السنة التي تقرأ فيها الاستشراق يجب أن تكون في أهميّة السنة التي تخرجت فيها، أو حصلت على أول عملٍ لك، أو تزوجتْ. سنة فارقة؛ لأن الكتاب يشكّل بالفعل علامة فارقة في قائمة القراءات.

يتناول الكتاب تحليل "خطاب" الاستشراق، وينقسم إلى ثلاثة محاور: نطاق الاستشراق، أبنية الاستشراق وإعادة بنائها، الاستشراق الآن. ثيمة الكتاب أو الفرضية التي يقوم عليها تتلخص في أن (الاستشراق مذهب فُرِض فرضاً على الشرق) وهو (جهاز ثقافي ينحصر في العداء والنشاط وإصدار الأحكام وفرض "الحقائق" والمعرفة).

بأسلوبٍ عميق، ونثرٍ آسر، ودقة لافتة يعرض سعيد تاريخ "التحيّزات" التي تكتسي طابعاً علميا زائفا، والرسائل المضمرة في الاستشراق، وتواطؤه المريب مع السلطة. وهو يكرر في صفحاتٍ كثيرة رفضه لتصوّر وجود جوهرٍ ثابت للشرق (أو حتى الغرب). (الاستشراق يقدم الشرق في صورة أنماطٍ ثابتة مجردة)، وبذكاء يلاحظ (الاختلاف المضمر والأقوى القائم بين المستشرق والشرقي، هو أن الأول يقوم بالكتابة، والثاني هو المكتوب عنه، والسلبية هي الدور المفترض للثاني، وأما الأول فيفترض فيه القوة التي تمكنه من الملاحظة والدرس وهلم جرا).

سيجعلك المؤلف في النهاية تنفر من لغة التعميمات الفضفاضة، والحشو والتطويل، والأحكام الساذجة، والصور الموغلة في السلبية، والقوالب الفكرية المغلقة، والمواقف العدائية المُغرِضة، وضيق الأفق.

إنه كتاب في (تهافت) الاستشراق، يمتاز بقدرة رهيبة على تفحص عيوبه ومساوئه، وسعيد يخلص إلى أن (الاستشراق رغم أوجه فشله، ورطانته المؤسفة، ونزعته العنصرية التي لا تكاد تخفى، وجهازه الفكري الهزيل، يزدهر اليوم. بل أني أرى ما يدعو إلى الانزعاج في انتشار تأثيره إلى "الشرق" نفسه، إذ تحفل صفحات الكتب والمجلات المنشورة بالعربية (وبلا شك باليابانية وشتى اللهجات الهندية وغيرها من اللغات الشرقية) بتحليلاتٍ من الدرجة الثانية يكتبها العرب عن "العقل العربي" وعن "الإسلام" وغير ذلك من أقوال في عداد الأساطير).

The following is a true story:

Me, in a San Franscisco bar reading Orientalism.

The blonde girl next to me reading over my shoulder: "So what's Orientalism?"

I explain as best I can in a couple sentences.

Her: "There are so many isms in Asia - like Buddhism and Taoism. You know what book you should read? The Tao of Poo. It's sooo good. It's, like, the perfect way to teach Americans about Eastern Religion."

Horrified, I look back to my book and take a sip of beer.

Orientalism is a study in the history of ideas, by Palestinian-American comparative literature professor Edward Said. The work traces the development of the perception of westerners of easterners from antiquity to the early XX century. It is mainly focused on the Levant and the Muslim East. East Asia is mentioned only as a destination for which the Muslim East was an important gateway. Said builds his theses on two major concepts of XX century philosophy: Michel Foucault’s ideas about knowledge and how it is related to power, and Antonio Gramsci’s cultural hegemony. Although the disciplines of philology and linguistics were very important in the field of Orientalism, Said gives much more importance to the literature written about the East in the XIX century, literature being his field of study, but for a reader who is not familiar with these authors it might be difficult to criticize his interpretations of these works.

 

From Antiquity to the middle ages, the East is represented as the essential Other. It is everything the West is not. Ancient authors enjoyed characterizing it with vague epithets, as long as they are not usually used to describe the West. The East is thus exotic, sensual, slavish, despotic…This will only be amplified by the coming of Islam as a political power, and the huge threat it represented on the door steps of Europe. It is an era of fear for westerners, combined with complete ignorance and misunderstanding. With the rise of the West in the beginning of the modern era, westerners started to develop a much wider interest in the region, with all the economic and military advantages a much more precise knowledge could give them. Travelers were the first to open what will become an odyssey of one civilization to describe and characterize another, a very unique venture in human History. Then the conquerors showed up, with England in India and Napoleon in Egypt. The marching troops were not only infantrymen, but also sophisticated scholars who went to explore what time had swallowed from these ancient civilizations, to expose what the indigenous population lost or forgot, and save it from oblivion. It was time for major linguistic and archeological discoveries, the birth of Egyptology, Assyriology, biblical criticism and the indo-European hypotheses. Then the romantic dreamers followed along to get their share in this great conquest, some of these authors did visit the East, and some of them only heard of it, but all were very enthusiastic about exploiting its inherent difference and exotic appeal in their literary projects.

