CHAPTER ONE: Orientalism: The Making of the Other

Author(s): Shehla Burney

Source: Counterpoints , 2012, Vol. 417, PEDAGOGY of the Other: Edward Said,
Postcolonial Theory, and Strategies for Critique (2012), pp. 23-39
Published by: Peter Lang AG

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42981698

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Counterpoints

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 CHAPTER ONE

Orientalism

The Making of the Other

Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for deal-
ing with the Orient - dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing
views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short. Orien-
talism as a western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority
over the Orient (0, p. 3)

Edward Said's groundbreaking critical work Orientalism (1978) is widely

acknowledged as the cornerstone of what has evolved into a multifaceted
and diverse conceptual framework known as 'postcolonial theory.' Oriental-
ism questions the very foundations of Western representation and the social
construction of the 'Orient' as the ultimate Other in history, literature, art,
music, and popular culture. The publication of Orientalism created a stir,
causing a huge impact on the humanities and social sciences that has influ-
enced academic scholarship in diverse disciplines, from Literary Studies,
Anthropology, Cultural Studies, History, and Politics to Women's Studies,
Media Studies, Native Studies, and Fine Arts. It has changed the way of see-
ing the Orient or the East, creating what can actually be called a 'paradigm
shifť in our ways of seeing and knowing. Orientalism sheds light on the un-
derlying structures of power, knowledge, hegemony, culture, and imperial-
ism that have been historically embedded in what Said has called "colonial
discourse" - a discourse that presents the Orient as Other. Orientalism as a
practice, according to Said, is a "systematic discipline [my emphasis] by
which European culture was able to manage - and even produce - the Ori-
ent politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and
imaginatively during the post Enlightenment period" (0, p. 3). In other
words, Said argues that Orientalism is a built-in system or method by which
the West not only socially constructed and actually produced the Orient, but
controlled and managed it through a hegemony of power relations, working
through the tropes, images, and representations of literature, art, visual
media, film, and travel writing, among other aspects of cultural and political
appropriation. Said contends that 'the Orient' is a European invention. He
distinguishes between the Orient (The Other or the East) and the Occident
(the West - mainly Britain and France, because of their massive colonial

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 24

empires - from the b

World War II, and th
East and the West ha
as binary oppositions
The major contribut
the Orient was create
the structures of pow
were historically em
domination of the Ot
binary opposition, th
imperialism not only
identity, (hi)story, cu
ent was an iconic ima
blance to actual live
discourse were compl
the Middle East. The
tropes of knowledge
Said explains in simpl

My Idea is that European

according to some of the
but that it was the cult
along with brute politic
the varied and complica
talism. (0, p. 12)

Said's central thesis

and culture of the Or
military interest in c
the seas in search of
interest in culture th
eventual colonization of the Orient.

In His Own Words

As mentioned earlier, Said is his own best spokesperson, in that he writes

with grace and simplicity in a lucid style, unlike present-day theorists who
indulge in creating an elitist discourse based on exclusive terminology that
is accessible only to the initiated few. Moreover, in order to understand the

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Orientalism 25

complexity of O
so much has be
befuddled and co
talism's publicat
acclamation of t
points. Said itera
political phenom
plot" to dominat
awareness into
philological text
tinction (the wo
but also a whole
tains" (0, p. 12).
Such vested int
tography, trade,
priation of geo
century, to the
which construc
psychological an
tion of the colon
building up of E
by the Orientali
to govern the Ot
concrete examp
sources as well a
lological texts. T
at length in this b
Orientalism is d
lishes
the expans
two centuries; it
tiquity" to the p
tain ideas crea
"Oriental splend
critiques these r
second part, "Or
of eighteenth-c
Renan to show t

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 26

through tropes, tra

already" (to use a De
This knowledge of th
to establish an imperi
ism," throws light on
ported to America an
Throughout the writ
perialism is establis
which the Orient is "
covery and practice"
tions on contradiction
constructed between
see the Orient as a co
tion, linked to colon
comprehensively and
Orientalism, which h
accepted fact

