Edward Said\'s Orientalism Edward Said\'s

EDWARD SAID'S ORIENTALISM

Edward Said's "Orientalism" tackles the question of East and West divide in the framework of western discourse. He realizes that in order to establish the superiority of western ideology, western discourse illustrated an irrelevant and rather unrealistic picture of the "Other." This 'Other' was termed as Orient or the Oriental and the culture that it subscribed was referred to as Orientalism. The creation of this 'other' was critical for accentuating the superiority of the west. And hence Said believes that Orient has not been depicted as it really was but was made to fit the so-called Oriental picture by means of western manipulation and fabrication. This is what was meant by his statement that, "Orient was Orientalized not only because it was discovered to be "Oriental" in all those ways considered common-place by an average nineteenth-century European, but also because it could be that is, submitted to being-made Oriental." (p. 5-6)

Said doesn't create his own version of the 'Orient' either. He refuses to subject Arabs and the entire Muslim community (which is his main subject as Orient) to a western definition of the Orient. He cannot bring himself to encapsulate a diverse, alive, ever-evolving community into west's narrowly constructed picture of the 'Other'. In fact Said doesn't have a real Orient picture because he doesn't want to succumb to western idea of what an Orient should be like. Western thinkers and writers never had a picture of what the real Orient was; they just had an idea of how this Orient was supposed to be like in behavior, characteristics, relationships etc. They thus constructed a poor, inferior and almost demeaning though oft-times an exotic vision of the Orient and tried to herald all Arabs into that vision. The result was a highly mythical and completely distorted picture of the Arab community which only helped the west maintain its supremacy by showing that the 'other' was an inferior alter ego. In one of his lectures, Said chastised the west for its purposeful distortion of the truth about the Orient: "I should say again that I have no "real" Orient to argue for. I do, however, have a very high regard for the powers and gifts of the peoples of that region to struggle on for their vision of what they are and want to be. There has been so massive and calculatedly aggressive an attack on the contemporary societies of the Arab and Muslim for their backwardness, lack of democracy, and abrogation of women's rights that we simply forget that such notions as modernity, enlightenment, and democracy are by no means simple, and agreed-upon concepts that one either does or does not find like Easter eggs in the living-room. The breathtaking insouciance of jejune publicists who speak in the name of foreign policy and who have no live notion (or any knowledge at all of the language of what real people actually speak) has fabricated an arid landscape ready for American power to construct there an ersatz model of free market "democracy," without even a trace of doubt that such projects don't exist outside of Swift's Academy of Lagado." ("Orientalism Once More, 2003)

By discussing the Orient, the west had only one agenda in mind and that was to subjugate all identities and nationalities other than its own. This was done by various means and especially by constructing a poor mythical picture of the Orient and then forcing all Oriental societies to fit that image. The same treatment was meted out to Japanese societies and other societies of the East. India was the land of snake-charmers and spices for as long as we can remember until India burst out with a brand-new identity by becoming a leader in science and technology. However to this day, many people would connect India with its Oriental image and those who visit the land usually do so because of the mythical picture they have constructed in their minds. India is no such place and it never was. But presenting it as an exotic and mythical land west had no desire to accentuate the beauty or charm of the land but instead it simply wanted to develop an unmistakable contrast between East and West so the latter would always be able to maintain its dominance by presenting itself as the more enlightened and educated of the two societies. The same treatment was then accorded to the Arab societies. And with Muslims, westerners did even more than simply construct a mythical image. They also gave a negative tone. Said thus says, "What I do argue also is that there is a difference between knowledge of other peoples and other times that is the result of understanding, compassion, careful study and analysis for their own sakes, and on the other hand knowledge -- if that is what it is -- that is part of an overall campaign of self-affirmation, belligerency and outright war." ("Orientalism Once More," 2003)