 

The conquerors, scholars and the writers were all expressing a sort of unchallenged Volonté de Puissance over the East. Ruling it and knowing it were two inseparable things. The indigenous population was not only under the shackles of the imperialists but also had the essence of its traditions, religion, way of life and whole world view described, linked to an essential character which is the Eastern character, once known it is enough to understand what makes an easterner one and what differentiates him from a westerner. All of this inside a now established institution called Orientalism, recruiting an army of scholars and backed by Empires and agents overseas. Nothing will represent this further than the merger of the scholar and the administrator to create the ultimate governor of easterners who govern efficiently because he knows what is most essential in his governed. This is personalized in the imperial agents of the beginning of the XX century such as Lord Cromer and T.E Lawrence.  

 

The fading of the two major European imperial powers will be a major shift in the discipline. France and Britain are no longer the centers of the study of the East, although their strong legacy remained pivotal in all that came after. American institutions of eastern studies produce much of the orientalist literature today. Even though it blended with other disciplines such as Sociology and History, it did not mean that some of its XIX century premises changed. Usually it is the same paradigm, dividing the world to two antagonistic entities, then searching for the essence of the Easterners and its consequences in the world they live in and on others around them.

 

Said argues that Orientalism is an essentialist reductionist and politically motivated discipline.  It institutionalized and perpetuated clichés about the East and gave them the prestige of a real social science. It served the agendas of the conquering empires. In the study of other human groups, the dangers of human fiction are numerous. Orientalists not only described the East but also gave it a voice. They spoke for the East, retrieved its treasures and saved its legacy. Real Easterners were never heard nor had the chance to fight back. Orientalists were thus free to perpetuate the same images over and over. The very notion of the East is in itself a gross approximation which allocates a certain character to the inhabitants of a vast geographical area, neglecting all the differences and the peculiarities of each of the sub groups. It also presents group identity as rigid, static and eternal. Which is far from reality. Civilization is a collective human construct which keeps evolving and changing. The identity of a certain group is not an unchanging fact, History shows us that it is rather a fiction created overtime under certain circumstances and responding to certain needs.   


Said also questions the possibility of the very existence of a disinterested scholarship. Any scholar is evolving and serving a structure which defines his methods and sets his goals, a system which he cannot escape. The quest can never exist outside of his author’s ideology, if we define ideology as a vision he holds of the world. Most of the time he is either defending it or refuting its adversaries.


For a lot of readers, Orientalism will sound like a long rant against western imperialism and also western scholarship. Most will agree about the imperialism part but for the scholarship it is a more complicated matter. The endeavor to know the East, no matter how flawed or politically motivated, is one unique venture in Human History. It is undeniable that the ancient languages deciphered, the archeological sites uncovered were a monumental human achievement, an unparalleled contribution to human knowledge. Said’s language seems to discount this to concentrate only on the fact that it was done by imperial means. Even if it all started by a desire to define, know and master the Other, westerners went further. They are not the only group who use the concept of Otherness either. It is enough to open a random page from the Coran to find a strong distinction between the believers and the non-believers, and perhaps in some Chinese chronicles, they are describing some uncivilized neighbors they fight or conquer. The systematic study of westerners is a step further than hatred and fear, although this does not justify its means yet it must be acknowledged that it was an enormous gain to humanity in general.

 

Said rarely mentionnes a defining parameter in the very existence of Orientalism.  The discipline wouldn’t have existed or had the power it had if Easterners did not leave the void it came to fill. The silence of the East is real and not a mere fiction of orientalists.  Scholarships in the East lagged behind and still lagging to this day. Eastern scholars use orientalist works as their starting points, if they had access to it or knew about its existence. Easterners failed to write about themselves let alone write about others. Despite the blame on westerners for this one sided narrative they create, it is difficult to say that the other side was not excluded intentionally, but it did not show up to the discussion. Said seems aware of this, in order to have a real cultural dialogue the two sides should at least contribute with an equal degree. Knowing how hard it is in the current circumstances, any reform in the discipline still has to come from inside, from the westerner side again.


