لا يحلل سعيد أصل الطابع الطاغي والمهيمن لهذه الثقافة، فهي بالنسبة له سائدة ومهيمنة لأنها غربية كتاب "الاستشراق"، ليس دفاعا عن لإسلام فقط، انه هجوما وفضحا لبنية الاستشراق اللاإنسانية، المهيمنة، وكشف لأسسها الإستعمارية، وشبكة المصالح المرتبطة بها،
فتح مبين تحقق لأدوارد سعيد من خلال هذا الكتاب ، حيث تمكن بواسطة حججه القوية من وضع المنهج العلمي المفترض المسمى بالاستشراق في مكانته الطبيعية بوصفه خبرة تاريخية تراكمت بشكل خاطئ لا أكثر ولا أقل .
شكل الاستشراق ظاهرة سياسية واجتماعية ألبست زورا لباس البحث العلمي امتد تأثيرها الى التيار الرئيسي للتفكير على مستوى العالم كله عبر حقب تاريخية متفاوتة مشكلة هيكلاُ معرفيا كاملاً انخرط في تشكيله كبار الأدباء والكتاب والمفكرين ، استهدف الكتاب الطعن في هذا التشكيل وتسليط الضوء على حقيقة أن الثقافات مهحنة ومتعددة العناصر وبأنها تتصل ببعضها البعض وتعتمد على بعضها الى درجة يصعب معها وضع توصيف لكل منها على حدة .
أقول ان الكتاب يعتبر فتحاُ مبيناُ في هذا المجال لسببين الأول انه أقام الحجة على أساس نفس المعايير والاساليب التي يتبعها العلماء والمفكرين الغربيين ، فكان له أن يترك أثرأ ما زال مستمرا لمسته شخصيا عند القراءة لكتاب أوربيين لدى طرحهم مواضيع تتعلق بالشرق حيث يشير بعضهم صراحة الى تأثير ادوارد سعيد في منهج تفكيرهم أما البعض الآخر فتستطيع استشعار ذلك التأثير من خلال ما يكتبون .
والسبب الثاني ان الكتاب جعلنا نميز بين مرحلتين وبتنا الآن في مرحلة ما بعد الاستشراق كما اعاد تعريفه الكاتب ولفظة " بعد " لا تعني التجاوز كما أوضح ادوارد سعيد في كلامه عن ما بعد الحداثة نقلا عن الباحثة " الا شوهات " في مقالها عن ما بعد الاستعمار ولكن تعني مظاهر الاستمرار ومظاهر الانقطاع .
رزين هو صوت اداورد سعيد ، ثقيل هو قلمه والجميل أنه لا يستغل هذه الرزانة والمهابة والثقل في تحقيق انتصارات او الدفاع عن قضايا ضيقة ولكنه يقدم دراسة من خلال هذا الكتاب بنيت على دعوة الى اعادة النظر في مقولات جاهزة اكتسبت منزلة المعرفة أو الممارسة كاملة الرسوخ في الوجدان العالمي .
خلاصة القول أن الاستشرا ق كان صرحاً من خيال فهوى ، فاسقني واشرب على أطلاله .
