Author: Edward W. Said
Publisher: Vintage
Year: 1994
Orientalism by Edward Said is a
cononical text of cultural studies in which he has challenged the concept of
orientalism or the difference between east and west, as he puts it. He says that
with the start of European colonization the Europeans came in contact with the
lesser developed countries of the east. They found their civilization and
culture very exotic, and established the science of orientalism, which was the
study of the orientals or the people from these exotic civilization.
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 defined themselves as the
superior race compared to the orientals; and they justified their colonization
by this concept. They said that it was their duty towards the world to civilize
the uncivilized world. The main problem, however, arose when the Europeans
started generalizing the attributes they associated with orientals, and started
portraying these artificial characteristics associated with orientals in their
western world through their scientific reports, literary work, and other media
sources. What happened was that it created a certain image about the orientals
in the European mind and in doing that infused a bias in the European attitude
towards the orientals. This prejudice was also found in the orientalists
(scientist studying the orientals); and all their scientific research and
reports were under the influence of this. The generalized attributes associated
with the orientals can be seen even today, for example, the Arabs are defined as
uncivilized people; and Islam is seen as religion of the terrorist.
Here is a brief summary of the
book, followed by a critique by Malcolm Kerr.
Chapter 1: The Scope of
Orientalism
In this chapter, Edward Said
explains how the science of orientalism developed and how the orientals started
considering the orientals as non-human beings. The orientals divided the world
in to two parts by using the concept of ours and theirs. An imaginary
geographical line was drawn between what was ours and what was theirs. The
orients were regarded as uncivilized people; and the westerns said that since
they were the refined race it was their duty to civilize these people and in
order to achieve their goal, they had to colonize and rule the orients. They
said that the orients themselves were incapable of running their own government.
The Europeans also thought that they had the right to represent the orientals in
the west all by themselves. In doing so, they shaped the orientals the way they
perceived them or in other words they were orientalizing the orients. Various
teams have been sent to the east where the orientalits silently observed the
orientals by living with them; and every thing the orientals said and did was
recorded irrespective of its context, and projected to the civilized world of
the west. This resulted in the generalization. Whatever was seen by the
orientals was associated with the oriental culture, no matter if it is the
irrational action of an individual.
The most important use of
orientalism to the Europeans was that they defined themselves by defining the
orientals. For example, qualities such as lazy, irrational, uncivilized,
crudeness were related to the orientals, and automatically the Europeans became
active, rational, civilized, sophisticated. Thus, in order to achieve this goal,
it was very necessary for the orientalists to generalize the culture of the
orients.
Another feature of orientalism
was that the culture of the orientals was explained to the European audience by
linking them to the western culture, for example, Islam was made into
Mohammadism because Mohammad was the founder of this religion and since religion
of Christ was called Christianity; thus Islam should be called Mohammadism. The
point to be noted here is that no Muslim was aware of this terminology and this
was a completely western created term, and to which the Muslims had no say at
all.
Chapter 2: Orientalist Structures
and Restructures
In this chapter, Edward Said
points the slight change in the attitude of the Europeans towards the orientals.
The orientals were really publicized in the European world especially through
their literary work. Oriental land and behaviour was highly romanticized by the
European poets and writers and then presented to the western world. The
orientalists had made a stage strictly for the European viewers, and the orients
were presented to them with the colour of the orientalist or other writers
perception. In fact, the orient lands were so highly romanticized that western
literary writers found it necessary to offer pilgrimage to these exotic lands of
pure sun light and clean oceans in order to experience peace of mind, and
inspiration for their writing. The east was now perceived by the orientalist as
a place of pure human culture with no necessary evil in the society. Actually it
was this purity of the orientals that made them inferior to the clever, witty,
diplomatic, far-sighted European; thus it was their right to rule and study such
an innocent race. The Europeans said that these people were too naive to deal
with the cruel world, and that they needed the European fatherly role to assist
them.
Another justification the
Europeans gave to their colonization was that they were meant to rule the
orientals since they have developed sooner than the orientals as a nation, which
shows that they were biologically superior, and secondly it were the Europeans
who discovered the orients not the orients who discovered the Europeans.
Darwin’s theories were put forward to justify their superiority, biologically by
the Europeans.
In this chapter, Edward Said also
explains how the two most renowned orientalists of the 19th century, namely
Silvestre de Sacy and Ernest Renan worked and gave orienatlism a new dimension.
In fact, Edward Said compliments the contribution made by Sacy in the field. He
says that Sacy organized the whole thing by arranging the information in such a
way that it was also useful for the future orientalist. And secondly, the
prejudice that was inherited by every orientalist was considerably low in him.
