هذا الكتاب جزء من ثورة جديدة في الدراسات الإنسانية جذورها ضاربة في الماركسية والثورة الألسنية و البنيوية،و مايكاد يكون مدرسة جديدة من"التاريخ الجديد" تنتسب بعمق إلى أعمال ميشيل فوكو بشكل خاص.

ليس كتاب سعيد دراسةً للاستشراق بوصفه تاريخًا، ،شخصيات، وأحداثًا، وليس بدراسة للشرق كما خلقه الغرب أيضًا، بل هو اكتناه صارم، مشبوبٌ أحيانًا، لكنّه دائمًا على درجة مدهشة من حدة اللمعة الفكرية لديه..
يطرح أسئلة جذرية حول مفاهيم الحقيقة والتمثيل..القوة وعلاقاتها، وعي الذات والآخر، دراسة في الآلية التي تتَصلب بها هذه التصورات والتمييزات وتتحول إلى معرفة..

يطرح ادوارد سعيد منظومة أساسية عن الشرق ككيان مشّكل مكون، وليس حقيقة من حقائق الطبيعة وأن مفهوم وجود فضاءات جغرافية ذات سكان محليين،مختلفين جذريًا و يمكن تحديدهم على أساس ديني أو ثقافي أو عرقي خاص ومتسق مع ذلك الفضاء الجغرافي هومفهوم قابل للنقاش المطول..

في نهاية الكتاب يستعيد سعيد الأسئلة التي حاول طرحها في كتابه بشكل مختلف: كيف يمثل المرء الثقافات الأخرى؟ماهي الثقافة الأخرى؟هل مفهوم وجود الثقافة مفهوم مفيد أم أنه ينتهي دائما إلى ان ينشبك إما في تهنئة الذات او في العدائية والعدوان؟وهل تهم الفروق الثقافية والعرقية والدينية أكثر مما تهم الفُصلات الاجتماعية او الفصلات السيا-تاريخية؟!

هذا الكتاب صعب، محير، ويحتاج لعدة قراءات كي تستطيع الإلمام بكافة تفاصيليه
الترجمة جيدة،وليست ممتازة ، واعتقد ذلك بسبب طبيعة الكتاب الشائكة

"إنجلترا تعرف مصر، ومصر هي ما تعرفه إنجلترا."
هكذا لخص إدوارد سعيد الحالة المعرفية التي مُني بها العالم الشرقي بعد سيطرة المؤسسات الأوروبية عليه عسكريًا وتعليميًا. على الرغم من الاطلاع على مادة الكتاب عند كتاب آخرين مثل جوزيف مسعد وشريف يونس، إلا أن إدوارد سعيد يسهب في توضيح أثر السلطة والمؤسسة القاهرة في رسم الإطار المعرفي والثقافي عند تناول أي ظاهرة أو مجتمع.

يستخدم إدوارد سعيد نفس منهج ميشيل فوكو في توضيح العلاقة بين المعرفة والسلطة، وكيف ساهم مجال الدراسات الاستشراقية في إعطاء الغرب سماته التي قام على أساسها في قهر شعوب الشرق ومحو ذاكرتهم الجامعة المُتعلقة بحكم أنفسهم، وأنهم دائمًا في حاجة إلى مُستعمر أبيض لتسيير أمورهم.

كان الشرق بالنسبة للغرب لغزًا محيرًا نظرًا لتهديده الدائم لهم وقوته الهائلة وبعده الجغرافي وعدم التلاقي التاريخي إلا في محطات معدودة، وخصوصًا مع ظهور الإسلام كتهديد حقيقي لأمن العالم المسيحي عسكريًا وثقافيًا. فبدأ الاستشراق كمجال تفسيري لتلك الظاهرة المسماة "الشرق"، وأنتجوا معرفة يمكن تحريها وامتحانها وضعيًا - كانت دائمًا وما تزال مشروطة محددة بكون حقائق الاستشراق، مثل أية حقائق أخرى تنقلها اللغة.

ساهمت تلك المعارف المسنودة والمدعومة من السلطة السياسية في خلق شخصية "الشرقي"، والتحدث باسمه، ومحاولة تفسير تصرفاته غير العقلانية والشهوانية مقارنة بالغرب. لقد أسروا الشرق في قالب ونمط واحد يمكن السيطرة عليه وحكمه، فكانت الإمبراطورية والحكم الاستعماري بمثابة طوق النجاة لهذا الشرقي، وليس ظلمًا له على الإطلاق.