Reading this book dispelled a lot of the caricatural ideas about Orientalism that permeate fields like political science and sociology and Near Eastern/area studies. Namely, this is the purely academic origins of Orientalism -which are inextricably intertwined with geopolitical facts but nonetheless exist independently of those facts insofar as the Academy *created* and *elaborated on* the Orient in such a way as to produce/influence those same material facts. The almost wholly academic origins of Orientalism- specifically in literature- go largely unremarked on when discussed in the vast majority of fields in which ‘Orientalism’ is employed as an accepted liberal buzzword. However, the uncovering of these origins as laying the groundwork for a widely accepted and intelligible set of relations between the Occident and Orient illuminates the ways in which Orientalism remained unchallenged for so long, was so easily integrated into literature, scholarship, etc. unquestioningly, and became a hegemonic citational archive. Indeed, these facts are necessary to understand the way in which imperialistic and neocolonial policy towards “the Orient” was shaped and validated. Orientalism is more than just racism or Islamophobia- although much of Orientalism’s beginnings are inflected through a specific focus on and denigration of Islam as a deviant religion- encompassing moreso the production of monolithic, passive, sexualized, feminized, impotent, ahistorical, atemporal ideas of the Orient and its people. Whether these projects were inflected through Arabs or Semites or etc., the specific was always used (or ignored) to validate the abstract notions which had been cemented in the academic archive that constituted Orientalism. Thus, Orientalism is a deeply conservative academic discipline, one which finds its own image in every specific particularity (discarding those which dare not to reflect Orientalism back onto itself). This discarding of experience for abstraction marks off the Oriental as always-already impotent (not sexually, but culturally, politically, and historically). They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented: and this representation by the Occident was used as a process of consolidating the identity and superiority of the Occident in turn. In fact, the imagined/produced bifurcation between Occident/Orient is necessary insofar as the Orient needed to be created in order to create the Occident and therefore construct hierarchies of power, civilization, etc. Orientalism is a long process of re-presentation in which this generative act served dual purposes as processes of Western self-actualization and discovery through the unveiling of the coy mistress that is the Orient (note the always-already sexualized language through which the Orient is denoted, described, and delimited as the manifestation of a larger tendency towards portraying the Orient (and the Oriental) as oversexed, always operating in gross excess). Of course, this excess was mystifying and seductive for the Westerner constrained by cultural norms of propriety, etc., thus explaining the perverse obsession with the Orient as simultaneously a space of degeneracy and lack and one of radical freedom and excess. To paraphrase from Said, there is no real Orient that stands in contrast to the portraits of the Orient and there is no inner/outer sense of the Orient that is inflected onto a local/foreigner binary. There is no real or true Orient: the Orient is “a constituted entity” and the idea that “there are geographical spaces w/ indigenous, radically ‘different’ inhabitants who can be defined on the basis of some religion, culture, or racial essence proper to that geographical space is equally a highly debatable idea…” Said leaves us with a series of questions before ending his monograph which are worth repeating here in full: “How does one represent other cultures? What is another culture? Is the notion of a distinct culture (or race, or religion, or civilization) a useful one, or does it always get involved either in self-congratulation (when one discusses one’s own) or hostility and aggression (when one discusses the ‘other’)? Do cultural, religious, and racial difference matter more than socio-economic categories or politicohistorical ones? How do ideas acquire authority, ‘normality,’ and even the status of ‘natural’ truth? What is the role of the intellectual? Is he there to validate the culture and state of which he is a part? What importance must he give to an independent critical consciousness, an oppositional critical consciousness?” Overall, this was an amazing, formative, and profound book that challenges not only conservative academia but liberal over-simplification of Orientalism and an incorrect conflation of the West with Orientalism or Arab/Islamic/Oriental societies as perfect. Said’s COML and ENGL backgrounds are apparent and make this a unique work that I know I will bring into my work far into the future!
really really interesting and probably my fave week for history of art this semester but anything academic just hurts my brain. also bonus that i had to read it for english lit but i have already read it.
هذا الكتاب نادر من حيث المعلومات والأفكار التي يحويها بين طياته ... ما جعل مؤلفه يقود حركة "ما بعد الإستعمار" في القرن العشرين. الكتاب يرتكز على مجموعة كبيرة جدا من المراجع وهو أمر إن دل على شيء فإنه يدل على سعة معرفة الكاتب وحسن اطلاعه على الموضوع الذي يكتب فيه.
هذا الكتاب صعب و يستحق أن يدرس لمرات حتى يتم فهمه جيدا. أنا شخصيا أنوي إعادة مطالعته في وقت لاحق إن شاء المولى.
الفكرة الفلسفية لهذا الكتاب يرثها إدوارد سعيد عن فلوبر فيبرز بأن هناك علاقة وطيدة بين العلم والقوة؛ فعندما تؤسس لعلم ما و تتحكم في الأفكار التي يروجها (وهنا العلم هو الإستشراق و مشتقاته كعلم اللغة مثلا) يصبح بإمكانك أن تتحكم في الموضوع المدروس و أن تسيطر عليه وأن تسيره كما تريد. هذا ما فعله الغرب بالشرق والشرقيين !
