Edward said On Orientalism.

: Hina P.Chauhan
Sem: 3
Roll No. : 10
Batch: 2018-20
Enrollment No. : 2069108420190006
Paper No.  11, Postcolonial Literature.
Topic:   Edward said On Orientalism.

Email ID: hinachauhan36511@gmail.com
Submitted to: Smt.S.B.Gardi Department Of  English,M.K.Bhavnagar University.

 v Introduction:

Orientalism was published in 1978  and is written by Edward Said that is greatly influential and controversial in many fields as well as inpostcolonial studies.  Edward Said has successfully redefined the term “Orientalism” to mean a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the Middle East. Edward wadie Said was born on 1st November, 1935 and died on 5th September, 2003. He was Palestinian American literary theorist.  Let’s know something about Postcolonialism.

*What is Postcolonialism?

Post colonialism is the study of a culture after the physical and political withdrawal of an oppressive power. Post-colonialism mean after colonialism.

·       What is Occident?

The occident deals with the West countries (West means the countries of Europe, America, and France). Occident derives from the latin word Occidens. Occident means the hemisphere that includes North America and South America = New world or Western hemisphere.

·       What is Orient?

The orient almost a European invention had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experience. The term ‘Orient’ is derives from the Latin word ‘oriens’ is meaning ‘East’. Orient is depends on the logic of discourse. Orients are incapable of change they are static. Orients are incapable of change they are static.

The relationship between Orient and Occident and is a relationship of power and domination.

Ø What is Orientalism?

ü The country of the east especially East Asia.

ü Study of orient means a study of orients.

ü Old civilization with an old knowledge system.

ü Problem between White and Muslim people.

ü A story of Middle-East.

ü Strangers by the fortune of colors.

ü Identities are not made naturally.

ü Post Structuralism has changed way of thinking.

ü Subjective and objective process.

ü Orientalism is generally means to a mental exercise and mental archrival.

The “East” as differentiated from the “West”, which includes the Middle East, Near East, Central Asia, South Asia and the Far East, is today top of mind with news breaking in a stream of anxiety, fear, economic and political pressures, social conflict, unrest and war.

“The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic being, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences.”

The structure of orient is nothing more than a structure of lies or the myths which, were the truth about them to be told , would simply blow away.

Orientalism as a system of knowledge about Orient, an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness, just as that same investment multiplied indeed made truly productive the statements profiling out from Orientalism into the general culture.

Orientalism is widely considered a seminal and foundational text for postcolonial studies, a discipline that has expanded to consider not only political systems of hegemony and imperialism, but also power structures and relationships in philosophy, literature, the arts and other fields.

“Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between “the Orient” and  “the Occident.”

“Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the orient”.

In the Introduction part Said divided into three parts,

•      Chapter 1: The Scope of Orientalism

•      Chapter 2: Orientalist Structures and Restructures

•      Chapter 3: Orientalism now

•      The Scope of Orientalism

This chapter process two important points as given below.

ü Knowing the Oriental

ü Imaginative Geography and its Representation

Said delineates his argument with several caveats as to how it may be flawed. He States that it fails to include Russian Orientalism and explicitly excludes German Orientalism.

Their background is the trans-formation of the exacting, professional science of Orientalism, whose function in nineteenth-century culture had been the restoration to Europe of a lost portion of humanity, but which had become in the twentieth century both an instrument of policy and, more important, a code by which Europe could interpret both itself and the Orient to itself. (Said)

•      Orientalist Structures and Restructures

Structure of Orientalism is nothing more than a structure of lies or of myths.   In this section Said outlines how Orientalist discourse was move from Country to Country and Political leader to author. He advises that this discourse was set up as a foundation for all further study and discourse of the Orient by the occident. The construction of identity — for identity, whether of Orient or Occident, France or Britain, whiles obviously a repository of distinct collective experiences. Edward Said points the slight change on the attitude of the Europeans towards the Orientals.

·       Orientalism now

Orientalism can also express the strength of the West and the Orient’s weaknesses seen by West. Such strength and such weakness are as intrinsic to Orientalism as they are to any view that divides the world into large. General divisions, entities that Coexist in a state of tension produced by what is believed to be radical difference.

Academic points of  view that,  The interchange between the academic and the more or less imaginative meaning of orientalism is a constant one, and since the late eighteenth  century there has been a considerable, quite disciplined perhaps even regulated traffic between two.

In the first place it would be wrong to conclude that the orient was essentially an idea or a creation with no corresponding reality. A second qualification is that ideas, culture, and histories cannot seriously be understood or studied without their force, or more precisely their configuration of power, also being studied. 

§  The distinction between pure and political

Here Edward Said categorize the knowledge as,

         West is that it be non-political, that scholarly, academic, impartial. The Orientalism is not a mere political subject matter or field that is reflected passively by culture, scholarship, or institutions; or it is a representative and expressive of some nefarious “western” imperialist plot to hold down the “Oriental” world.

§  The methodological question

The Anglo-French-American experience of the Arab and Islam , which for almost a thousand years together stood for the Orient. Immediately upon doing that a large part of the Orient seemed to have been eliminated-India, Japan, china and other sections of the Far East- not because these regions were not important but because one could discuss Europe's experience of the Near Orient, or of Islam, apart from its experience of the Far Orient.

§  The personal dimension.

In the Prison Notebooks Gramsci says: “The starting point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and knows thyself as a product of the historical process to date…..” Much of the personal investment in this study derives from my awareness of being an “Oriental "as a child growing up in two British colonies.

Ø Conclusion

In short Orientalism is not just large collection of texts. It is not political subject matter. The corporate institution for dealing with the Orient. Dealing it by making statement about it, authority view of it, by teaching it, ruling over it.

Works Cited

Said, Edward. Orientalism. Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1977.