'Orientalizing' the Orient

Orientalism, then, is a complex web of Western representations of the Ori-

ent Said reiterates his main argument that the "Orient was created - or,
rather as I call it orientalized" (0, p. 5) by a hegemonic process that robbed
it of its true identity, voice, and indigenous culture. This imagined reality
was substituted with pictures, perceptions, and perspectives derived from
what I like to call the "Western gaze' or a hegemonic Eurocentric perspec-
tive. This Western gaze, not unlike the deadly "male gaze" in feminist the-
ory, subjectifies and objectifies all that it sees in its own image, through its
own colored lenses, and from its own position of power. As Said says, "The
main thing for a European visitor was a European representation of the Ori-
ent" (0, p. 1). Indeed, Orientalism views the Orient through its own vested
interests, from its own vantage point, with an imperial Eurocentric perspec-
tive. In a sharp and penetrating critique of the systemic and systematic ob-
jectification of the Orient by the Occident, Said states:

Under the general heading of knowledge of the Orient, and within the umbrella
of Western hegemony over the Orient during the period from the end of the
eighteenth century, there emerged a complex Orient suitable for study in the
academy, for display in the museum, for reconstruction in the colonial office,

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 Orientalism

for theoretica
historical thes
nomic and soc
ity, national or

These are th
Orientalizing
of its charact
culture, relig

'Imaginative

Orientalism,
of the Orient
raphers, trav
it is more th
Foucault's no
ism. Foucaul
which the wo
in society con
disciplines, a
ism - the heg
pert Orienta
entrenched in written and oral texts. Foucault's theories of discourse and

his view that representations and discursive formations are influenced by

systems of power is a central argument in Orientalism. Said had engaged
with Foucault's work in depth between 1972 and 1986, but over the years
he had become skeptical of Foucault's notion of power, as it did not lead to
action, unlike Gramsci, who believed in the application of theoiy into ac-
tions. Foucault's writings reject any possibility of direct transition from his
methodological analysis to action. Moreover, Foucault's ideas often seem to
deny the possibility of resistance, which Said develops towards the end of
Orientalism and, later, more deeply in Culture and Imperialism (1993). Some
early critics found fault with Said for basing his arguments on both Foucault
and Gramsci - poststructuralism and Western Marxism - but others con-
tended that Said used both theorists in ingenious ways to create a powerful
theoretical concept This is Said's genius - he thinks beyond binaries, bor-
ders, and disciplines, deploying "commonsense" theory, or theory that can
be applied rather than just theorized. Whatever methodological inconsis-

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28

tencies Said may have

the work have now
monumental critique,
and cultural questions
Said's argument is t
"positional superiorit
close ties to the enabl
Commenting on Gra
identity ("us") is deem
and cultures, "reiter
ness" (0, p. 7). Deplo
French, English, Arab
and historians, Said b
indiscourse by revea
Orient, in academic
vast canvas of susta
from literary works,
has never been as su
Said's thesis. Using a
discipline, Said reite
referentiality to the
any references to act
discourse that builds
conceptions that have
is an imaginary pheno
tuals, artists, comme
ing a wide range of a

The choice of Oriental

Mandeville, by Shakespe
East, geographically, mo
tal personality, an Orie
an Oriental mode of pr

Said is implying th
cause of its consistent
of English Literature
the centuries of colon
note certain concepts

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Orientalism

classical lite
The word c
signifies ste
exotic, stati
nary opposi
tional, civili
In semiotic
meanings an
pants in th
Things (1970
all those wh
by an act of
per se, unles
erent The sig
ture and con
works like
iconicized Or
ference of th

The Orient is
contestant, a
addition the
ing image, ide

That is, the

gies that are
yet another
trace by tra
cultural disc
sedimented
technologica
self-referen
ated through
reality of the

Appropriatio

The subjugat
enced by co

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jSO

voiced, represented, d
tations of the Orient,
or Occidental experts
writers, artists, and t
"pioneers," and "disco
history and celebrate
that most explorers a
For instance, it has be
'sherpa' Tenzing Nor
Mount Everest, thoug
altern sherpa/servan
guide, he was possibly
of Everest It is Sir Ed
of the highest mount
with the passing of ti
reach the summit (Th
chapters three and s
peoples of the world
honor of discovering
Western traveler. The
had long existed and
them long ago does n
originates from the p
nizer sees the colonize
which its history begi
Fanon to explain the n