الكتاب ينقسم إلى ثلاث محاور أساسية :
1 - تعريف الإستشراق هنا يحدد الكاتب ما يعنيه بالاستشراق وحدود الإستشراق الذي سيدرسه في كتابه .. فأدورد سعيد ألف هذا الكتاب لسببين اساسيين؛الأول يخص تنبؤ الغرب بخسارة بشعة للعرب في حرب 73 و السبب الثاني هو الفرق الشاسع بين الأفكار التي تروج لها كتب الإستشرقين عن الشرق وبين الحقيقة التي عايشها المؤلف في شبابه في فلسطين ومصر.إذن سيكون الحديث عن الشرق الأوسط والإسلامي بصفة خاصة ! الإستشراق يجد جذوره في القرون الوسطى مع دانتي مثلا، ثم يتطور فيصبح فكرا مؤسسا للإستعمار بحيث يشهد بروز مؤسسات اكاديمية تعنى بالأستشراق في اواخر القرن الثامن عشر ومطلع القرن التاسع عشر .. فيصبح الشرقي شيئا يدرس و يتكلم (بضم الياء) عوضا عنه. فالاستشراقي يعرف موضوعه جيدا وهو قادر على تقديمه لبني جلدته بطريقة علمية. فرحلة بونابرت تمثل لدى إدوارد سعيد الإنطلاقة الفعلية لتطبيق فكرة صنع الشرق بيد الاستشراقيين. فالمشروع الاستعماري هنا كان الهدف منه السيطرة العسكرية والسياسية وكذلك السيطرة الثقافية والفكرية بحيث تم إنشاء لجنة من العلماء تعنى بتأليف الموسوعة المصرية والتي تعرف الشرقي كجاهل وأن دور الإمبراطوريات الغربية سوف يكون إعادة تنظيم هذه البلاد و تحديثها.
2- إتساع أوروبا جغرافيا و الصدام التاريخي و "العاطفة" الغربية و التصنيف. هذه أربع عناصر مثلت التيارات التي حددت الهياكل الفكرية والمؤسساتية في القرن 18. فالغربي هو البطل الذي ينقذ الشرق من الغربة والغرابة. يعطي هنا إدوارد سعيد مجموعة من الأمثلة عن المفكرين والإستشرقين الذين عملوا في تلك الفترة على تأسيس الفكرة المسيطرة على الإستشراق. سيلفستر دي ساسي ورينان و حتى ماركس الذي كان يتألم لما تعيشه الشعوب الشرقية من الآم الإستعمار إلا أنه كان يعتبر هذه الأوجاع ضرورية من أجل تحديث هذه المناطق من العالم.
3- الإستشراق الحديث
السيطرة الأمريكية على العالم على اثر الحربين العالميتين أدت إلى ظهور الإستشراق الأمركي. هذا الإتشرق الذي واصل على منوال مؤسسيه مع إستعماله لأدوات جديدة للبروباغندا كالسينما والفوتوغرافيا.
بطبيعة الحال الشرقي لا يعبر عن نفسه وعن أفكاره، الشرقي ليست له إنسانية بحيث يتم إخفاء كل ما هو إنساني فيه كميراثه الأدبي على سبيل المثال. وحتى الشرقي الذي يتكلم باسم الشرق فهو خريج المدرسة الغربية بحيث أصبحت الدراسات الشرقية حكرا على الجامعات الغربية. وهكذا أصبح من الشرقيين استشراقيين يعيدون في بلادهم ما يسمعون ويتعلمون في أروقة الجامعات الغربية (ذكر مثال طه حسين).
شهدت هذه الفترة أيضا تطور صورة العربي المسلم الإرهابي الذي يكره العالم الغربي الحديث.
ينهي سعيد كتابه بذكره للفشل الإنساني والفكري للإستشراق. ذلك بأن الإستشراق حاول منذ نشأته أن يضع نفسه على الحافة المقابلة للأخر الشرقي وبأن يعرف نفسه عبر تعريفه للآخر. والحل النسبة له لا يكون عبر تأسيس مدرسة "استغرابية" بل الحل يكمن في الموضوعية والإنسانية في البحث العلمي.
Just from my own experience, if you spend enough time in another culture you realize that human nature is remarkably consistent wherever you go. It’s that consistency that allows us to see the humanity in another but it’s only the lived experience that allows us to truly understand. We all have similar daily anxieties, starting with basic needs, similar needs for family, purpose and spirituality and ultimately similar expressions of joy and sorrow. At least on the level of symbols we can always find counterparts in other cultures, traditions and languages. But to have the opportunity to see things in this way involves a level of knowledge, power and privilege that is not available equally to all. More to the point it involves a particular WAY of seeing things that is one of the main ideas in Said’s writing.