On the other hand, Renan who took advantage of Sacy’s work was as biased as any
previous orientalist. He believed that the science of orientalism and the
science of philology have a very important relation; and after Renan this idea
was given a lot attention and many future orientalists worked of in its line.
Chapter 3 : Orientalism Now
This chapter starts off by
telling us that how the geography of the world was shaped by the colonization of
the Europeans. There was a quest for geographical knowledge which formed the
bases of orientalism.
The author then talks about the
changing circumstances of the world politics and changing approach to
orientalism in the 20th century. The main difference was that where the earlier
orientalists were more of silent observers the new orientalists took a part in
the every day life of the orients. The earlier orientalists did not interact a
lot with the orients, whereas the new orients lived with them as if they were
one of them. This wasn’t out of appreciation of their lifestyle but was to know
more about the orients in order to rule them properly. Lawrence of Arabia was
one of such orienatlists.
Then Edward Said goes on to talk
about two other scholars Massignon and Gibb. Though Massignon was a bit liberal
with orientalists and often tried to protect their rights, there was still
inherited biased found in him for the orientals, which can be seen in his work.
With the changing world situation especially after World War 1, orientalism took
a more liberal stance towards most of its subjects; but Islamic orientalism did
not enjoy this status. There were constant attacks to show Islam as a weak
religion, and a mixture of many religions and thoughts. Gibb was the most famous
Islamic orientalist of this time.
After World War 1 the centre of
orientalism moved from Europe to USA. One important transformation that took
place during this time was instances of relating it to philology and it was
related to social science now. All the orientalists studied the orientals to
assist their government to come up with policies for dealing with the orient
countries. With the end of World War 2, all the Europeans colonies were lost;
and it was believed that there were no more orientals and occidents, but this
was surely not the case. Western prejudice towards eastern countries was still
very explicit, and often they managed to generalize most of the eastern
countries because of it. For example Arabs were often represented as cruel and
violent people. Japanese were always associated with karate where as the Muslims
were always considered to be terrorists. Thus, this goes on to show that even
with increasing globalization and awareness, such bias was found in the people
of the developed countries.
Edward Said concludes his book by
saying that he is not saying that the orientalists should not make
generalization, or they should include the orient perspective too, but creating
a boundary at the first place is something which should not be done.
Malcolm Kerr’s review on
Orientalism
Malcolm Kerr did his
specialization in International Relations and specialized in the Middle East
from Princeton University. He worked on his PhD thesis with Gibb, and spent two
years with him in Cambridge University.
Malcolm’s review on Orientalism can be concluded by his following remarks, “This
book reminds me of the television program “Athletes in Action,” in which
professional football players compete in swimming, and so forth. Edward Said, a
literary critic loaded with talent, has certainly made a splash, but with this
sort of effort he is not going to win any major race. This is a great pity, for
it is a book that in principle needed to be written, and for which the author
possessed rich material. In the end, however, the effort misfired. The book
contains many excellent sections and scores many telling points, but it is
spoiled by overzealous prosecutorial argument in which Professor Said, in his
eagerness to spin too large a web, leaps at conclusions and tries to throw
everything but the kitchen sink into a preconceived frame of analysis. In
charging the entire tradition of European and American Oriental studies with the
sins of reductionism and caricature, he commits precisely the same error”.
He further goes on to say “The list of victims of Said’s passion is a long one,
too long to examine in detail. Some of them deserve it: he has justly taken the
measure of Ernest Renan. Some others are probably not worth it. One wonders why
he is so ready to lump nineteenth-century travellers with professional
philologists; why he found it necessary to twist the empathy of Sylvain Levi for
colonized peoples into an alleged racism (pp. 248-250), or to dismiss the
brilliance of Richard Burton as being overshadowed by a mentality of Western
domination of the east (p. 197); why he condemns Massignon for his heterodoxy,
and Gibb for his orthodoxy; or why he did not distinguish between Bernard
Lewis’s recent polemics on modern politics and his much more important corpus of
scholarship on the history of Islamic society and culture. For those who knew
Gustave von Grunebaum and were aware of his scholarly genius and his deep
attraction to Islamic culture in all its ramifications, Said’s exercise in
character assassination (pp. 296-298) can only cause deep dismay. Suffice it to
say that von Grunebaum’s view of Islamic culture as “antihumanist” was a serious
proposition, and in fact not an unsympathetic one, denounced but not rebutted by
Said, who seems not to recognize the difference between an antihumanist culture
and an inhumane one. He might have done well to note that Abdallah Laroui, whose
penetrating criticism of von Grunebaum’s work he invokes, earned thereby an
invitation from von Grunebaum to teach at UCLA”.
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