A Summary of “Orientalism” by Edward Said (1978) Ibrahim Al Huri

A Summary of “Orientalism” by Edward Said (1978)

About the Author
Edward Said was an American writer and a professor of Palestinian
origin. He was born in Palestine in 1935 and died in 2003. He was a
professor of English and comparative literature at Colombia university. He
was an American through his father.
Said was best known for his famous book ‘Orientalism’ in which he
redefined the term Orientalism to mean the study of the Eastern culture from
the Western perspectives, or how the West represents the East. For many
scholars, Said’s book marks the beginning of the postcolonial studies.
Said spent his life investigating the imaginary line that divides the
East and the West. His book Orientalism has been translated into 25
languages. He was intellectually active until the last months of his life. He
died of leukemia in 2003.

The Summary
Orientalism by Edward Said is a cultural study in which he has
challenged the concept of Orientalism. In other words, he redefined the term
of Orientalism to mean simply the difference between East and West.
According to Said, “Orientalism” is “a style of thought based upon an
ontological and epistemological distinction made between the orient and the
occident”.

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A Summary of “Orientalism” by Edward Said (1978) Ibrahim Al Huri

Orientalism is also defined as the biased perspective through which

Westerners view languages, lifestyles, art, cultures, values and attitudes of
the East, particularly the Middle East and North Africa. This term is also
used to describe the attitudes of the 19thcentury intellectuals who depicted
their travels to these regions in art and literature, particularly works done by
British and French writers and artists.
Edward Said initially defined Orientalism at three levels:
 Orientalism as an academic discipline, including anyone
who writes and teaches about the orient:
He wrote:
The most readily accepted designation for Orientalism is an
academic one, and indeed the label still serves in a number of
academic institutions. Anyone who teaches, writes about, or
researches the Orient—and this applies whether the person is an
anthropologist, sociologist, historian, or philologist—either in its
specific or its general aspects, is an Orientalist, and what he or she
does is Orientalism.(Said,1995:2)

 Orientalism as a set of thoughts, concepts, and ideas:

He regarded Western Orientalism as “a style of thought based
upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made
between the orient and the occident”.
 As a practical action done over the orient politically,
ideologically, militarily and scientifically:
Said regarded this kind of Orientalism as “a Western style for
dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient”.

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A Summary of “Orientalism” by Edward Said (1978) Ibrahim Al Huri

According to Said, the West has created a dichotomy between the

actuality of the East and the occident’s romantic notion of the orient.
McCarter in his comment on Said’s Orientalism mentions that the people of
the East or “orient” are seen through the lens of prejudice and racism.
Orientalism tells the westerners that these people who live in the “orient” are
backward, uncivilized, uneducated and unaware of their history and culture.
In his essay ‘Orientalism in India’, Jukka states that the Orientals have been
seen by the orientalists and thus by the Occident as problems, not as citizens.
In this regard, Said explained to what extent the orientalists have been
ethnocentric and reflect cultural bias. He said, “since the oriental was a
member of a subject race, he had to be subjected” (Said, 1995:207). For the
West, all these factors were enough reasons to create a culture and a history
of the East in order to be civilized, educated and able to understand their life
in a much better manner. This discourse justified the colonization to have the
hegemony and dominance over the orient. Their implicit discourse said that
the Orients cannot even manage their own life, so they should be colonized
to get a better manner of life and to be more enlightened.
Edward Said stated that Orientalism was not just misrepresentations
of the orient in Europe, but it created a body of theory and practice in which
there has been a considerable material investment. In addition, Said
indicated to the fact that the orient played an essential role in constructing
the European culture as a distinctive culture and civilization. He said, “the
orient has helped to define Europe (or the west) as its contrasting image,
idea, personality, experience”. He added that “the orient is an integral part
of European material civilization and culture”. Said here alluded to the
cultural exploitation made by the West, and that the Orient civilization was