This book is one to regularly re-visit and I have in light of recent events. We fear what we don’t understand - understanding (knowledge) brings a form of control whether conscious or not and even that sense of control compels many of us to study a particular topic in the first place. Understanding a topic brings a sense of order - this is a psychological trait common to all of us. Also common is the tendency to place broad generalizations and to project our own fear of the unknown onto others which dehumanizes them in many ways, starting with our need to explain their reality in terms we understand. As Said famously says, “The Orient must be represented, it can’t represent itself.” This is both an observation and perhaps a statement of human nature. We can only understand things in the context of our own subjectivity. Knowing a foreign language or spending time in a foreign country will help as will a genuine positive desire to learn from other cultures for the sake of learning alone but we will still interpret all this through the context of our own experiences. We retreat to those subjective experiences (or we simply retreat to fear) when we can’t properly describe our observations of the “foreign” or “the orient” in this case.
One of Said’s main concerns is to show how knowledge, power and privilege (in this case coming from the West) has defined “the East” or “the Orient” in terms of “the Occident” - we’ve described what we don’t know in terms of what we do know - as outsiders - without taking into account these fundamental subjective biases. These biases are both conscious and subconscious and are a result of our speaking for others.
Said goes on to point out the dangers of Orientalism in the sense that it has become a structural way for the “West” to define the “East” in terms and through labels that allow our control and dominance of the areas in question - which leads to actual invasions, occupation and general warfare. Orientalism is a colonial phenomenon in Said’s thinking and developed almost parallel and naturally as a part of the drive for world domination. In the time of writing and currently, the greatest face of the Orient is Islam or brown people generally. It is in the Middle East that the greatest geopolitical concerns for the United States and proxies still remain. It was as true 50 years ago as it is today - maybe more so. How we have viewed the people of this region has a dramatic effect on our tolerance for evil - it is still sobering to imagine 2.3 million Americans being shot and starved like fish in a barrel in Gaza (instead of 2.3 million Arabic speaking brown Palestinians) or 1 million Americans killed in Iraq to understand the twinge of subconscious Orientalism many (sometimes all of us) still harbor. How would it affect your view of the current conflict to know that your neighbors or friends or people who spoke exactly like you on the instagram videos were being sliced in half by bombs or burned alive in their homes? Even if you’re against the war I would guess it would still hit a bit harder. Hopefully not, but likely we all carry some of it. It hurts more and we fear it more when the victims look like us. It comes down to human life being valued differently. Said mentions in this book that more than any other group, we will accept labels, slurs and bigotry towards Muslims and Arabs. The things that are said publicly about Palestinians would get you canceled if you said it about any other group. Imagine a panel of university presidents being called before Congress for accusations of “anti-Palestiniansim”.
Orientalism goes hand in hand with Colonialism - it’s a system of rationalizing our actions, justifying our violence and expansion of cultural or physical territory through dehumanization of those we don’t understand towards the end of power and control. It allows us to re-write history according to our narrative and gives power the ability to create labels according to our needs. At times it’s purposeful but it always results from the human fear of what we don’t understand, making it a tool of manipulation for those in positions of power. It’s a critically important read as is The Question of Palestine and Covering Islam by Said which are considered part of a trilogy of related works that are as relevant now as when they were written.
[academic text][read for: Post-Colonialist Theory and Representation]
When Palestinian-American thinker, Edward Said, published Orientalism in 1978, he absolutely shook the world of Western academia into chaos. Through his seismic work, Edward Said — a key founder of what would be known today as “post-colonial studies” — illuminated the insidious interplay between knowledge and power in the Western world and its artistic and literary canon. Today his work stands as one of the most important texts in helping reshape the intellectual landscape of the late 20th century, mainly through Said’s devastating critique of how the West has historically viewed/misrepresented the East, constructing the East as a fabricated “Other.” This legacy of “Othering” the East, Said argued, was designed to position the West as superior (and to justify their actions as a world power). Said’s Orientalism became key in establishing post-colonialism as an area of study, one that continues to influence things like literature, history, and cultural criticism today. Said’s arguments in Orientalism not only exposed the political and economic systems of colonialism, but also revealed the deeper (far more treacherous) cultural frameworks that underpinned them.
