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.

Extremely repetitive. I had to force my way through most of the second half of the book. I expect a little repetition with history books, because often the same topic will be approached from different angles, but it was excessive.

I found the language of the book to be needlessly convoluted (academic writing does not have to be boring, and I have been lucky enough to read plenty of wonderful academic works). The arguments were mostly good and backed up well, but occasionally the narrative would randomly jump to make a completely different point (I’d physically scrunch up my face in confusion) and Said did not even bother providing credible sources. It read as though he let his personal bias color his writing and was unwilling to provide the same level of proof that he did for his other points when he jumped around.

It’s also tricky regarding the handful of authors that Said quoted as “proof” of a literary tradition of a fantasy Orient. I’ll believe it because I’ve read enough to get what he’s talking about, but it’s hard to prove something culturally WELL and he didn’t quite dig deep enough. He was both over- and under-specific.

I’m still glad that I read it though, because he provides an invaluable perspective on how to approach “orientalist” works after growing up in the western world. It’s definitely a useful book to read and have in mind, but I’d take his arguments with a grain of salt.

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.

في هذا الكتاب منهج ونتيجة وكلاهما أدى لثورة في الأوساط الأكاديمية الغربية وأما مؤلفه إدوارد سعيد فهو من المفكرين البارزين لتيار ما بعد الحداثة والذي كفر بالعلوم بعد أن أمن بها “فالاستشراق” كمثال بعد أن كان محل الثقة عند إنشاء مراكز الدراسات الشرقية في بداية القرن الثامن عشر أصبح بعد هذا الكتاب مدعاة للشك والريبة على الأقل في الوسط الأكاديمي فقد نجح إدوارد سعيد في هدم مفهوم الاستشراق والتشكيك في مصداقيته من خلال المنهج الذي إتبعه، ويقوم أساس هذا المنهج على سؤال؛ كيف تنظر الذات للأخر وكيفية إصدار الأحكام على هذا الواقع، ويبدأ إدوارد من منطلقات أدبية وتفاصيل جزئية في منهج منظم لإدراك الصورة الكلية وإطلاق الأحكام، فقد تتبع أدبيات الاستشراق منذ القرون الوسطى وحتى نهاية القرن العشرين وأوضح العلاقة بين الأدب والواقع وكيفية تفسير الأدب لذلك الواقع، إن ما يميز إدوارد سعيد كناقد هو المنهج الذي يتبعه في تناول الحجج والاعتراض والذي يقوم على إيجاد نقاط الإتفاق قبل تميز أوجه الخلاف، أي أنه أوجد أرض مشتركة بالتسليم بمبادئ البحث العلمي مع قبل أن يظهر أوجه الخلاف والإشكال، إضافة الى أنه لا يستخدم لغة الجزم كثيرا عند اطلاقه الأحاكم فهو يظن أكثر مما يجزم ويكتفي بالتلميح لا بالتصريح بالغالب

الكتاب غني بالمصادر التاريخية والفلسفات والنظريات الاجتماعية، مثل مفهوم البنوة والإتباع والذي يقيس معيار التقدم والتأخر عند الأمم والشعوب، أو مفهوم المثقف العضوي والمثقف التقليدي عند الإيطالي جرامشي، وغيرها الكثير مما لا يسع ذكرها في هذا النص وهذه المراجعة، وأظن أن قراءة الكتاب الأولية لا تمكن غالب القرّاء من إستيعاب الكتاب بشكل كامل، لذا فهو يستحق اعادة القراءة أكثر من مرة

ولأن موضوع الإستشراق فضفاض فقد إستعنت بعد أن فرغت من قراءة الكتاب بالعديد من المقالات المكتوبة والمقاطع المرئية والتي تطرح وجهات النظر حول موضوعه، وتتباين هذه الأراء على قدر تباين الأفكار البشرية فالأصولية الإسلامية بالغالب اكتفت بالنتيجة التي خرج بها ادوارد سعيد دون الإلتفات الى منهجه في ذلك، واستعانت بنقد ادوارد سعيد في تغذية المد الأصولي في العالم الإسلامي والذي بدأ ظهوره على الساحة السياسة العالمية بعد صدور كتاب الاستشراق، فقد صدر الكتاب في عام 1978 وقامت الثورة الإيرانية سنة 1979 وتبنت السعودية الأخت الكبرى لدول الخليج الأصولية الإسلامية في محاولة منها لإحتواء الصحوة الإسلامية بعد محاولة جهيمان العتيبي إقتحام الحرم المكي

لقد تأثرت بمنهج الكتاب أكثر من نتيجته، والذي قطعا له أثر بالتأثير على نمط التفكير واطلاق الأحكام، فالقضايا الكبرى تبدأ من تفاصيل جزيئة صغيرة، ونظم هذه التفاصيل في سلسلة مترابطة لإدراك الصورة الكلية ضرورة عند اطلاق الحكم على أي قضية يراد فهمها ومعالجتها

