This is a great example of a paradigm shift in the social scientist's perspective. Something like "orientalism" was so taken for granted over the centuries that it took someone like Said to simply take a step back and say "dude, what the fuck." As I read it, I found myself trying to step back from the orientalizations in my own life and in the cultural/social life around me. For the life examined.

“Orientalism” is a giant monster swallowing up all the concrete human experience to dehumanize a particular region. Always a cultural prejudice or what anthropology calls ethnocentrism resides in human heart. A ferocious fear of the unknown region or culture makes us tremble,after being trembled we project hatred towards them. “We” are we,“they” are they. A cultural representation awaits our own culture, a sodomy. Though Edward Said in this book never argued that there can be anything called the true culture or the true “orient”,he at least argues that we can overthrow the sociopolitical propaganda of a certain culture towards another. But how can Edward Said say a lot about the western representation of Islam and Middle East, but not about the problematic things in Islam that gave rise to some extent a general hatred against Islam? That was such a weak analysis by him on this regard. Otherwise his grasp on the pre-imperialistic situation was brilliant and illuminating. Since Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, Orientalism as a Scholarly vision got a new twist, and how Napoleon’s method of archiving the culture as a vast sea of knowledge gave rise to a modern orientalism and imperialism. But even for Napoleon Egypt was first and foremost a textual field heavy with symbolism,metaphor, exaggerations and all. So Orients are what the Orientalists say about them. Hence a particular discourse called Orientalism. And orientalism as a subject was in the making through the use of power,let it be scholarly or militant. This rather Foucaultdian method of Edward Said may seem to many readers exaggerated.

But we need a depth, a philosophical understanding beneath all these discussions of Edward Said on Orientalism. Representation is always evil(not in a moralistic sense),so is Identity and opposition. The moment someone represent a culture, they always assume some preobtained knowledge about them to be true,they always detach themselves from others,and observe as an alien. Thus render so many value judgements on their particular customs and habits. And it becomes their knowledge. As if only they could make that culture organised and developed through their knowledge. This knowledge gives them a source of power through which they oppress that particular culture. French and British imperialism are the common examples of this behaviour. Their scholars,political leaders,poets,novelist--all have been the part of that particular discourse. The Division or opposition between West and East, Us and them.

Edward Said also discussed on the latest phase this Oriental knowledge took. And this time rather than Europe, it is United States. Now through advent of advanced technologies or what we call globalization the orientals are orientalizing themselves. As if they themselves are happy to study themselves as a curious subject. The socioeconomical dominance of the west also making it possible to handle orientalism as a new weapon. Now even the social scientists are being employed to study orientalism as curious scientific object. Since then so many things or methods have changed,but the underlying theme of orientalism is unchanged.

Let me say first that this will be a very gross summation of this classic that I first encountered through literary theory, in particular, postcolonial theory, but it is an attempt that I nevertheless will make. If I could I would make the entire world read this book, extremely relevant as its subject matter remains today.


Edward Said’s Orientalism is a treatise on the cultural construction that is Orientalism, which, far from merely an academic and scholarly discipline, is inextricably bound with power (as knowledge always is), in particular imperial and colonial, and which rests on the binary opposition between East and West and the connotations that go with such a divide. The point that Said makes above all else is that Orientalism, a science in its own right from the nineteenth century onwards, part of a dominant discourse, gives rise to epistemological systems that formulate the Orient as an atavistic, essentialist object of study, which, seen as a platonic concept, inert and unable to represent itself, is thus dehumanised and in no way a true picture of the real Orient. In fact, what Said says is that there can be no real Orient; it is an invention of Orientalists, a representation, not an ontologically stable picture. The point is that there is no real, separate and distinct essence of any culture or people and anything anyone says about them, grouping them thus, will be only a representation that can in no way be taken for objective knowledge, steeped as it is, for one thing, in the Orientalist’s own contexts. Said emphasizes that Orientalism is very political indeed and not a pure science or just innocent scholarly endeavours given that it is deeply connected with European Imperialism as well as the neo-imperialism of today in which America dominates. Said focuses specifically on Islamic Orientalism and argues that Islam or the Arabs cannot be reduced to an essentialist and reductive definition by either the West, as they doubtless are, or the East itself because such objective formulations cannot help but be false. Said also clarifies that in no shape or form is this book anti-Western or a defense of Islamicist fundamentalism, doing which would in fact defy the very anti-essentialist position that he is taking in it. It is instead a multicultural work which studies the way knowledge, culture, and power, work together, and ultimately takes, despite postmodern critiques of the term, a humanistic position, resisting the way human history is disfigured through most other approaches and aiming “to go beyond coercive limitations on thought toward a non-dominative, and non-essentialist, type of learning.”

Well I am certainly not qualified enough to review a work like this. Enough to say that I thoroughly enjoyed and its an honor to be exposed to such scholarship even once in a life time.

An excellent critique of scholarly criticism, although some people dislike it for political reasons, this analysis of how the study of the Near East, which originated over three hundred years ago, still impacts and affects the Western view of the East. In some parts, he misrepresents some beliefs of the Orientalists from the 18th and 19th centuries by summarising and cherry-picking quotes, which is not uncommon in the field of academics.

n  I intended my book as part of a pre-existing current of thought whose purpose was to liberate intellectuals from the shackles of system such as Orientalism: I wanted readers to make use of my work so that they might then produce new studies of their own that would illuminate the historical experience of Arabs and others in a generous, enabling mode.n

“Arabs, for example, are thought of as camel-riding, terroristic, hook-nosed, venal lechers whose undeserved wealth is an affront to real civilization. Always there lurks the assumption that although the Western consumer belongs to a numerical minority, he is entitled either to own or to expend (or both) the majority of the world resources. Why? Because he, unlike the Oriental, is a true human being.”

