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Orientalism – Edward Said




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Name : Jethwa Monali A
Paper : 11 The postcolonial Literature
 Topic : unit : 3 Orientalism – Edward Said
Sem : 3 MA part 2
Email id : monalijethwa19@gmail.com
Submitted : Depatment of english , MKBU



Introduction of Edward Said Orientalism : -

   " Edward Said was born in Jerusalem in 1935 and was for many years        America’s foremost spokesma   
 for the Palestinian cause. 


     
        His writings have been translated into 26 languages, including his most influential book, Orientalism (1978), an examination of the way the West perceives the Islamic world.
  


Much of his writing beyond literary and cultural criticism is inspired by his passionate advocacy of the Palestinian cause, including The Question of Palestine, (1979), Covering Islam (1981), After the Last Sky (1986) and Blaming the Victims (1988). . . . He went to a New England boarding school, undergraduate years at Princeton and graduate study at Harvard." (from the Columbia University website)

" Orientalism” is a way of seeing that imagines, emphasizes, exaggerates  
and distorts differences of Arab peoples and cultures as compared to that
of Europe and the U.S. It often involves seeing Arab culture as exotic,
backward, uncivilized, and at times dangerous. Edward W. Said, in his
groundbreaking book, Orientalism, defined it as the acceptance in the
West of “the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point
or elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political
accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, ‘mind,’ destiny and
so on.  ”


The Orient signifies a system of representations  by political forces that brought the Orient into Western learning, Western awareness, and Western empire.

The Orient exists for the West, and is constructed by and in relation to the West. It is a picture of what is lower and unknown to the West.

 Orientalism is ‘a way of regular writing, vision, and study, subject by imperatives, perspectives, and ideological biases truly suited to the Orient.’ It is the picture of the ‘Orient’ expressed as an entire system of idea and scholarship.
The beginning of the study of Orientalism is early eighteenth century and focused on language. This early study consisted of translating works from the Oriental languages into European languages.

The colonial rulers could not rule well, it was believed, without some knowledge of the people they ruled. They think this knowledge from translating different works from the native language into their own.

The Orient existed to be studied and that studying was done by Westerners who believed themselves to be superior to the "others", which is how they described the East.

They were basically the opposite of the East and careful to the active while the Orient was considered to be passive. The Orient existed to be ruled and subject.


Examples of early Orientalism can be seen in European paintings and photographs and also in images from the World’s Fair in the U.S. in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The paintings, created by European artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, show the Arab World as an unusual and mysterious place of sand, harems and belly dancers, reflecting a long history of Orientalist which has continued to permeate our modern popular culture.


 Said argues that, Orientalism can be found in current Western depictions of ‘Arab’ cultures. The depictions of ‘the Arab’ as irrational, scary, untrustworthy, anti-Western, corrupt, and perhaps most importantly prototypical, are ideas into which Orientalist scholarship has evolved. These notions are trusted as foundations for both ideologies and policies developed by the Occident.


 Edward Said argues that the Europeans divided the world into two parts; the east and the west or the occident and the orient or the civilized and the uncivilized.
This was totally an artificial boundary; and it was laid on the basis of the concept of them and us or theirs and ours. The Europeans used orientalism to define themselves.
Some particular attributes were associated with the Orientals, and whatever the Orientals weren’t the occidents were. The Europeans define themselves as the superior race compared to the Orientals and they justified their colonization by this concept.


 Orientalism revolutionized the study of the Middle East and helped to create and shape entire new fields of study such as Post-Colonial theory even influencing disciplines and English, History, Anthropology, Political Science and Cultural Study etc. The aim of this program is to explore these issues through an interview with him.



He starts by discussing the context within which he conceived Orientalism.

- Edward said Orientalism began for two reason , One is that Arab - Israeli war of 1973 which had been preceded by a lots of images and discussion in the media how to Arab are cowardly and they don't know about fight because they are not modern. second is that everybody was surprise when Egyptian cross the canal Oct - 1973 and demonstrated that like anybody could fight.


- Edward said the great deal of writing had gone before and this writing was an organized form of writing like organized science that is he called Orientalism.

-   American experience from the British and French of orientalism is that the American Orientalism is very politicized by the presence of Israel for which American is the main ally.

-   Edward said is the Arab world full of terrorist. there are terriorst as there are everywhere he was talking about 250 -300 million people and one of the great problems with is these generalization about Islam and the nature of Islam .

-    Edward said there is a certain sense in which in not really mounting critique of it the Arabs have participated and countinue to allow themselves to be represented as Orientals in this orientalist way.
-   Orientalism ,covering Islam, and the question of Palestine ,He believes that finding a peaceful humane and just solution to the conflicts in the middle East ,that is finding an answer to the Question of Palestine ,will require overcoming the racist legacy of Orientalism that stresses the sepration of people from each other because of complex and bloody History of the Middle East .

-    14palenstine is so important in this respect because its local complexities like Arab Jews, Arab Muslim , Arab christian , And Israeli Jews of themselves very mix backgroud.


The term Orientalism covers three interrelated meanings:

(1)   Said , argues that it names the academic study of the orient, in the multiple disciplines of anthropology, sociology, history or philosophy.



(2)   Orientalism is a "style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological       distinction made between the orient and the occident.

      In this way Orientalism tends to rely on a binary opposition between East & West. And this dichotomy is both misleading and destructive, since the Orient comes to stand for all that is ‘Other’ to the West and therefore threatening.

(3)   Orientalism can be seen as "a Western style for dominating, restructuring and   having authority over the Orient.


Orientalism is a foundational book in the field of Post Colonialism, by Edward Said- a Palestinian born in Jerusalem in 1935, and was educated in Cairo before continuing his studies& developing his career in America.(Hiddleston)



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