هذه بعض المراجع التي أرشحها للقارئ قبل قراءته لكتاب الاستشراق بترجمة الدكتور؛ محمد عناني، وهي عبارة عن ثلاث مقالات مكتوبة وثلاث مقاطع مرئية





http://sudanile.com/index.php?option=...

https://www.maghress.com/almassae/211463

https://almanassa.com/ar/story/6897


https://youtu.be/1hshCwqEWx0

https://youtu.be/ovxlv6CBJM4

https://youtu.be/Le5VtiD_Zjo

One of these books, that you need to reread many times to absorb it.
Edward said research skills are beyond words.
A hard and academic read.

The Orient in this book is everything from what we call Egypt and the Middle East to the Pacific ocean. Orient is from the root - where the sun rises. The villain in this story is the Occident (from the root - where the sun sets) mainly England, France, to a lesser extent the rest of Europe and of course the United States. The book concentrates on Egypt, the Middle East and the religion of Islam. The book does not contain any information about or history of these lands or the Islamic religion. It is a critic of the interaction between the Occident and the facts of the Orient.

"Knowledge of the Orient . . . in a sense creates the Orient, the Oriental, and his world. . . the Oriental is something one judges (as in a court of law), something one studies and depicts (as in a curriculum), something on disciplines (as in a school or prison), something one illustrates (as in a zoological manual). The point is that in each of these cases the Oriental is contained and represented by dominating frameworks."

Edward Said represents himself as a profoundly angry man in this book. He begins by saying the interaction over the last hundreds of years is normal and then condemns it. "This whole didactic process is neither difficult to understand nor difficult to explain. One ought again to remember that all cultures impose corrections upon raw reality, changing it from free-floating objects into units of knowledge. The problem is not that conversion takes place. It is perfectly natural for the human mind to resist the assault on it of untreated strangeness; therefore cultures have always been inclined to impose complete transformations on other cultures receiving these other cultures not as they are but as for the benefit of the receiver they ought to be."

"The relationship between the Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony...". I looked up hegemony and the dictionary says it is domination but by culture rather than power. Said appears to believe that all scholars and travelers since the time of the Romans have defined something called the Orient with hostile intent. "The Orientalist makes it his work to always be converting the Orient from something into something else: he does this for himself, for the sake of his culture...". "We need not look for correspondence between the language used to depict the Orient and the Orient itself, not so much because the language is inaccurate but because it is not even trying to be accurate."

"The political importance of Orientalism comes from the possibility of its direct "translation into economic terms" and "the closeness of a field to ascertainable sources of power in political society." "All academic knowledge about India and Egypt is somehow tinged and impressed with, violated by, the gross political fact" - the imperial interests of America, Britain, and France. "For readers in the so-called Third World, this study [the book] proposes itself as a step toward an understanding, not so much of Western politics and of the non-Western world in those politics as of the strength of Western cultural discourse, a strength too often mistaken as merely decorative or 'superstructural' . . . [it is] a formidable structure of cultural domination". This is why he states conservative Islamists must crack down hard.

These ideas are rehashed and repeated for countless pages. I started skipping big sections after one hundred pages. Said gets angrier and angrier. He pulls out the most repulsive things ever said and uses them to paint all efforts to understand as hostile. "For no other ethnic or religious [Islamic] group is it true that virtually anything can be written or said about it, without challenge or demurral." Orientalists are "slanderous and racist". "Orientalism is a form of paranoia." "Orientalism is a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient."

I don't recommend this book to anyone. Said does not find any material ever written on the subject to be neutral let alone praiseworthy so you will not get any ideas for future reading from him.

Feb 1, in Harper's Magazine February edition, "Madame and the Masters: Blavatsky's cosmic soap opera" by John Crowley he writes, "British theosophists ... introduced a non-religious young barrister named Mohandas Gandhi to the Bhagavad Gita - which he read first in English translation." A society can, if history is not important to it, lose knowledge, discount its own history. Having swarms of academics from outside the society attempt to excavate and understand is not a totally negative, colonial, strong-arm tactic. It is important that someone cares and preserves even if they are not the politically correct members of that ethnic group.

- - - -
Said had a valuable message but his book did not work for me. I did get the offensiveness of uninformed handling of material better from this YouTube video on music. Orientalism: Desert Level Music vs Actual Middle-Eastern Music - Farya Faraji
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR511...