ذكر إدوارد سعيد بالتفصيل الممل كيف تطورت الدراسات الاستشراقية في فرنسا وبريطانيا، وكيف ساهم المغامرون وحكاياتهم عن الشرق في خلق تلك الحالة المبهمة عن تلك المجتمعات المنتظر اكتشافها ونقلها إلى نور العقلانية وحكم الذات.

I'm sure you've heard people say, "I've got to get a handle on it" when they are telling you they need to better understand something.

Edward Said has written this comprehensive account of how people in the West have gotten a handle on the area of the world called the Orient - the Middle East, Asia Minor, the Far East and Southern Asia, much of it Islamic. It isn't about the Orient at all but about the representation of the Orient in the West. To say the result was a better understanding would be wrong...with a couple of notable exceptions, all they really got was a variety of stereotypical impressions having common themes.

Said acquaints the reader with the difficulty of dealing with the "other" in a way that gives even an approximation to the reality of lives and cultures in other places. He makes a solid case that more is to be discovered about the West and its experts on the Orient themselves than anything solid on the subject they claim to be illuminating.

What IS the "Orient"? What are the themes that run through writing about it? Said is convinced that the imbalance of power between West and East during the period from the 1700's through the 1900's is a driving factor and the bus really gets rolling with the invasion of Egypt by Napoleon and the voluminous study he commissioned on it. One object of Orientalist writing was to defuse the fear of the ominous East for Westerners by putting it in its place.

The superiority of the West is assumed, as one would expect of material written for Europeans.

Another theme is the nature of Islam. Being considered a challenger to Christianity, Orientalists held up Islam as a bizarre, inferior, perverse, anti-modern and anti-intellectual entity that kept its subjects benighted and unable to think in the clear and rational way of Western man. Said stresses the fact that the Orientalists didn't really like their subject and were ever ready to belittle it.

Keenly appreciating their assumed authority, these writers often held forth with flights of speculation intended to show their own brilliance rather than revealing anything about distant lands and peoples. Racism was never out of the picture. No interviews of those who lived in the Orient were required. In fact, even a visit by the author wasn't necessary, though of course many did tour the area and a few even learned the languages.

Philology (the study of languages) was the "handle" upon which Orientalism started. Great gobs of "wisdom" and summary judgments about the Orient were made on the basis of language analysis alone, showing the clear inferiority of the Semitic languages to the Indo-European languages. Then came the political/colonial experience which put another set of almost opaque spectacles on Western writers. The arrogance of colonialism was quite compatible with orientalist writing. In other words, the orientalists wrote in service to their time and culture, not to their subject in itself.

Instead of individuals, Orientalists wrote of "The Arab" or "The Semite" or "The Musselman". Like those who might inspect insects under a magnifying glass, entire peoples are given immutable characteristics preserved from ancient times which bound their mental outlook allowing no escape; instinctual just as one could speak of how insects behave. The people of the Orient were not fully human like the European.

Islam takes on the character of an invariant blanket of rules that determines life from birth to death, ignoring all the variety that we know to be characteristic of Christianity in the Western world. Not surprisingly, none of the Orientalists were born or raised in the cultures they claimed to know with great accuracy. And the Orientalist outlook has continued to current times, think of the advisors to the president of the United States on foreign policy.

But Said is clear that he doesn't mean only those who live in the Orient are capable of writing about it, nor that one must be a member of any group in order to understand the group. He describes how Orientalism infected the Orient and became a comfortable home for Arab writers as well. Perhaps that is the primary lesson for me in this book - that one can become so at home within the in-group that conforming to the norms of that group and behaving so as to gain the approval of that group becomes more important than any reality outside of it.

The Afterward of the book is a must read. Said relaxes and explains his thinking in reaction to criticism of the book received from all over the world. In describing how his work was misinterpreted, by Islamists holding it out as a repudiation of the West and a vindication of Islam, for example, he explains how easily we label and categorize others, unable to see the rich variety in culture and daily life that we conclude is exclusively ours. He did not write Orientalism as a rejection of the West or to claim that Europeans are uniquely prone to what the book describes.

