Edward said and the idea of 0reientalism

"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 for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts
concerning the Orient, its people, customs, ‘mind,’ destiny and so on.”

According to Said, Orientalism dates from the period of European Enlightenment and colonization of the
Arab World. Orientalism provided a rationalization for European colonialism based on a self-serving
history in which “the West” constructed “the East” as extremely different and inferior, and therefore in
need of Western intervention or “rescue”.

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, depict the Arab World as
an exotic and mysterious place of sand, harems and belly dancers, reflecting a long history of Orientalist
fantasies which have continued to permeate our contemporary popular culture.

France colonized Algeria from 1830 to 1962. From roughly 1900 to 1930, French entrepreneurs
produced postcards of Algerian women that were circulated in France. While Algerian women are
portrayed in these photographs as if the camera is capturing a real moment in their everyday lives, the
women are actually set up in the photographer’s studio. As demonstrated in Malek Alloula’s book, The
Colonial Harem, these photographs were circulated as evidence of the exotic, backwards and strange
customs of Algerians, when, in fact, they reveal more about the French colonial perspective than about
Algerian life in the early 1900s. This is an example of how Arab women have been exoticized and
eroticized for the pleasure of the European male voyeur, as these photographs make visible French
colonial fantasies of penetrating the harem and gaining access to Arab women’s private spaces.

Throughout the 20th century, Western stereotypes of the Arab World and Arab Americans moved from the elite
realms of art and literature into American popular culture. Over generalized images of Arabs have been
sustained through songs, television programs, films, consumer products, comic strips and national news media
reports.
The harmful influences of stereotypes depend not only on the repetition of distorted imagery, but also the
omission of diverse imagery. What is absent in American popular culture are the important images of Arabs and
Arab Americans who are business owners, family members, teachers, classmates, artists, engineers,
neighbors, and who have made lasting contributions to society.
Oriental Structures and Restructures
Edward Said traces the development of modern Orientalism by presenting a broadly
chronological description. He also attempts to trace it by describing a set of devices usually
common to the works of popular artists, poets, and scholars. Said presents a review of the French
and English traditions of the study of Muslim Near East during the 19th century and further up to
the world war I. For this purpose, his major focus is on the works of French Orientalists, such
as Sylvester de Sacy, and works of English Orientalists like Edward Lane’s Account of
the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836).

 Edward’s Said’s Ideas of Orientalism

One of Edward Said’s central ideas in Orientalism is that knowledge about the East is generated
not through actual facts, but through imagined constructs. These constructs imagined “Eastern”
societies as fundamentally similar and sharing the characteristics that are not possessed by
“Western” societies. Thus, this ‘a priori’ knowledge set up the Orient as the antithesis of the
West. Said argued that such knowledge is built through literary texts and historical records which
are often limited in terms of their understanding of the authenticity of life in the Middle East. 

Said also claimed a subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic people and
their culture. He further said that a long tradition of false and romanticized images of Asia and
the Middle East in Western culture has served as an implicit justification for Europe and
America’s colonial and imperial ambitions. Also, Said denounced the practice of Arab elites who
internalized the American and British orientalists’ ideas of Arabic culture. Although he restricted
his discussion to academic study of the history and culture of Middle Eastern Africa and Asia,
Said clearly asserted that “Orientalism is, and does not merely represent, a significant dimension
of modern political and intellectual culture.”

Orientalism and Domination

The theme that Said spent the most time developing and producing examples in Orientalism was
the idea that Orientalism was not the objective field of study it claimed to be. Rather, it created a
space in which justifications of the Occidental’s political and cultural domination could be
imposed on the Orient. He attempted to ‘show how Orientalism came into being as the doctrine
and corporate institution for exercising Western domination of the Orient.” The way in which the
Orientalists accomplished this was to brand what they termed as Orientals as essentially inferior
in culture and personhood to their European counterparts. The political powers picked up this
thread and used it to justify their colonial expansion.
Edward Said’s Major Claims In Orientalism
The four central claims that Said’s book makes are as follows:
 First, while Orientalism presents itself as an objective field of study, it was used to justify
the political domination of the East by the West.
 Secondly, Orientalism was actually more about defining itself through the mirror of the
East rather than it was about objectively studying it.

 Third, points one and two are produced and reinforced by viewing the Orient as a
homogenous group. This essentialist thinking was a false way of viewing people groups
and their culture. Edward Said also rejects the validity of the terms Orient and Occident.
Still, he employs them because this is how the argument has been framed by the
Orientalists.
 Lastly, the Orientalist scholars are the product of the system they come from. Due to this,
they can’t help but to misrepresent the ‘Other’. Therefore, what we need is for the
subaltern to speak for itself.