EDWARD SAID AND ORIENTALISM

EDWARD SAID AND ORIENTALISM

Edward W. Said was Professor of English and Comparative Literature at
Columbia University in New York.
Born in Jerusalem in 1935, he lived in Cairo until the age of 15, when
he left for Mount Hermon School.
He did his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Princeton and Harvard
universities respectively.
For many years, this Palestinian- American figure was considered
America’s foremost spokesman for the Palestinian cause. His
scholarship in the fields of critical theory, literary and cultural
studies and comparative literature, influenced several generations of
students and literary critics. He passed away in 2003 after a long
battle with chronic leukemia.


Said’s books have been translated into several languages, including
French, Arabic, Turkish and Persian. Among his works, which include
twenty book and several articles, one may cite:

Joseph Conrad and fiction of autobiography (1966)

The Arabs Today: Alternatives for Tomorrow (1973)

Beginnings: Intention and Method (1975)

Orientalism (1978),

The Question of Palestine, (1979),

Literature and Society (1980)

The Middle East: What Chances for Peace? (1980)

Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the
Rest of the World (1981),

The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983)

After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives (1986),

Criticism in Society (1987)


Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship

Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature (1988)

Napoleon in Egypt (1993)

Culture and Imperialism (1993)

Representations of the Intellectual (1994)

Out of Place (1999)

Reflections on exile and other essays (2002)


Orientalism, considered as his most influential book, is a
foundational text in postcolonial studies


SAID’S WRITINGS


Literary and cultural critic, social commentator
Controversial figure among contemporary intellectuals
Influence in the fields of cultural and postcolonial studies
He discussed relationship between literature, politics and culture
His works are in three kinds:
1) His two books Orientalism and Cultural Imperialism consider
relationship between East and West

Orientalism
Culture and Imperialism
He has been concerned with Palestine and situation of Palestinians in
Middle East and issues related with Arab o-Islamic world.
The question of Palestine (1979)
The covering Islam (1981)
In the introduction of Covering of Islam he argues that, three
books i.e. Orientalism, Question and Covering, deals with relation
between: Islam, the Arabs and orient in one hand, the west, France,
Britain and United States on the other.

He devoted considerable time to define the role of intellectuals in
cotemporary world.
The world, the text and the critic (1983)
Representations of the intellectual (1994)




ORIENTALISM

It has a significant role in the study of literature in English in the
Anglo-American academic context.
It opened a global perspective of criticism in literary studies which
hitherto remained closed.
He brought politics into literary studies.
Until 1970 there were radical ideas about it.
In 1978 it came out to such a closed world.
It has utterly different style from these dominant books in this time:
The sense of an ending – Kermode (1966)
The prison house of language – Fredric Jameson (1972)
The modes of modern writing – David lodge (1977)
Working with structuralism – David lodge (1981)


So Orientalism not only inaugurated the changes in the study of
English and comparative literature, but it opened a new field of post
colonel studies.



It focuses mainly on the eighteenth and nineteenth French and English
scholarly studies of Middle Eastern Arabic culture


CONTENTS


Introduction


Chapter: 1

The scope of orientalism

Knowing the oriental
Imaginative geography and its representations: orientalizing the oriental
Projects
Crisis


Chapter: 2

Orintalist structures and restructures

Redrawn Frontiers, Redefined issues, secularized religion
Silvester De Sacy and Ernest Renan: Rational Anthropology and
Philological Laboratory
Oriental residence and scholarship: the requirements of lexicography
and imagination
Pilgrims and Pilgrimages, British and French


Chapter: 3

Orientalism Now

Latent and Manifest Orientalism
Style, expertise, vision: Orientalism’s worldliness
Modern Anglo French Orientalism in fullest flower
The last phase
Afterward





INTRODUCTION


The orient is not only adjacent to Europe, but it is also the place of
Europe’s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its
civilization and languages.
None of this orient is merely imaginative. It is an integral part of
European material civilization and culture.


THREE DEFINETIONS

1-The most readily accepted designation for orientalism is an academic
one and it still serves in a number of academic institutions- this
applies whether the person is anthropologist, sociologist, historian
or philologist, either in its specific or general aspect, is an
orientalist, and what he or she does is orientalism. (Literary)


2-Orientalism is style of thought based upon ontological and
epistemological distinction made between “the orient” and “the
occident”. (Cultural)


3- It is more historically oriented. Taking the late eighteenth
century as a roughly defined starting point orientalism can be
discussed and analyzed as a corporate institution for dealing with the
orient- in making decisions, authorizing views, describing it,
teaching it and ruling over it. (Politics)


So in brief, the orientalism is a western style of dominating,
restructuring and having authority over orient.
Orientalism derived from a closeness experienced between Britain,
France and the orient (in early nineteenth century India and bible
lands)
From the beginning of nineteenth century to the end of Second World
War Britain and France dominated on the orient.
From second world war America dominated the east
This triangular concept of power and attempts and related texts… I
call orientalists…


GEOGRAPHICAL PERSPECTIVE

“Orient” and “Occident” are man-mad. Therefore, as much as the west it
self, the orient is an idea that has a history, a tradition of
thought, imagery and vocabulary that have given it reality and
presence in and for the west.
The two geographical entities support each other and to an extent
reflect each other.
The relationship of orient and occident is relationship of power and
domination.


CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

Edward Said argues that the Europeans divided the world into two
parts; the east and the west or the occident and the orient or the
civilized and the uncivilized.
The Europeans defined themselves as the superior race compared to the
Orientals; and they justified their colonization by this concept. They
said that it was their duty towards the world to civilize the
uncivilized world.
The generalized attributes associated with the Orientals can be seen
even today, for example, the Arabs are defined as uncivilized people;
and Islam is seen as religion of the terrorist.
Orientalism doing the constellation of false assumptions underlying
Western attitudes toward the East.
It is a "subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against
Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture.
"My contention is that Orientalism is fundamentally a political
doctrine willed over the Orient because the Orient was weaker than the
West, which elided the Orient’s difference with its weakness. . . . As
a cultural apparatus Orientalism is all aggression, activity,
judgment, will-to-truth, and knowledge" (Orientalism, p. 204).
Principally a study of 19th-century literary discourse and strongly
influenced by the work of thinkers like Chomsky, Foucault and Gramsci,
Said's work also engages contemporary realities and has clear
political implications as well.


Orientalism, in Said’s formulation, is principally a way of defining
and ‘locating’ Europe’s others.


For instance, the influential French philologist and historian Ernest
Renan (1823–92) could declare confidently that ‘Every person, however
slightly he may be acquainted with the affairs of our time, sees
clearly the actual inferiority of Mohammedan countries’


And philologer and race theorist Count Arthur Gobineau (1816–82).


Thus Lord Cromer, who relied a great deal on writers like Renan, could
write in 1908 that, while the European’s ‘trained intelligence works
like a piece of mechanism’, the mind of the Oriental, ‘like his
picturesque streets, is eminently wanting in symmetry’


The superior ‘order’, ‘rationality’ and ‘symmetry’ of Europe, and the
inferior ‘disorder’, ‘irrationality’ and ‘primitivism’ of non-Europe
were the self-confirming parameters in which the various Orientalist
disciplines circulated.


It is tempting to see Orientalism as simply a product of the growth of
modern imperialism in the nineteenth century,


As European control of the Orient required an intellectual rationale
for its cultural and economic dominance.


Before the publication of Orientalism, the term ‘Orientalism’ itself
had faded from popular usage, but in the late 1970s it took on a
renewed and vigorous life.


CHAPTER: 1

THE SCOPE OF ORIENTALISM


In the first part Said establishes the discourse that has been in
existence for over two centuries, which continues into the present.


The core of Said’s argument resides in the link between knowledge and power


demonstrated by Prime Minister Arthur Balfour’s defense of Britain’s
occupation of Egypt in 1910,


The premises of Balfour’s speech demonstrate very clearly how
knowledge and dominance go hand in hand:


England knows Egypt; Egypt is what England knows; England knows that
Egypt cannot have self-government; England confirms that by occupying
Egypt; for the Egyptians, Egypt is what England has occupied and now
governs; foreign occupation therefore becomes ‘the very basis’ of
contemporary Egyptian civilization. (1978:34)


Said points out that the upsurge in Orientalist study coincided with
the period of unparalleled European expansion: from 1815 to 1914.
By the end of World War 1, 85% of earth was under the control of Europe.


But the crucial fact was that Orientalism, in all its many
tributaries, began to impose limits upon thought about the Orient.


Even powerful imaginative writers such as Gustav Flaubert, Gerard de
Nerval or Sir Walter Scott were constrained in what they could either
experience or say about the Orient.


‘[O]ne big division, as between West and Orient, leads to other
smaller ones’ (1978:58) and the experiences of writers, travelers,
soldiers, statesmen, from Herodotus and Alexander the Great on, become
‘the lenses through which the Orient is experienced, and they shape
the language, perception and form of the encounter between East and
West’ (1978:58).


What holds these experiences together is the shared sense of something
‘other’, which is named ‘the Orient’.


This analysis of the binary nature of Orientalism has been the source
of a great deal of criticism of the book.


His emphasis on its political nature can be seen in his focus on the
beginnings of modern Orientalism: in the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt
in 1798, ‘which was in many ways the very model of a truly scientific
appropriation of one culture by another, apparently stronger one’
(1978:42).


Although not the beginning of the Orientalism that swept Europe early
in the century, Napoleon’s project demonstrated the most conscious
marriage of academic knowledge and political ambition.