He ends with optimism, citing the work of such as Clifford Geertz (whose work is fascinating and well worth investigating) and a new generation of writers that have conducted their investigations on guard against the dangers Said exposed.

Orientalism is now a classic text, but Said had great difficulty in finding any publisher for it when he completed it in the late 1970's. As another reader said to me, "it's a scholarly work, but he nailed it." I'd bet most readers will learn a new word or two. I did. His writing expects an educated audience.

There aren't lots of books that mark a sharp dividing line, but this is one of them. I found the high praise I'd heard about it well deserved. It's an education we can all use.

Still the most influential book in Cultural, Near Eastern, Arab, Islamic, and Post-Colonialist Studies.

Interesting how everyone giving it a bad/ambivalent review is someone that simply can't acknowledge history - 200-300 years of colonialism which was then only replaced by neo-imperialism in the form of wars, economic exploitation, and political interference through force. Is the world any different even today? Obviously not. You're not hating the West by acknowledging this truth, Edward Said asserts this acknowledgment is the first step towards a fairer understanding of both sides. Knowledge and patriotism aren't mutually exclusive, contrary to what others might have you believe with their bigotry.

The "tide isn't changing" against this book in academia or outside, this book is as relevant today as it was 30 years ago. Nor is this book some vitriolic outcry against the West that some ignorant reviewers like to fallaciously classify it as.
Rather, it simply acknowledges a bias and uneven power dynamic in the shaping of East-West relations, conditions that are supported by historical and cultural facts, which ultimately resulted in how the West views the East today. A quite reasonable conclusion.

This is a book lauded by intellectuals and critics alike, the few "responses" to Said's assertions would be laughable if they weren't so lacking in credibility, written by pseudo-scholars that are ignored in academia like Ibn Warraq and Daniel Pipes but somehow get 5 stars on amazon.com from xenophobes and islamophobes.

Even Bernard Lewis, at one point the most influential Near Eastern Studies scholar in the West, only criticized Orientalism because he was forced to. In Orientalism, Said asserts that those of a particular culture, with appropriate education, intellect, and experience, were more capable of teaching their culture than a white man who only knows of that culture through his immersion in the academic bubble. Of course, Mr. Lewis couldn't stand by this as a westerner who made his living teaching about the Middle East.

Yet this isn't really a controversial position considering African-American Studies is taught by African-Americans as is Chicano Studies by Latinos. So why is it so shocking that in studies of the East, a minority has a more relevant view of their culture than a random who only knows of that culture through the vacuum of academia? The truth is, it isn't, if anything it's quite logical and reasonable - two characteristics we need more of in a post 9/11 world.

I urge you to not pay mind to the fallacious reasoning of those giving this book bad reviews, there's a reason it's still extremely influential and relevant even 35 years after being published. How many works can stand both the test of time and the test of critical academic scrutiny? Not many, which is why this work has continued to influence many professors and scholars. I hope someday to also join such scholars rising under its shadow like Columbia's eminent Near Eastern professor Massoud.

This was the first book to inspire me to become a professor, philosopher, and cultural critic just like Edward Said and I can proudly say I'm on that path.

To ignore this book is to simply ignore world history. I recommend this book so highly that if you read one book a year, this is the one for 2010.

Much of this book presents a simple, uncontroversial thesis: the field of Orientalism in colonial times was very sloppy, often practiced by complete racists (such as Ernest Renan) and frequently relied on sloppy caricatures about the "Arab mind" or the "Muslim way of life". (Said understandably focuses mainly on the Near East, but he claims that his ideas apply equally to all "Eastern" peoples, from Turkey to India and China.) The most interesting part, a relatively small bit at the end, is where he extends this critique to modern scholars of "Area Studies", reserving particular scorn for the Arabists of the US State Department or oil companies, and conservative academics such as Bernard Lewis, whom he sees as direct continuers of Orientalist pseudoscholarship in the service of extractive imperialism.