This book has been on my to be read list pretty much since it was published (yes I am that old!). It has been much criticized, argued over and dissected since then; and much misunderstood. Said wrote an afterword almost twenty years later for s subsequent edition and my copy has the afterword, which is helpful as Said is able to address some of the criticism. Some of the criticism of Said is directly related to the Isreal/Palestinian conflict which still continues. Bernard Lewis argues Said was part of a Nazi-linked antisemitic conspiracy who depicted Western scholars as evil (Said was Palestinian and had firm views about the conflict). I am going to resist diving into all the debates, as whole books have been written about that.
It is useful to note that Said’s main focus in on the Middle East rather than the Indian subcontinent and on Islam rather than Hinduism or Buddhism. He examines the approaches of French and British (and some German) scholars from the late eighteenth century onwards. Pretty much from the time Napoleon invaded Egypt, looking at their interpretations and arguments. Said’s own approach owes a good deal to Foucault and Gramsci. He firmly ties western approaches to the East to Imperialism and the arguments made by the British and French that they were a civilising and positive influence:

“Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice.”
My understanding of the origins of modern Orientalism, its nineteenth century roots, is limited, particularly in relation to French scholarship. Consequently I did find this work illuminating. I know scholarship has moved on, as has the interface with Islam, but Said does cover a great deal of ground. There is plenty to dispute and disagree with, but the primary argument about how Western Europe has approached the Middle East still holds and is especially pertinent with the recent escalation in the conflict in Palestine.
In an odd sort of way it feels like I have absorbed some of the arguments in this book over the years. Some of this feels a little dated but, for me Said was on the right side of history, whatever the flaws in Orientalism.

“I have spent a great deal of my life during the past thirty-five years advocating the rights of the Palestinian people to national self-determination, but I have always tried to do that with full attention paid to the reality of the Jewish people and what they suffered by the way of persecution and genocide. The paramount thing is that the struggle for equality in Palestine/Israel should be directed toward a humane goal, that is, coexistence, and not further suppression and denial. Not accidentally, I indicate that Orientalism and modern anti-Semitism have common roots. Therefore, it would seem to be a vital necessity for independent intellectuals always to provide alternative models to the reductively simplifying and confining ones, based on mutual hostility, that have prevailed in the Middle East and elsewhere for so long.”

Une lecture essentielle pour tout le monde, qui que vous soyez. La postface écrite par Edward Said 16 ans après la publication de son essai est très intéressante et enrichissante puisqu'il y revient sur les critiques et diverses interprétations faites de son texte aux quatre coins du monde et nous rappelle ce que son texte N'EST PAS, mais l'expérience démontre qu'il est très difficile de ne pas y voir ce que chacun espère ou redoute... La citation choisie par Edward Said au début de son essai prend tout son sens "Ils ne peuvent se représenter eux-mêmes ; ils doivent être représentés." Karl Marx.

الكتاب مجهدٌ جدًا، وهو مرجعٌ تاريخي أكثر من كونه كتابًا للقراءة.

This is tremendously well-constructed and I enjoyed the occasional forays into dry humour. Some of it went over my head as I'm not familiar with many of the authors discussed, but I found the book an accessible read regardless.

n  “In a sense the limitations of Orientalism are … the limitations that follow upon disregarding, essentializing, denuding the humanity of another culture, people, or geographical region.”
n

I recently read Said’s “Culture and Imperialism”, which I adored for its study on the effects of imperialism on literature, and this one is equally at par. This work should’ve been read first though, as it explores orientalism as a Western-created concept in order to assimilate Eastern culture into a simple entity, as to make it easier for people in the other side of the world to understand, forgoing all real understanding in exchange for an exotic fixation.

I’ve read a couple reviews that seem to completely miss the park when it comes to Said’s views. They see him as pro-Islam or pro-East, rather than as a person who sees East and West as terms that hold no actual definition of the places it refers to. Said does not hate the West, in fact, his writing barely carries any emotion towards either side when it comes to non-fiction works, as he rather give a good introduction to people from both sides. One of his main points instead is to show how those two terms are unnecessary, one cannot pair Saudi Arabia, China, and India as the same, even thought they are considered East, same as one should not pile Russia, the U.K. and Sweden in the same specter. One should try to read this as a complex work on orientalism and the human error often presented in naming things, rather than as an attack on our “Western values”. One should focus on his desire to explain how both sides of the globe have traditions and intellectual achievements, and at the same time the lack thereof of it, not simply a West versus East ideal.

n  “Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn’t trust the evidence of one’s eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice.”n

But perhaps the most truth comes from his view on “civilizing” other cultures, a thing that the West has done repeatedly in the centuries it spent trying to colonize (or managed to do so) the East. Some people now see the “Middle East” as a trouble area that would be best to the rest of the world if it were eradicated, and Islam as a vicious faith that has contributed nothing to society except a concept of stoning and female degradation, neither of these are true statements. It seems to be forgotten among many, that for centuries, places such as Baghdad, Alexandria, Beijing, Ur, Yinxu, Constantinople, Carthage, and many more were centers of learning and education for centuries, even millennia, and many of those were largely encouraged by the Islamic idea of achieving knowledge “Attain knowledge from the cradle to the grave. (Prophet Muhammad pbuh).

In general, a magnificent piece of comprehension, that obviously deserves a through re-read, with my own copy.

Понеже си минах изпита, е време да кажа и нещо за книгата.

Идеите за Ориента са много. Няма само една, защото гледната точка на всеки е индивидуална. Дори разказите по реални събития не могат да дадат точен отговор, те само създават действителност.
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Perhaps the best exploration of "projection" in the encounters between civilizations.