The settler makes histo

stantly refers to the his
himself is the extension
writes is not the history
own nation in regard to
(Quoted in C&I, p. 270)

Fanon, who firmly be

from the point in tim
Fanon's work has been
ism and its impact on
substantial political ch

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 Orientalism

However, d
temporary a
gotten in m
politics still
the nineteen
the stormy
considered
honor is be
helped to bu
that one Chi
tions have g
deed a form
Other. In Ce
tionalities p
ish, Scottish
Eurocentric,
revealing th
worthy tha
show how w
tric perspec
way of seein
priating an
history, arc
ments sardo
(0, p. 263).

The Power to Name

The question that Said seems to be posing, put simply, is "Who has the
power to name?" It was the privilege of the Orientalist to represent the
images, scholarship, knowledge, and descriptions of the Orient. As a result
of colonial domination, the voice of the indigenous person - the disem-
powered Oriental - had been appropriated by the educated and trained
Orientalist, whose travel writing and critiques built the sources upon
which notions of the Orient were not only constructed but perpetuated
throughout history. Said reinforces the point that it is the Western-
establishment Orientalist who has the power to name and the privilege to
represent the Oriental:

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32

Because he feels himself

the Orientalist not onl
each aspect of Oriental o
other geographical half

Said critiques this O

trenched concept tha
the Other. He suggest
ordained systematic
manage and produce t
Said's notions have
tional, stereotypical,
East/West binaries. H
truth to power," of s
subjectification, go d
critics, contends tha
Eastern scholars but w
decade or so before th
explored by various w
(1965) by the Syrian
sian historian and ph
ments about the rep
the Malaysian sociolo
Myth of the Lazy N
constructed the imag
teenth century to th
the ideology of colon
have much impact on
cause of the very poi
subaltern voice of th
communication, whic
3) the politics of loca
were situated outside
writing in English, an
ern scholarship. Said's
not only because of S
Comparative Literatu
worlds of the East a

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 Orientalism

scholarship
many critics
use of a wid
poststructur
nial discour
mented, an
factors, I fi
rather mean

Feminization of the Orient

At the opening of Orientalism, Said raises the issue of the feminization of the
Orient by citing the relationship between Flaubert and an Egyptian courte-
san. This encounter, Said suggests, "produced a widely influential model of
the Oriental woman":

She never spoke of herself, she never represented her emotions, presence or
history. He spoke for and represented her. He was foreign, comparatively
wealthy, male, and these were historical facts of domination that allowed him
not only to possess Kuchuk Hanem physically but to speak for her and tell his
readers in what way she was "typically Oriental." My argument is that
Flaubert's situation of strength in relation to Kuchuk Hanem was not an iso-
lated instance. It fairly stands for the pattern of relative strength between East
and West and the discourse about the Orient that it enabled. (0, p. 6)

Kuchuk Hanem personified for Flaubert the exotic, erotic, and sensual, self-
sufficient Oriental woman, the Other, who appeared in many of his novels in
various forms. The Orient represented desire, color, sensuality, and femi-
nine sexuality: "Woven through all of Flaubert's Oriental experiences, excit-
ing or disappointing, is an almost uniform association between the Orient
and sex" (0, p. 188). The Orient is the charming seducer, the feminine per-
sona, who never speaks but is spoken for, just like in Kuchuk Hanem and
Flaubert's relationship. Here Said makes a crucial point about the East/West
divide with reference to gender:

One can explain such statements by recognizing that a still more implicit and
powerful difference posited by the Orientalist as against the Oriental is that the
former writes about, whereas the latter is written about. For the latter passivity
is the presumed role; for the former, the power to observe, study, and so forth;
as Roland Barthes has said a myth can invent itself ceaselessly. (0, p. 308)