Napoleon gave his deputy Kleber strict instructions after he left
always to administer Egypt through the Orientalists and the religious
Islamic leaders whom they could win over (1978:82).


Said, the consequences of this expedition were profound.


the occupation gave birth to the entire modern experience of the
Orient as interpreted from within the universe of discourse founded by
Napoleon in Egypt’ (1978:87)


After Napoleon, says Said, the very language of Orientalism changed radically


‘Its descriptive realism was upgraded and became not merely a style of
representation but a language, indeed a means of creation’ (1978:87),


But Napoleon’s expedition gave an unmistakable direction to the work
of Orientalists that was to have a continuing legacy, not only in
European and Middle Eastern history but in world history as well.


Said draws on written and spoken historical commentary by such Western
figures as Arthur James Balfour, Napoleon, Chaucer, Shakespeare,
Byron, Henry Kissinger, Dante and others who all portray the "East" as
being both "other" and "inferior."
He also draws on several European studies of the region by
Orientalists including the Bibliotheque Orientale by French author
Barthélemy d'Herbelot de Molainville to illustrate the depth of
Orientalist discourse in European society and in their academic,
literary and political interiors.
One apt representation Said gives is a poem by Victor Hugo titled
"Lui" written for Napoleon:
By the Nile I find him once again.
Egypt shines with the fires of his dawn;
His imperial orb rises in the Orient.

Victor, enthusiast, bursting with achievements,
Prodigious, he stunned the land of prodigies.
The old sheikhs venerated the young and prudent emir.
The people dreaded his unprecedented arms;
Sublime, he appeared to the dazzled tribes

Like a Mahomet of the Occident. (Orientalism pg. 83)


CHAPTER 2:
ORIENTALIST STRUCTURES AND RESTRUCTURES
Here, Said sets out to establish how the main philological, historical
and creative writers in the nineteenth century drew upon a tradition
of knowledge that allowed them textually to construct and control the
Orient.


In this chapter Said outlines how Orientalist discourse was
transferred from country to country and from political leader to
author.


He suggests that this discourse was set up as a foundation for all (or
most all) further study and discourse of the Orient by the Occident.


Here he discussed about the creations of William Beckford, Byron,
Thomas Moore, Goethe, Blumenback, Immanuel Kant, Vico, Rousseau,
Silvester De Casy, Earnest Renan, Frederich Nietzsche,


Writers and Orientalist agents: T.E. Lawrence, Henry Palmer, D.G.
Hogerth, Gertrude Bell, Ronald Storrs, St. Jhone philby, William
Gifford Palgrave.


In addition it has been estimated that around 60,000 books dealing
with Near Orient were written between 1800- 1950.


Authors and scholars such as Edward William Lane, who spent only two
to three years in Egypt but came back with an entire book about them
(Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians) which was widely
circulated in Europe.


Further travelers and academics of the East depended on this discourse
for their own education.


So the Orientalist discourse of the West over the East was passed down
through European writers and politicians (and therefore through all
Europe).


Some books or works wrote on or against east in this time:
Gusteve Flaubert – Bouvard et Pacuchet (Encyclopedic novel on the
degeneration of knowledge)
Raymond Schwab – La Renaissance oriental
Anquetil & Jones – East Discoveries
Cook & Bouganville – East Discoveries
Tournefort & Adonson – Eastern Voyages
De Brosses – History of navigations
George sale – Translation of Koran
William Jones – Anniversary of Discourses
Edgar Quinet – Le Genie der religions
Caussin – Mohammed
Thomas Carlyle – Mohammed
Burton – Pilgrimages to Madinah and Makkah
Nerval – Voyages on orient
Lane – An account of manners and cultures of modern Egyptians
Lane – Arabean Nights
Lane – Modern Egyptians










CHAPTER: 3

ORIENTALISM NOW


The third part is an examination of ‘Modern Orientalism’. This section
shows how the established legacies of British and French\ Orientalism
were adopted and adapted by the United States.
Modern Orientalism focuses on the representation of the Arab in
American popular culture.


In the films and television, Arabs are represented as bloodthirsty,
dishonest, low, lecherous, and oversexed. Some Arab roles in the
cinema include those of the “[s]lave trader, camel driver,
moneychanger, [and] colorful scoundrel” (pp. 286-87).


Arabs are always shown in large numbers (mass or mob): related to the
threat of Jihad (p. 287).


The Arabic language is associated with violence reflecting the Arab
mind and genes (p.287).


The silencing of Arab voices in the West: Who speaks for the Arabs?
What is the location of the “representative voice(s)”? (p. 293).


•In the scholarship of Arabists and Islamologists, Islam and the Arab
world are represented as a homogeneous entity: “For them [Arabists and
Escapologists] there are still such things as an Islamic society, an
Arab mind, an Oriental psyche” (p.301).


Participation of the “modern Orient . . . in its own Orientalizing” (pp. 324-5