Colonialism, Said argued, was not merely a project of political domination or straightforward resource extraction — it was also a way of seeing and categorizing the world. Said introduced his idea of "Orientalism," a concept where Western powers constructed a view of the East and its people as inferior, exotic, mystical, and irrational (thus contrasting themselves and being able to claim all the superior qualities for themselves). This worldview, pervasive in culture through literature, art, etc., justified and sustained colonial rule, presenting it as a “civilizing mission” rather than its reality as an exploitative enterprise. Crucially, Said demonstrated how this ideology extended beyond politics into other areas like academia, literature, and art, creating a pervasive system of thought that influenced how entire cultures were represented and understood.
A Palestinian-American intellectual, Said wrote Orientalism from a uniquely dual perspective. Born in Jerusalem and educated at elite Western institutions like Princeton and Harvard, he combined intimate knowledge of the Middle East with the analytical tools of Western literary criticism. This position gave him the ability to trace the origins of Orientalist thought back to even the “beginning”, through the writings of the ancient Greeks, medieval travelers, and even Enlightenment philosophers. Said showed how these early depictions of the East — from the ancient Greeks’ depiction of Persia as barbaric to the Romantic period of literature and its obsession with the mysterious, mystical East — evolved into the racist stereotypes of the colonial era, where entire regions were reduced to caricatures and dehumanized, paving the way for colonialism and its atrocities and injustices.
The power and lasting impact of Orientalism lies in its interdisciplinary approach. Said can write and move seamlessly between discussing literature, art, history, and politics to build his logical arguments — he examines how European (with a focus on British and French) writers/scholars/thinkers of Near Eastern studies contributed to a system of knowledge that both reflected and reinforced colonial hierarchies. For example, he critiques a few authors like the British writer Kipling and French author Flaubert as examples of how literature can systematically reinforce colonialist and imperialist ideologies. Rudyard Kipling (one of the most famous writers of the British Empire), was known for his stories that romanticized and justified colonialism (The Jungle Book is a notable example). Said argued that Kipling’s writing (along with other works of literature from this colonial period), was part of a broader cultural and intellectual agenda to depict the "Orient" as this backwards, primitive, and inferior "Other" in need of European governance and civilization. Said also critiques French literature, for instance though the example of 19th-century French novelist Gustave Flaubert. Flaubert’s portrayal of the Egyptian courtesan Kuchuk Hanem in Voyage en Égypte is an imperialist depiction that reduces her to a voiceless symbol of sensuality and passivity, reflecting the Orientalist trope of the exotic and submissive "Other." Said argued that such representations were not isolated artistic choices but rather part of a broader cultural project that dehumanized Eastern subjects, presenting them as objects of Western curiosity, to justify the West's crushing colonial domination. Said was particularly concerned with how ostensibly “objective” academic work collaborated in this process and helped this agenda, lending a veneer of legitimacy to insidious imperial ideologies.
For context, Orientalism focuses on the Middle East and the Muslim world, but its insights resonate far beyond these regions. Said demonstrated that colonialism was not just a physical act of occupation, but an all-encompassing way of structuring knowledge and asserting cultural superiority (something that is unfortunately still highly relevant today, Palestine being one example). Even after formal colonial rule ended, he argued, these attitudes persisted, particularly when the United States emerged as a global power of its own, with its own "Orientalist" vision of the world.
Unsurprisingly, the book was controversial. Orientalism sparked fierce criticism and discourse upon its release. Said’s critique of Western academia definitely struck a nerve with academics, particularly among scholars of Orientalist disciplines who saw their fields under attack. Other critics, who did agree with his ideas, pointed to what they viewed as gaps in his analysis, including his decision to limit his focus to critique of British and French scholarship/literature, leaving out German, Russian, Dutch and other colonial powers whose authors also participated in Orientalist, colonialist writing. Critics also point to the book’s focus on the Islamic Near East, which largely excludes East and South Asia. Said himself acknowledged these limitations, maintaining that his narrower scope was deliberate, designed to address the most influential colonial powers (British and French) and their enduring cultural impact.