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 34

Despite the energy of

out about the Orient,
into place of themsel
the Orient also figures
India. Though 1 can p
writing in fiction, the
universally and typica
terious, sensual and se
In this typical form o
try, becomes the main
eler's gaze.
Said has been criticized by some critics, once again by Aijaz Ahmad
(1992) and others, for not using gender as a theme in Orientalism. However,
historically there are hardly any women Orientalists or Orientalist works by
women, so it is a fairly moot point Moreover, Said feels that in any relation-
ship between the rulers and the ruled, race precedes gender and class as a
category. He also states that the problem of emphasis and relative importance
took precedence in his overview of Orientalism. As he writes, "Latent Orien-
talism also encouraged a peculiarly (not to say invidiously) male conception
of the world....The Oriental male was considered in isolation from the total
community in which he lived.. ..Orientalism itself, furthermore, was an exclu-
sively male province; like so many professional guilds during the modern pe-
riod, it viewed itself and its subject matter with sexist blinders. This is
especially evident in the writing of travelers and novelists: women are usually
the creatures of a male power-fantasy. They express unlimited sensuality,
they are more or less stupid, and above all they are willing. Flaubert's Kuchuk
Hanem is the prototype of such caricatures" (0, p. 207). His point that
Flaubert's prototype of the Oriental woman described the whole relationship
of power between the East and the West is very insightful, showing categori-
cally that Said was indeed conscious of gender in Orientalism-, he could not
address it more deeply because of the massive scope of the book, which liter-
ally covers a period of textual/colonial discourse from the fifteenth century to
the present time. In this light, the criticism over non-use of gender seems
rather self-centered and de-contextualized. Said's own description of the
range of Orientalism reveals the immense proportions of the work:

To speak of Orientalism therefore is to speak mainly, though not exclusively, of

a British and French cultural enterprise, a project whose dimensions take in

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 Orientalism

such disparat
vant, the Bib
and a long tr
innumerable
plex array of
domesticated
definitely. (0,

Never the Twain Shall Meet

It is evident that in discussing the example of Kuchuk Hanem and Flaubert,

Said is revealing the absolute opposite attributes of the East and West, the
binary oppositions that define the two halves of the globe, the Orient and the
Occident Early in the book, he defines the binary relationship categorically
after explaining that for Britain and France, the Orient is the Middle East, "ad-
jacent" to Europe, but for America, historically the Orient is the "Far East":

European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the
Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self. (0, p. 3)

Kipling's celebrated lines, "East is East and West is West / And never the
twain shall meet" - define the entrenched colonial attitudes that still pre-
vail. According to Said, however (putting it simplistically) the East is East
and the West is West but the two are symbiotically "intertwined" and "in-
terdependent." This position of the interdependent history and culture of
the Orient/Occident stands against the 'Orientalized' Orient where the
reader gets to the Orient through "the grids and codes provided by the Ori-
entalist" (0, p. 67). In other words, the Orient is Orientalized through a
"process that forces the uninitiated Western reader" to accept "Orientalist
codifications" as "the true Orient" (0, p. 67). For Said the Orient and Occi-
dent are "man-made" [sic]:

As much as the West itself the Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradi-
tion of thought, imagery, vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in
and for the West The two geographical entities thus support and to an extent
reflect each other. (0, p. 5)

The ambivalent love-hate relationship of the colonizer/colonized is dis-

cussed later, but the point that Said makes here about mutual support and
interdependence of the Orient/Occident is deconstructionist - that the bi-
naries break down, reflecting each other. However, one of the most interest-

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36

ing points that Said r

could not exist withou
could write a definiti
tage point of exile in
life; it has both a pe
been further discusse

Colonial Discourse Th

One of Said's major c

'colonial discourse/ w
to point out the trop
tives. Said's extensive
known as colonial dis
signs and codes that
within colonial relat
of power, denigration
texts. The technique
Said uses to elucidat
underlying structur
postcolonial theory.
the traces and trop
meaning. As Kennedy
nial discourse analyse
to colonialism has rec
to be taken seriously
terms of colonialist
trends were brought
strategies are now be

Travel Writing

The critique of travel

that Said initiated wit
Said's colonial discour
logues and tales, whic
explorations of travel
in diverse ways. One
Travel Writing and T

