EDWARD SAID
EDWARD SAID Edward Said was a Palestinian- American literary theorist and cultural critic. He was born 1935 and died in 2003. Author of several highly influential post-colonial texts, the most famous of which was Orientalism. He is one of the foundational theories of post-colonial and Middle- Eastern studies.
The cover of the first edition Orientalism is a detail from the 19th-century Orientalist painting The Snake Charmer by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824 1904).
Representations of the Orient in early cinema
REPRESENTATIONS OF THE ORIENT IN FILM (ALADDIN)
REPRESENTATIONS OF THE ORIENT IN FILM (ALADDIN) Oh, I come from a land, from a faraway place Where the caravan camels roam Where they cut off your ear If they don't like your face It's barbaric, but hey, it's home When the wind's from the east and the sun's from the west And the sand in the glass is right Come on down stop on by Hop a carpet and fly To another Arabian night
MODERN REPRESENTATIONS OF THE ORIENT IN... FILM VIDEO GAMES NEWS MEDIA
EUROPEAN CULTURES HAVE HISTORICALLY DIVIDED WORLD HAS BEEN DIVIDED INTO TWO CATEGORIES: Occidental The West The familiar Civilised and Sophisticated Intelligent and Peaceful Superior, Victorious and Dominant Explicable and Rational Oriental The East The other Uncivilised and Crude Barbaric and Violent Inferior Defeated and Submissive Mystical and Irrational
WHAT IS ORIENTALISM? Said argues that the orient is an idea that was invented by the Western consciousness. It is part of a historical miscategorisation of people from Africa, Asia and the Middle East by European academics, scholars, authors and political elites. It turns Eastern cultures into an other something that is different, that can be feared, that can be defeated without offending the other values we hold. The concept of the orient emerged as a means of justifying imperialism and colonisation. This understanding of the orient was not aimed at understanding the people or coexisting, but on how to conquer and subdue them.
ORIENTALISM, COLONISATION AND IMPERIALISM Europe came to define itself in relation to the orient: the orient was everything that Europe was not. If Europe is everything that is good, then the Orient is it s opposing force. It has been about the glory of conquering the East and as a means of justifying Western superiority over other cultures. As a concept, orientalism is closely tied to colonialism (the conquering, occupying and controlling of another country, populating it with settlers and exploiting it economically) and imperialism (extending a country s power and influence through many means, including colonisation, military force of economic power).
ORIENTALISM ON IDENTITY: EUROPE AND THE ORIENT European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self. A line is drawn between two continents. Europe is powerful and articulate; Asia is defeated and distant. Orientalism became a code by which Europe could interpret both itself and the Orient to itself.
WHOSE KNOWLEDGE? Said argues that Orientalism has always been more about the European cultures than the Eastern cultures: it is the story of the conquerors, not the conquered. The knowledge of the Oriental people is based on entirely generalisations: mythology, romanticised ideas, turning isolated observations into immutable law. This knowledge, in turn, becomes a means of dominating the colonised people and justifying the coloniser s actions and narrative. The Orientals become passive in this history they are objects to be studied, don t have any active role and lack their own voice.
ORIENTALISM ON KNOWLEDGE: HUMANISM VS ORIENTALISM there is a difference between knowledge of other peoples and other times that is the result of understanding, compassion, careful study and analysis for their own sakes, and on the other hand knowledge if that is what it is that is part of an overall campaign of selfaffirmation, belligerency and outright war. There is, after all, a profound difference between the will to understand for purposes of co-existence and humanistic enlargement of horizons, and the will to dominate for the purposes of control and external dominion.
ORIENTALISM AND STEREOTYPES Orientalism leads to misconceptions in the West: mass stereotyping, lack of knowledge of the differences between different countries, social groups, religious sects, time periods, etc. There are always huge problems when you attribute the one identity to a large group of diverse people. Because of this, Orientalism is also anti-humanist as it prevents people from viewing others as humans. People are robbed on their identity and individuality when they are viewed in this way.
ORIENTALISM AND IDENTITY: THE DANGERS OF STEREOTYPING the terrible reductive conflicts that herd people under falsely unifying rubrics like "America," "The West" or "Islam" and invent collective identities for large numbers of individuals who are actually quite diverse
THE EFFECT OF ORIENTALISM TODAY Orientalism continues to create fear towards the Eastern world. As a result, it validates and encourages Western intervention in the Middle East. It perpetuates ideas of Western cultural superiority while discouraging people from learning and understanding the true complexities of Eastern cultures. Orientalism continues to lead to the subjugation of Eastern cultures: in the past through being turned into colonies of Europe, and today through Western Imperialism, both military and economic. In many ways, Orientalism has led to many of the problems that the Middle East now faces: nations follow western-imposed boundaries; Western policies and interference either gave rise to or support the continued power of many of the dictatorships, etc.
ORIENTALISM AND CONFLICT Orientalism invariably leads to conflict. By creating an other, fear is also created, since this other is meant to represent everything we are not. When combined with mass-stereotyping and ignorance of these cultures, it makes it difficult to avoid or resolve conflicts. This fear and hatred can then be replicated. If people in the East are treated as the enemies of the West and the representation of everything the West is not, then this can be internalised. Stereotypes beget stereotypes. Through its connection with colonialism and imperialism, orientalism is also closely aligned with greed and the desire to gain power and control over others.
ORIENTALISM ON FEAR: AMERICA, ISLAM AND THE MEDIA Today, bookstores in the US are filled with shabby screeds bearing screaming headlines about Islam and terror, Islam exposed, the Arab threat and the Muslim menace, all of them written by political polemicists pretending to knowledge imparted to them and others by experts who have supposedly penetrated to the heart of these strange Oriental peoples over there who have been such a terrible thorn in "our" flesh. Accompanying such warmongering expertise have been the omnipresent CNNs and Foxs of this world, plus myriad numbers of evangelical and right-wing radio hosts, plus innumerable tabloids and even middle-brow journalists, all of them re-cycling the same unverifiable fictions and vast generalizations so as to stir up "America" against the foreign devil.
ORIENTALISM ON THE IRAQ WAR: THE WESTERN VIEW OF IRAQ Without a well-organized sense that these people over there were not like "us" and didn't appreciate "our" values, the very core of traditional Orientalist dogma, there would have been no war.
WHAT IS THE SOLUTION? Said, as a humanist, believes that we need to view people as humans first and foremost, and not be misled by imposed identities. We must instead seek understanding and knowledge and recognise our shared humanity The aim of all cultures must be to work towards coexisting, rather than trying to dominate the other. If we can do so, we will discover that there is much that all of these cultures can learn from each other. Rather than the manufactured clash of civilizations, we need to concentrate on the slow working together of cultures that overlap, borrow from each other, and live together in far more interesting ways than any abridged or inauthentic mode of under-standing can allow.