This is particularly true in the case of the Muslim East. Which is where Said spends most of the last half of the book. Bringing China to his reasoning will complicate the equation. Sure in the late XX century so many circumstances changed its relationship to the west which challenged the way the west viewed it. In the meantime nothing really changed in the Muslim East since Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt, the animosity with the west has never reached a similar level since decolonization, this situation allow so much of the Orientalist tradition to be valid to this day. If orientalists spoke from inside an imperialist interventionist structure from which they cannot be isolated, then Said speaks from a structure which is marked by centuries of humiliation and frustration. A Palestinian displaced by overwhelming ideological, military and materially superior powers.


I apologize for such a long review! So many things to say. Edward Said’s Orientalism is a book to love and hate. That is why he sparked so much controversy. This is proof that after all those centuries of eastern studies were not a waste of time. Knowledge is a collective effort which is constantly questioned. It is only with contributions such as this book that advances are made.

An intelligent and insightful book about how the West has stereotyped and dehumanized the East through racist and oppressive representations of the East as backwards, uncivilized and in need of Western revitalization or aid. Edward Said writes at length about the origins and development of Orientalism throughout history and how it has culminated in and contributed to anti-Arab sentiments. He raises important and thought-provoking questions about interrogating how places are represented, who has the power to create representations, and what are the consequences of those representations. His point about how universities in the United States wield so much power in their construction of knowledge about the East struck me – just as much of this book did – as unfortunately relevant to today still even though this book was published in the 1970’s. Here’s one quote in particular that I liked:

“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. But Orientalism has taken a further step than that: it views the Orient as something whose existence is not only displayed but has remained fixed in time and place for the West. So impressive have the descriptive and textual successes of Orientalism been that entire periods of the Orient’s cultural, political, and social history are considered mere responses to the West. The West is the actor, the Orient a passive reactor. The West is the spectator, the judge and jury, of every facet of Oriental behavior. Yet if history during the twentieth century has provoked intrinsic change in and for the Orient, the Orientalist is stunned.”

I give this book four stars instead of five because I found the language super dry and hard to get through at times, despite the quality content. It took me over a year to get through this book because I would read it for a little and find myself dissuaded by the writing, like, am I just not “smart” enough to get this book or enjoy this dense writing? Maybe I’m not and that’s fine with me. But, if not for a burst of motivation over the past couple of days I’m not sure when I would’ve finished Orientalism. Even though I found the language somewhat tedious I’d still recommend this book given the pervasiveness of imperialist and racist notions of the Middle East that exist today.

يناقش أدوارد سعيد في هذا الكتاب " الاستشراق " كظاهرة ثقافية يشوبها الكثير من التحامل الغربي على الشرق ،، يظهر ذلك في سطحية النظرة الغربية للثقافة العربية و الاسلامية بل و الشرقية بصفة عامة فيلعب المستشرق دور الراصد لما يعتقد أنه همجية في مقابل الحضارة و التقدم الغربي فينجرف وراء " نحن " مقابل " هم " أو المسيحية و الحضارة مقابل البدائية و هنا تظهر كثير من الدراسات الاستشراقية كدعامة للعنصرية و التعالي الأوربي على الشعوب الأخرى الأقل درجة في رأيهم ،، ناقش إدوارد سعيد بشكل كبير الاستشراق من عدة جوانب مستشهداً بالعديد من الكتابات الاستشراقية على مدى فترات طويلة ،، كذلك ناقش دورها في التنظير للاستعمار و بناء صورة مشوهة عن الشعوب التي تقع في جنوب و شرق أوربا و الصورة النمطية التي رسمها هؤلاء المستشرقون وأصبحت كحقيقة لا يمكن مناقشتها بل و تم البناء عليها بشكل مستمر من الأجيال الأوربية التالية ،، في نهاية هذه الطبعة - التي ترجمها الدكتور محمد عناني بشكل متميز - سجل المؤلف ردود الفعل المعادية لكتابه و آرائه من بعض المهتمين بالشأن الاستشراقي و ناقش حججهم و انتقاداتهم بشكل جميل ،، الكتاب متميز و غني بالمعلومات و الحقائق و الأفكار المتميزة للمؤلف

شتان بين الطلسمات التي ابتلينا بها على يد كمال ابوديب في الترجمة الأولى التي صدرت قبل أكثر من عقدين، وبين هذه الترجمة السلسة الرائقة البعيدة عن التقعُّر، والإغراب، وصك المصطلحات الشاذة. إذا أردت أن تقرأ كتاب إدوارد سعيد، وتفهمه فهماً حسناً، وتفيد منه، فعليك بقراءة ترجمة أستاذنا محمد عناني، واهرب من ترجمة كمال ابوديب هروبك من المجذوم!!!!!!!!!!!!