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Orientalism

quiry of trav
She also cons
starting poin
some new co
women's trav
go deeper in
touching upo
does not ackn
nedy to poin
does not men
without the
ingly, Said n
but also calls

Orientalism

With the bu
scientific an
ence of langu
the first tim
language, pow
do with Em
Europe and
1700s, it gen
and cultures
later develop
ogy, establis
ward raciali
despite the d
In 1786, San
be an Indo-A
guages, by W
Bengal in Bri
gate the rel
statement cr

The Sanskrit l
perfect than t
fined than eit

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38

roots of verbs, and in

produced by accident (C

What Jones had unc

lost mother tongue
language that led to t
Russia, and the Middl
guistics to fill in all t
skrit and Latin. The oldest form of Indian is Sanskrit The earliest

documents in archaic language are the religious texts known as Vedas,

ing from 1000 BC. The term 'Aiyan' became significant in 1819, as the
pean tribes that had come down through the Himalayan Passes a
1000 BC and settled in the fertile northern plains of India were called
Aryans. 'Arya' in Sanskrit means 'noble' and still exists in the language,
found as a last name. The Vedic Sanskrit of 1000 bc was followed by C
cal Sanskrit of the fourth century BC, which "remained in use as a le
literary medium down to 1835 when Macaulay's Minute inaugurat
era of English" (Lockwood, 1969, p. 34). Macaulay's Minute to Parliame
Indian education (1835) is famous for its denigration of Sanskrit and a
literatures of India while establishing the supremacy of the Englis
guage. This Minute is cited by Said (O, p. 152) to show the Orientalist
tion of the basic supremacy of the West over the East, linguistical
culturally. It is ironic that within just a hundred years of colonial Bri
rule, and despite the designation of Sanskrit as the purest and fin
Germanic languages with its roots reflected in all the Indo-Europea
guages, Macaulay would denigrate Sanskrit, the ancient language o
learned Vedas and the rich modern Indian languages and literatu
"childish and unsuitable for study" (see Curtin, 1971, pp. 178-91 fo
complete text of McCauley's Minute). This crucial question of Mac
colonial attitude toward Indian scholarship, and his direct words, a
cussed later in some depth in chapter five.
Freidrich Schlegel's (1772-1829) linguistic research had popula
the notion of the Aryan race, which historically became the theme of
cious nationalism in Germany. Schlegel suggested that the German lan
and not the French, stood in unbroken continuity with ancient Sanskri
the German Romanticists, Sanskrit, the oldest surviving Indo-Europea
guage, led to romanticizing India in a way that stood in marked contr
the Orientalist clichés of the time. For him, the link between Sanskri

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 Orientalism

German mad
been criticize
tones of Ger
and German
the horror o
notion that
Iranian or A
the inverted
India as a dec
word 'Aryan
the political
guage that o
has tonal inflexions and intonations similar to German.

This endorses Said's point that it is the interest in culture that eventu-
ally leads to conquest. Said also acknowledges that the origins of Oriental-
ism were philological, which racialized the Oriental subject and endorsed a
built-in sense of European superiority, so that neither Macaulay nor Renan
nor other Orientalists had any hesitation in denigrating the Oriental lan-
guage, literature, culture, and religion as inferior. This is the power of em-
pire and colonialism, as Said suggests, and it can destroy the cultural
identity, language, and land of the colonized Other through the practice and
power of Orientalism.
Indeed, the impact of Orientalism and its critique of representation and
discourse analysis cannot be denied. It has established Said as a leading
theorist of the present age and as a leading scholar of postcolonialism. After
Orientalism Said further developed his seminal theory about the intrinsic
relationship between culture and colonial domination in his later works,
The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983) and Culture and Imperialism
(1993), which are discussed in depth in later chapters. The next chapter,
however, will focus on the developments and innovations in theoretical
perspectives on postcolonialism which in/form contemporary postcolonial
critique. First, I shall discuss postcolonial theory in general as it emerged
from Said and Frantz Fanon's work, and then elaborate on the contributions
of Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha to the development of conceptual
frameworks in postcolonialism.

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