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A Summary of “Orientalism” by Edward Said (1978) Ibrahim Al Huri

the main source of the West civilization and culture. He argued that “the
orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it’s also the place of Europe’s
greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and
languages, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the
other.”(Said, 1995:1)
Said argues that the term of ‘orient’ may not actually for the people in
the Near and the Far East, it exists for the people in the west because it is
socially constructed in the western minds through learning and education.
Said regarded this term as a mirror of what the West says as other. Said sees
the oriental as being a person who is represented by the system of
knowledge, and that is what is called Orientalism. This misrepresentation of
the Orientals in the westerns’ minds inevitably has led to stereotypes.
Accordingly, the Orientals have been depicted as barbarian, savage,
dangerous, and sensual people. In this context, Said posited that the
Europeans defined themselves by defining the Orientals. For example,
qualities such lazy, irrational, uncivilized, crudeness were related to the
Orientals, and automatically the Europeans became active, rational, civilized
and sophisticated, for this reason, the Europeans stereotype and generalize
the culture of the orients. The oriental women were depicted as harem girls,
belly dancers, and oppressed beings. The Arabs were also stereotyped as
either oil suppliers or terrorists.
Another manifestation of Orientalism was that the cultures of oriental
were explained to the Europeans by linking them to the western culture. In
his essay ‘Introduction to Edward Said’s Orientalism’, Haroon Khalid shows
that Orientalism has made Islam into Mohammedism because Mohammad
was the founder of this religion, and since the religion of Christ was called

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A Summary of “Orientalism” by Edward Said (1978) Ibrahim Al Huri

Christianity, thus Islam should be called Mohammedism. None of the

Muslim community knows about this terminology, and this term was
completely western invention and came as a result of the frequent and
constant missions of the missionaries. In his article “Islam and Orientalism”
Syed Alim Ashraf, makes no big difference between Orientalism and
missionaries. He mentions that “although the aims and objectives of
orientalism are similar to that of missionaries, the main difference between
them is that missionaries concentrate on general people, while Orientalism
targets intellectuals”.
In his discussion about the type of writing about the orient namely the
travel pilgrimage writing, Said differentiated between French and British
writings. From one hand, the British wrote about Egypt, Syria, and Turkey.
Their writings were in the realm of political issues. On the other hand, most
of the French writings were colored by the feel of the big loss in the Orient.
Latent and Manifest Orientalism
Said discussed two types of Orientalism, latent and manifest
Orientalism. According to Said, the “almost unconscious (and certainly
untouchable) positivity” is latent while “the variously stated views about
oriental society, language, literature, history, sociology, and so forth” is
manifest Orientalism. Said explained that latent Orientalism refers to
cultural differences which couldn’t be easily seen or identified by western
attitudes, such as the manner of speaking and thoughts. This manner of
speaking and thoughts are mainly responsible for stereotyping and
representing the orient as inferior and uninterested in development and
technology as the Occident. Most of these views, as Said stated, were taken
from comparing their technological progress to the status of the East. In his

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A Summary of “Orientalism” by Edward Said (1978) Ibrahim Al Huri

article “Latent Orientalism ”Iverson shows that latent Orientalism

“represents the constellation of underlying attitudes and assumptions about
the Orient which have remained essentially constant and unchanging
through the years”.
On the other hand, manifest Orientalism deals with the obvious and
noticeable features of eastern culture such as, the way of clothing,
architecture, and art as well as the other things which could be seen by the
west and interpreted to mean opposite and strange culture.
In the last chapter of his book, Edward Said argued that the
manifestations of Orientalism still exist with only a main difference in which
the British and French role was replaced by the American’s Orientalism. He
mentioned that “West/East” binarism is now commonly referred to as
“Advanced/Backward” binarism.
Conclusion
Finally, we can conclude that Orientalism was that tool which paved
the road for the Europeans to expand their empires in the orient and exploit
the oriental pure cultural resources to construct their civilization, language,
and culture. In addition, Edward Said’s book ‘Orientalism’ could be
regarded as a groundbreaking book and important source for all those who
are interested in cultural and postcolonial studies.

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A Summary of “Orientalism” by Edward Said (1978) Ibrahim Al Huri