It is striking how the reputation of this book has mainly come from its use in departments of Art Historical, Literary and Cultural Studies, fields barely touched on this book. Together with his Columbia colleague Gayatri Spivak, Said's work spawned the entire field of Postcolonial Studies, one in which postmodernist thought and literary analysis play much stronger roles than the philology or archaeology of the erstwhile Orientalists. In other words, Said's book made a deep impact on our culture, but not in the way that he seems to have intended it to. Perhaps this is fitting: like Foucault (another writer I first read this year), Said is full of brilliant ideas but rarely marshals them into orderly lines of argument. He seems most at home when discussing French literature, but often pulls together theories based more on ideology than on facts. I was persuaded by some of his critiques of lazy stereotyping in modern writing (an egregious example being Samuel Huntington's portrayal of "Islamic values" in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order), but he discusses few facts, and when discussing his vision of a "good" Orientalism, seems to want something like Clifford Geertz's "thick description": anthropological studies comprising only of observations, and not attempting to draw any summary conclusions. That seems to me like a swing too far in the other direction. There are surely some conclusions to be drawn from prolonged, in-depth study of a region, not tainted by essentialism or cultural supremacy, but they may not always be palatable to their receivers.

This one has been on my list for decades.

I finally read it.

Part of me CANT BELIEVE I waited this long.

Another part of me is GRATEFUL I did.

This book is so POWERFUL.

It’s a KNOCKOUT.

I’m kind of speechless. And I’m DEFINITELY unqualified to comment on this field defining, historic, landmark piece of critical scholarship.

But (for the sake of me in the future, and maybe you if you become inspired to read it) I will attempt to cite some of the major ideas/themes.

Edward Said was a Palestinian-American scholar, literary critic, and public intellectual.

His work has had a MASSIVE impact on post-colonial theory and literary/cultural criticism.

Said brought attention to the Palestinian struggle and genocide throughout his career.

Said died in 2003, but his intellectual legacy endures through his writings (particularly this book) and the ongoing relevance of his ideas.

Orientalism is a term Said coined to refer to the derogatory stereotypical, and racist depictions of Arab and East Asian people and cultures by Western scholars, writers, artists and politicians.

Said argues that Orientalism sets up a TOXIC binary between the West (Occident) and the East (Orient), where the West is seen as rational, developed, humane, and superior, while the East is irrational, undeveloped, barbaric, and violent.

Said argued that Orientalist scholarship and cultural production served as a justification for colonial and imperial ambitions, providing a rationale for Western military and geopolitical domination, and cultural/economic exploitation of Eastern and Arab people and their resources.

Said was a RELENTLESS critique of racist scholarship that studies Arabs and Islam and which perpetuates antisemitic stereotypes.

Said posited that historically (and presently), Orientalist scholarship isn’t simply an academic pursuit, but also functions as a mechanism in the larger apparatus of anti Arab anti Muslim racism, exploitation, oppression, and genocide.

NOTE:

Said is NOT PRO/ANTI WESTERN.

Said is not PRO/ANTI ARAB/MUSLUM.

Said is DEFINITELY not PRO/ANTI JEWISH/ISREAL.

Said is a cultural critic and historical scholar.

Siad is PAINSTAKINGLY careful in his approach.

Said RESISTS the TOXIC BINARY of ORIENTAL/OCCIDENTAL

Said is ANTI RACISM/COLONIALISM/GENOCIDE.

Orientalism is NOT an ANTI WESTERN polemic.

Orientalism is a focused, well resourced deconstruction and critique of a particular racist ideology and practice.

GREAT BOOK.

IMPORTANT BOOK.

GREAT TIME TO READ IT.

5/5 ⭐️

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

The truly terrifying thing about such Empires is how much they genuinely believe their own discourses in this regard; yes, they also profit from the subjugated people; yes, they do exploit them for their own ends, but they do actually believe they are doing some good in the process. They think that superimposing their ways, their systems of politics and culture, is actually going to benefit others. So they force it on people; they make them adapt to their ways and engage in a mode of totalitarian control that does nothing but destroy individualistic culture and history; thus, unfolds the history of mankind.

Edward Said keeps his arguments relatively in the present, at least, from the perspective of the way the current eyes of the Occidental view the Oriental. He mainly discusses how the legacies of fairly recent Empires, namely the British powers, have contributed to this lasting effect. Though I’d argue this is nothing relatively new. Man has been doing this sort of thing for the last 2-3 thousand years; it just means now he has the media and literary power to make such racial stereotypes and prejudices widely known, however accidental or purposeful. Orientalism can be recorded more effectively. When reading books such as this I find it hard not to fall into misanthropy, as I look at the current political climate the world faces; ultimately, asking myself the question: will man ever learn?