“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.”

This is a fascinatingly interesting book. It is also a book that is virtually required reading if you are going to say anything at all about post-colonialism. Whether you agree or disagree with the central theme of the book is almost beside the point. This work is seminal and landmark – so it can be avoided only at your own cost.

I’ll get to the central idea of the book in a second, but first some advice for people thinking of reading it. I think, if I only wanted to get an idea of what the book was about, but didn’t have time to read 305 pages or so, that I would read the preface to the 2003 edition and then read the afterword (actually, you could probably read those the other way around if you wanted, that would probably make even more sense). The point being that he is so clear and so ‘summary’ in these two parts of the book that as an overview and a way to get at the meat of his argument you would struggle to get a better grounding than those parts of his book. The rest of the book is a bit more for the kind of person who likes ‘completeness’. Look, it is all beautifully written and utterly fascinating too – but like I said, life is short and this is the sort of book that covers more ground that you might feel you really need covered.

So, what’s it all about? Well, Orientalism probably doesn’t mean what you might first think. You might assume that it has something to do with China – which isn’t quite where he is coming from. Said is tracing the history of an idea and in that idea the exotic East was the Middle East long before it was the Far East. That is what makes this book essential reading. If there is one thing that is increasingly being used to define our understanding of the world today – in the way that the Cold War defined our world for large parts of the 20th Century – it is the relationship between the West and Islam. We are constantly told that Islam is monolithic, that Islamofascists are wanting to impose Sharia Law on a hapless and ‘too democratic for our own good’ West. That we are pluralistic, they are clones. The main lesson of this book is to beware as soon as anyone starts using the word WE. It can be the most dangerous word in the language. But the similarities between the pluralist US and the monolithic THEM so reminded me of the East / West cold war that it was terrifying.

The Orient has long been a place where Westerners have projected their lusts, their dreams and their nightmares. Much of what is said about the East in this book by ‘Orientalists’ confirms masturbatory desires on behalf of the Orientalists themselves more than it says about life in the Middle East.

In fact, Orientalism says infinitely more about the West than it does about whatever we choose define as the Orient. The problem is one of essentialism. East is East and West is West and neither the twain shall meet – but not only is this geographically stupid, for it to be true in any sense it relies on a definition of the two ‘diametrically opposed’ opposites that must be taken as being real and total explanations before you start.

It requires us to have a single notion of what a Muslim is – as if this religion covering so many millions of people and having lasted for centuries and centuries could really, somehow remain self-identical across all of that time and all of that space. Such an idea ought to be utterly ludicrous after a moment’s reflection (not that such ideas ever really get even a moment’s reflection) – but our desire for a simple and clear and easily defined enemy is such that we lump together Seventh Century Arabs with Twenty-First Century Indonesians as if they were all identical.

And it gets worse. Not only are they all the same, but they are also too stupid to even understand the first thing about themselves. It is only because of we remarkably generous Westerners being able to explain their history to them, their language, society and character, that they have any ideas about themselves at all. This is the role of the Orientalist, a role he (and from what I can gather from this book it does seem to virtually always be a he) has played rather consistently over the centuries.

What is particularly interesting here is that Said says Orientalists don’t really treat the Orient as if it was a place, in space or time, but rather as a text – written once and then indelible. The Orient really reached its glory days a long time ago – you have to remember that much of our mathematics and virtually all of our Classical Philosophy came from Islamic scholars. So, to explain this we need to see Islam and the Orient as a culture in decay, a culture that is degenerating. But still a text nonetheless. And a text that can only be read by a properly schooled Western scholar. And what is the appropriate schooling for such a scholar? Well, not necessarily Oriental texts, as you might think – but rather texts about the Orient by previous Oriental scholars. This is like an entire school of Shakespeare scholarship that never actually refers to any of the poems or plays, but rather discusses previous works of scholarship on Shakespeare. And like such scholarship the assumption is that the plays never change – just as it is assumed the Orient and those who live there never changes either. You can understand the Muslim mind by reading the Koran – in a way that you can’t understand the Western mind by reading the Bible.

Of course, our television makes this unity of the Orient something that is self-evident. Other than Israel, the rest of the region is self-identical. This was made particularly clear during the so called Arab Spring when an image of an Arab in headgear shaking his fist could have been someone revolting in Libya, or Tunisia, or Egypt, or Syria – and fortunately from our perspective in the West all of these countries were identical and had identical problems and were resolving those identical problems in exactly the same way. Through unreason and violence – that is, a particularly Oriental and non-Western way.