Despite the hot debate that raged on in the years since publication, Orientalism has had a profound and lasting influence. Its ideas have shaped fields as diverse as literature, history, art history, and other cultural studies. Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination echoes a lot of Said’s analysis through an American lens on race in the country’s literary canon, examining how American literature constructs racial identities and perpetuates Blackness as “Otherness” in order to define whiteness as "superior." In its central premise — that knowledge production is inseparable from power dynamics — Orientalism challenged generations of scholars to reconsider how they approach non-Western societies, urging them to question the language, frameworks, and assumptions that underpin their works.
At its heart, Orientalism asks a pretty important and fundamental question: how do we study and represent non-Western societies without perpetuating the inequalities of the colonial past? Said’s answer, rooted in Michel Foucault’s ideas on discourse and power, was to interrogate the systems of representation themselves. By emphasizing the ways in which language shapes perception, Said gave us a framework for understanding the enduring legacies of empire — one that given current events and the modern political climate, remains as urgent and relevant today as it was in 1978.
More than four decades later, Orientalism stands as a cornerstone of post-colonial theory and a powerful critique of cultural hegemony. It compels us to examine not only the past but also the narratives we continue to construct about the world. Said’s work remains essential reading for students of post-colonialism and for anyone seeking to understand the complexities of colonialism’s cultural aftermath.
مع إني سئ في الكتابة حول كتاب ما إلا إني سأكتب على أي حال... قسم ادوارد سعيد كتابه 560 صفحة لثلاثة فصول رئيسية... 1-الاستشراق وفصل فيه حول مدى معرفة الغرب حول الشرق، تلك المعرفة الباهتة التي ألزمت الشرقي صفة الجاهل وغير عارف بمصالحه. وأن الغربي أكثر دراية بها هذا ما ح��ول تبريره بلفور لغزو مصر. وتحدث عن مشروعات عن مشروعين سبقا غزو نابليون لمصر. أنكتيل الذي ترجم الأفستا وترجمة الأوبانيشاد ومنها ربط بين الشرق والغرب فاكتسبت آسيا لأول مرة بعدا فكريا وتاريخيا دقيقا. ثم جاء وليم جونز الذي جاء بعد انكتيل ووضع قواعد التحليل والتصنيف والمقارنة. 2- أبنية الاستشراق وإعادة بنائها وتحدث عن ساسي الذي اختير لوضع لوحة عامة عن تقدم العلوم والفنون من قبل المهد الفرنسي المكلف من قبل نابليون. ثم رينان الكاره للسامية مع فقه اللغة. 3- الاستشراق الآن تحدث عن الانجلوفرنسي ومن ثم الوريث لهم الامريكي.
بعض الأمور التي اراد توضيحها سع��د وهي الأفكار السابقة التي اعتمدها المستشرقون اللاحقون دون الحيد عنها في الاتفاق على أن الشرقي أبله لا يعرف مصالحه وأنه عبدا لشهواته ونزواته. وأن المنطق لم يخلق لهم بيننا مثلا الانجليزي يولد محملا بجينات المنطق! كذلك الهدف الغربي من وراء الاستشراق في السيطرة على الشرق وتجنبا مثل ما يصفون همجيته التي كانت لها انتصارات عظيمة مثلما سبق. تغير موضوع الاستشراق الذي كان في زمن رينان محاربا لكل السامية، وخصوصا بعد سقوط الاتحاد السوفيتي الى الاسلام بوصفه عدو السامية -متمثلة في اليهود- الأكبر فهو دين لا يعرف سوى العنف والكراهية تجاه الغير.
الكتاب دسم جدا وهو مناسب للمتخصصين في السياسة او من كان مهتما في العلوم السياسية وصعب على من هو غير ذلك. وكان صعبا علي فعلا واتعبتني طريقة سعيد في سرده الطويل وجمله الأطول...
الكتاب مهم فعلا وحتى بفهمي القاصر الا اني خرجت بفوائد والاهتمام اكثر من خلال القراءة مستقبلا. ولقد ادهشني قول بعض المفمرين مثل ماركس الذي عمل ما عمل من اجل الانسان الا انه لم يزد الا موافقة على تصرفات الانجليز في الهند مما قد يترجم خوفا من قوة السرق...