I digress here; the point is Said captures an argument vital to comprehending the way the world, unfortunately, works. It saddens me deeply that such things aren’t taught in schools. How many people will actually read this in their lifetime? How many people have even heard of it? The truth of the matter is this is a deeply important book; it demonstrates how the West has created this fog like gaze when it looks at the East. Whilst trying not to sound too general here, what it sees is an image of falsehood. It doesn’t see the East as it is, but instead sees a version of it that has been embedded into its subconscious by countless generations of inaccurate representation followed by further inaccurate re-representations.

To demonstrate here, I’ve included this image from a cover poster of a funfair James Joyce’s short story Araby is based upon. Please note, Joyce is but one example of countless. Don’t let this put you off him. (I offer no excuses for the representation, but know that many authors in the cannon did things very similar)



And here is a direct quote from Said; it literally sums up this picture:

“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.”

It’s almost laughable how ridiculous such a thing is. Here we have an Arab riding a camel waving a rifle in the air like a lunatic. The problem is it that many people didn’t have access to knowledge bases. We live in an internet age where we can find anything out if we really want to. But go back a hundred years and the general person reading this story and seeing this poster would have taken it for fact. Granted, the educated and perhaps even pseudo-educated may have had qualms with it, but the average reader would have seen it and believed it. Again, this is but one example. Imagine it duplicated ten-fold, seen in every Western representation of the East and you have cultural conditioning that leaves the populace with this false notion of the Oriental world. And then it is passed on through the years leaving the lasting impression of racist stereotypes.

The sad thing is, as I write this, this sense of Orientalism is still in the world today. I’ve seen it. It’s still out there amongst the Western populace. Sure, it may not be as bad, but it is bad enough. Said wasn’t the first to suggest these ideas, they are not just his arguments, but he was the first to write an entire book describing Western to Eastern perceptions. And he really did need to write it, to help educate people on their own folly. But, again, not many outside the realms of scholarship, arguably the ones most likely to manifest these false perceptions, will actually read it. Simply put, this is a complex book. My review scarcely scratches the surface in regards to the depth of some of these arguments.

This is a book for the relatively well-read. I tried it a few years ago during the first year of my undergraduate degree and was overwhelmed by some of the prose. Even now as I read it I find the arguments complex and warranting a second read. The point is, this book portrays an erudite scholarly voice. Although these arguments are vital, the book can be daunting at times for those new to literary criticism and cultural analysis. For me, this a book to work up to rather than dive into, and for students of postcolonial theory it is a book that simply must be finished- even if it takes you a year as it has in my case!

"الاستشراق هو دراسة للظاهرة العلمية والفكرية والسياسية والأيديولوجية المعروفة باسم الاستشراق: الإطار الذي من خلاله فسر الكتاب وصناع القرار وعامة الناس المجتمعات الإسلامية في الشرق الأوسط وعرّفوها على أنها "الشرق". الاستشراق لا يعكس الحقيقة الموضوعية عن هذه المجتمعات أو الأشخاص الذين يعيشون فيها. بدلاً من ذلك ، إنه اختراع للعقل الغربي الذي يفترض اختلافًا جوهريًا ، وغريبًا ، وخطيرًا ، وشرقًا "آخر" - وهي فكرة كانت حجر الزاوية الفكري الرئيسي للإمبريالية الأوروبية وما زالت لها آثار عميقة على المشهد الجيوسياسي اليوم. "