If this book is anything, it is a plea for us to recognise the humanity of the other – of the Arab other in this case. One of the things I’ve become increasingly concerned about is what I call aggregated facts. For example, when I hear that the USA spends more on healthcare than any other nation or how much an average Australian spends on education, I become worried. People who talk in averages are not to be trusted – there, a generalisation you can rely on in a review telling you not to rely on generalisations. What people who talk in averages are about to say next is generally a lie. ‘How can there be a problem when America already spends more on healthcare than any other nation on earth?’ ‘How can Australia need the Gonski Report, we already spend a fortune on education?’ But averages mask how much is going to some people and how little is going to others. Averages are lies told in numbers. Aggregating humans as if all you need to say about them is that they are Arabs or Americans or Australians and then thinking that is somehow all you needed to say, that a single label can explain entire human cultures, is the stuff of racist fantasy. That so many otherwise rational and intelligent people have fallen into this trap (yes, I’m looking at you Hitchens – but not only you) and have done so repeatedly is to all of our shame.

Unfortunately, the work of learning about other cultures cannot be done by pouring them into a single bucket and giving them a single name. People are insanely complex and the societies they make are even more so. To imagine for a second that by calling a society Arabic or Islamic suddenly makes it any easier to understand says far more about the person pointing their finger and calling names than it does about those on the receiving end.

Of course this doesn’t only go for Arabs – or even just those living in Asia – but this is a common theme for all people who we think of as being different from ourselves and so group into a single mass. This book is a mirror held up before us (whoever that US is) – we should have the courage to look squarely into that mirror and learn the lesson it is trying to teach us.

Highly recommended, essential reading.

Orientalism is a masterpiece of comparative literature studies and deconstruction, published in 1978 it is arguably Said's most rigorous piece but undoubtedly his most influential. This is a examination of the academic discipline of Oriental Studies, which has a long history most of the European universities. Oriental Studies is a pastiche areas of study which include philology, linguistics, ethnography, and the interpretation of culture through the discovery, recovery, compilation, and translation of Oriental texts. Said makes it clear that he is not breaking new ground. Said limits Orientalism on how English, French, and American scholars have approached the Arab societies of North Africa and the Middle East. Although at times he refers to other periods - ranging as far back as the Greeks, the time period he covers is more limited than the scholarly field really extend. Said stays within the confines of the late eighteenth century to the present, whereas European scholarship on the Orient dates back to the High Middle Ages. Within his time frame, however, Said extends his examination beyond the works of recognized Orientalist academics to take in literature, journalism, travel books, and religious and philosophical studies to produce a broadly historical and anthropological perspective incorporating Foucaultian notions of "Discourse" and Gramscian notions of "Inventories".

His book makes three major claims. Firstly, that Orientalism, although purporting to be an objective, disinterested, and rather esoteric field, in fact functioned to serve political ends. Next, his second claim is that Orientalism helped define a European (mainly English and French) self-image. Lastly, Said argues that Orientalism has produced a false description of Arabs and Islamic culture.

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.

"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.

I tried but failed to read the entirety of this book's turgid prose, in fact I am pretty sure that the number of those who use the term Orientalism who have actual read Said's book is probably as small as the number of Marxist who have read Marx or the number of people who include Joyce's Ulysses as one of their favourite books who have actually read it.

The book was interesting, but deeply flawed. It created a paradigm that was not only false but easily observed and thrown back at anyone and everyone who had a contrary view to what Said believed. It was also deeply flawed in perspective and scope, his Orientalism was chiefly concerned with Palestine and Egypt, had nothing to say about areas East of Suez so even his definition of the 'Orient' is dubious. Of course he had some interesting things to say but his book has grotesquely overshadowed the work of others as well as becoming a simplistic catch phrase. The work is mired in contradictions - he absolutely hated the author Paul Bowles and the writer Robert Irwin but the basis for his attacks on them and other writers would actually work against Said as his own background, education and the language he wrote in makes a profile of these classic 'Orientalist' that he condemns.

Re-examining literature of the past, our views and way of looking at things is essential, there is so much we don't realise we take for granted and how often our views are full of presumptions which we never think of. But simple reductive sloganeering is no real help. Said constructed a phantom which he then demolished for his own ends. You can't ignore him but you'd do far better to read the Wikipedia entry first and then look at more recent, and older, and more subtle authors who have applied his ideas but to more interesting affect.