said grew up in what was then called Palestine and is now called Israel and the Occupied Territories. Said explains about Palestinian’s local complexities and about mixed backgrounds of Arabs and Jews, Arab Muslims and Arab Christians and Israeli Jews. Palestinians, still, is under constant threat of Israel. MAny a times in the interview video, Said's refers to Palastine and to Palastine issue. So, let us know it in brief.

                    The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is the ongoing struggle between Israelis and Palestinians that began in the mid-20th century. Various attempts have been made to resolve the conflict as part of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. (Wikipedia)

This video takes about the theological differences between Islam and Judaism. The conflict of land as portrayed as eternal or as religious makes it intractable. According to James Gelvin's historical sense, in the late 19th century, the Ottoman Empire ruled over Palestine (as now we know). The language was Arabic. Ottoman Palestine was a place where people of different religions lived peacefully. Some of the Zionists, later thought that the Isreal was a state of Jews and so they settled there. So the issue of the ownership of the land kept changing. 

This video observes that Isreal wants to live in a Jewish Sate to live in peace as well as Isreal recognizes the right of Palestinians to have their own state. And the Muslim doesn't want to consider the right of Jewish people to live in the land. 

To conclude, it can be said that Said emphasized on staying and co-existing together on the land to avoid the conflict. It is also suggested by some people that it would have been better if Jews have been given space in either Europe or in America.  The issue of land where Isreal people located had witnessed tremendous exodes. Now the Saudi Arabia had made a collaboration with Isrealites to support intellectual growth and development.