يستخدم "الاستشراق" أكاديميا للدلالة على المذاهب والأطروحات الغربية حول الشرق. وهناك تعريفات أو مفاهيم أخرى للاستشراق أدرجها ادوارد سعيد في النص. كممارسة علمية، ظهر الاستشراق في أواخر القرن الثامن عشر في مراكز التعلم الأوروبية وبؤرهم الاستعمارية، عندما أصبحت دراسة اللغات والآداب والأديان والقوانين والفنون والفلسفات والتاريخ وقوانين المجتمعات الآسيوية، وخاصة القديمة منها، محط اهتمام العلماء الغربيين والمفكرين. في تلك الحقبة، زاد عدد الأوروبيين الذين يجرون أبحاثًا حول شرق آسيا بشكل كبير ، وشجعت أشكال جديدة من الدعم المؤسسي في الجامعات والجمعيات العلمية مثل هذه الدراسات ونشرها. ارتبط العديد من المستشرقين، كما أصبح يطلق عليهم، بالبيروقراطية الاستعمارية، لكن آخرين لم يكونوا كذلك، وتباينت مواقفهم من الاستعمار. سيطر البحث في اللغات الفرنسية والإنجليزية والألمانية على الاستشراق كمجال علمي، و مراكز التعلم المرتبطة به ، وتراوحت موضوعاته جغرافيًا؛ من شمال إفريقيا-البحر الأبيض المتوسط ​​إلى شرق وجنوب شرق آسيا. "كان من أهم اكتشافات المستشرقين أن اللغة السنسكريتية والعديد من اللغات الأوروبية كانت مرتبطة ببعضها البعض ، مما يعني أن أوروبا والهند تشتركان في الأصول التاريخية. يرجع الفضل في هذا الاكتشاف إلى ظهور المنهج المقارن في العلوم الإنسانية والاجتماعية."

يتحدث ادوارد سعيد عن الاستشراق بصفته ظاهرة ثقافية سياسية، بكل تعقيداته التاريخية، وتفصيلاته، وقيمته-ماهو؟، وما جوهر كينونته الجدلية بإشكاليته الفكرية والنقدية بين المفهوم والمنهج- وظيفته كمنشئ للمعرفة عن الشرق الأوسط - أراد من هذا الخطاب الفكري البليغ أو البحث التاريخي، ردم الفجوة بين الغرب والشرق،الذي يحتل في الخيال والجغرافيا والتاريخ مكاناً مضاداً لأوروبا والغرب. وتوضيح دور المستشرقين" ما كتبه الباحثون والمتخصصون في المعارف الخاصة بالشرق ولغاته وآدابه، مع التركيز على دراسة الاسلام والبحث والتنقيب في التراث." عن شعوب الشرق والمسلمين؛ أو الشعوب الأدنى كما توصف في أبحاثهم؛ " ذلك التوافق المصنوع، أو تلك المجموعة المعتادة من الأفكار، بوصفها الشيء الأبرز عن الشرق- الصورة النمطية المتداولة عن شهوانية المسلمين والعرب، وكسلهم، واستسلامهم للقدر، وقسوتهم ، وذلهم، وبذخهم، وغيرها " - يدرسون تاريخ الأفكار على هذا الاعتقاد الأساسيّ، وعلى تبعاته المنهجية-والذي ساهم إلى حد كبير كذلك في تخطيط وبناء سياسات المستعمر في الشرق " فقد استعملت القوى الاستعمارية الكثير مما تجمع من معلومات ومعرفة مستمدة من البحث الاستشراقيّ عن الإسلام والشرق لتسويغ الاستعمار." أي كيف وضع الإطار الاستشراقي الشرق ككيان غير قادر على التصرف بناءً على وكالته أو مبادرته - وبالتالي يتطلب توجيهًا وتدخلًا من قبل الأوروبيين، أو المستعمر.
كما أنه يوضح تاريخ الصلات بين الاستشراق والمجتمعات التي أنتجته والتعبير عنها اجتماعيًا. فهو يجد أن هناك علاقات قربى وثيقة بين الاستشراق والخيال الأدبي، على سبيل المثال، وكذلك بينه وبين الوعي الامبرياليّ." كما يدرس في بحثه أثر التحالف بين العمل الثقافي والتوجهات السياسية، والدولة، والوقائع المعنية بالسيطرة، على سبيل المثال: نطرة الأدب ( الرواية، الشعر الغنائي)، والخيال، واللغة، للشرق والمسلمين والتي تمخضت من بحوث ودراسات المستشرقين للشرق؛ ما بعد الاستعمار وما بعد الحداثة ، بما فيها الأفكار والثقافات والتواريخ المصبوغة بالهيمنة الغربية؛ اللذان ساهما بشكل واضح في رسم تلك السياقات الأحادية في الفكر والتصور عن الكائن الشرقي. أي كيف روج الاستشراق لفكرة شعوب ومجتمعات الشرق الأوسط على أنها لم تتغير منذ العصور القديمة ، مما ساهم و بشكل أساسي في بناء مفهوم أو أسطورة "العقل الشرقي ."

أثار الكتاب منذ صدوره الكثير من النقاس، والجدل والنقد بين الباحثين والمتخصصين في الأبحاث والدراسات الثقافية السياسية، و التاريخية والانسانية بما فيهم المستشرقين غرباً وشرقاً، ولازال لليوم مصدراً للبحث والنقد والالهام.

Intellectual porn for self-hating westerners, shockingly became one of the most influential texts of the last 25 years. Said's pompous, self-important writing style papers over yawning gaps in scholarship and breathtaking dishonesty. Finally, some academics appear to be getting over their institutional infatuation with Said and the critical tide is starting to turn. None too soon.

Yes--- in many ways, Said's "Orientalism" is a classic. And he's right about some things: Western art and literature created a whole fantasy world about "the Orient" (which included the Balkans and Russia) over the last few centuries; Western scholarship about North Africa or the Middle East or India could be (and was) used by colonial powers. But as critics (especially Bernard Lewis and Robert Irwin)have pointed out, Said took a handful of serious ideas and created his own fantasy world of "Orientalism" (destroying, as Lewis lamented, a perfectly honorable scholarly term). Said and his followers very nearly argue that any Western study of "the Orient" is invalid and nefarious from the start, and that any scholarship by Westerners is a tool of oppression and political domination. Said notoriously got the careers and beliefs of the great Orientalists of the 18th and 19th centuries wrong, and, despite some fine writing, produced in the end a book that conflated artistic and literary visions with intelligence gathered for conquest or rule and which came close to saying that only scholarship with a "correct" political message about the Middle East could ever be acceptable. A necessary read, but one that has to be complemented with a reading of Lewis' critiques and the debates between the two, and perhaps---- since the critique is from the Left ---even more so by reading Robert Irwin's "Dangerous Knowledge".

I just cannot believe that this book existed out in the world and I did not read it until now. I've had it on my bookshelf for years, but I guess I figured I knew what it contained. I did not. This book was revelatory and also so familiar. It explained and contextualized all of my issues with the way the western cannon has talked and still talks about Islam and the east. It's been fetishized. I'd love an update now that the east is no longer "female" and sexual, but it's male and irrationally angry. Still, the text holds up because we are still orientalizing the Islamic world. The part that made me gasp out loud was when he talked about how Western scholars have claimed reason and rationality as the sphere of the west and unreason and softness as the sphere of the orient. You still see that so strongly in the anti-islamic rhetoric coming out of rationalist spheres of the new atheist movements. And I want to say, dude, we invented reason!

Si può studiare ciò che si odia, ciò che si ritiene inferiore? In quanto umanisti, siamo in grado di scegliere più o meno liberamente il tema dei nostri studi, in base alle nostre preferenze, ai nostri interessi. Lo sguardo può spaziare sul mondo intero e non esserne mai sazio, poiché sono infinte le possibilità, infinite le domande che possiamo porci, infinite e sorprendenti le risposte che i nostri studi possono donarci.

Ma per udire quelle risposte, per raccogliere gli indizi che gli studiosi prima di noi hanno disseminato nelle loro opere è necessario affondare nel passato con la mente aperta, avida di comprendere, di scendere a patti con una realtà che può essere forse diversa da noi, ma comunque umana, ricca, piena. Se, invece, ci si avvicina alla meta dei propri studi con lo sguardo carico di pregiudizi, odio o ribrezzo quale potrà mai essere il risultato se non una visione faziosa della realtà?

Said produce uno studio particolareggiato, approfondito e politicamente impegnato che permette al lettore di comprendere appieno cosa sia l’orientalismo, fin dove affondino le sue radici e quale sia l’impatto che questo pensiero ha avuto sull’idea dell’Oriente, sulla sua fisionomia e sulle sue popolazioni. Questa stessa idea, questa immagine distorta, è stata forgiata nei secoli dallo stesso Occidente che vedeva all’altra parte del mondo come a una minaccia, un’oscura forza primordiale decisa ad attaccare la supremazia politica e religiosa degli occidentali.

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