Most of it's statements are probably true to reality given the fact that there are so many realities. But where is the analysis

كيف ينظر الغرب إلى الشرق ، وماهي الأفكار التي تدور في ذهن الغربي تجاه نظيره الشرقي ؟
حقيقة الإستشراق ، معناه ودوافعه ، أبعاده !
كل هذة الأسئلة وأكثر ستجد إجابتها هنا ،
الكتاب " كامل الدسم جدا " أستطيع القول بأنه مرجع لما يحتويه من معلومات نادرة وهذا إن دل على شيء إنما يدل على ثراء فكر كاتبه .

الك��اب مقسم الى ثلاث أقسام رئيسه
تبدأ بتعريف الإستشراق ومراحل تطور اهتمام الغربي بالشرق ، وتوسع العالم الغربي .ثم يأتي الإستشراق الحديث المتمثل بهيمنة الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية
على العالم .

لقد كان واضحاً لي أن هذه المراحل إتخذت شكل حلقات متراصله في سلسة إبتدأت حينما قال : كارل ماركس
"لا يستطيعون أن يمثلوا نفسهم ولابد أن يمثلهم أحد "

فمن يتأمل الواقع المعاصر الذي نحياه سيجد إستمراية
هذا الفكر لديهم .

الكتاب مهم جدا و ليس بالشيء الهين
ولا يقرأ مرة واحده
ولا يقرأ ايضا دون بحث ومطالعه خارجية ...





#أبجدية_فرح

"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.

A Pioneering Study in Intellectual History
Make no mistake: this book is not about the East at all - no matter how you fill in that geographical-political-cultural term - but about the West, Western culture in the broad sense of the word (including its political, social and economic dimension). The essence of Said’s thesis is that in Western culture an image of the East was created very early on as the fundamentally different: mysterious, strange, exotic, somewhat attractive, but above all different and therefore threatening. He delves deeply into history, and devotes most of his book to how 'Orientalism' has evolved from a rather vague mythical-social concept to a concrete literary movement (after all Said was a literary scientist) and in the course of the 19th century also into a branch of scientific practice. In addition, he discusses concrete writers such as Dante, Chateaubriand and E.M. Forster, but also scientists such as Ernest Renan, Edward William Lane and Louis Massignon.

strengths
Said certainly has an eye for nuances: with each of these authors there are different accents, and throughout history the concept of the 'Orient' is constantly evolving, if only geographical: ranging from ancient Persia and Egypt, to Arabia and Islam, to India and even South East Asia, to shrink back to the Middle East and especially Islam in the 2nd half of the 20th century. Three things keep coming back: the orientalist discourse always has Western superiority as a starting point, and in the 19th century that even led to the overt mission to drag the 'passive and backward' Orient along in the advance of (Western) civilisation. Said was clearly inspired by the work of Michel Foucault and his thesis that any discourse is an expression of a power relationship, in this case colonialism and imperialism; Said adds that Orientalism also precedes that colonialism, made it possible, supported it and also was strengthened and influenced by it. A second characteristic of 'Orientalism' that is stressed is that it mainly says something about the West itself, because it is simply constitutive of Western identity: as there is a ‘different, retarded and strange’ East, it is also immediately clear that the West must stand for civilization and enlightenment. And a third important characteristic is that the concept of ‘Orient’ among the Orientalists is unchanging, does not allow nuance; it is a frozen concept (“the typical Arab always is lazy”).

So I certainly support the extensive praise that this work has received, which has led to a much more critical view of Western culture, both in the West itself and beyond. Of course, it also has something to offer for the view of the West on other cultures: the African, the native American, Chinese, Polynesian (and why not: the Russian, those of the Balkans), and so on. Edward Said only focussed on the ‘Orient’, because he is right that no other approach was as deep, elaborate, persistent and as fundamental to Western civilization in general as 'Orientalism'.

Since its publication, in 1978, this book also has received a lot of criticism. Said is said to have written a purely anti-Western book and has feeded the hateful movements against the West in their (sometimes violent) struggle. Anyone who has read this book thoroughly will have to admit that this reproach is unjustified. Said really does his best to elaborate his thesis from a nuanced theoretical framework (the relationship between culture and society), with a subtle eye for constant shifting, the fluidness of concepts and opinions, and at the same time placing ‘Orientalism’ in a context that immediately exposes how generally human that tendency is to reduce the other to a reductionist essence ("otherness").

weaknesses
But the book also contains elements that in a certain sense justify criticism. Said does not always write coherently, has been rather sloppy in the construction of this book, and occasionally is fiercely polemic (especially his criticism of the Arabist Bernard Lewis is extremely harsh). Ultimately, this book is an engaged piece of writing: it is an explicit position against ‘Orientalism’, that is to say, against reducing the East to an essence that is constructed and self-nourishing. Also in his personal life, Said did not shy away from polemics, and in the United States in particular, that - as an advocate of the Palestinian cause – has done his reputation much harm.

Detail criticism is certainly also possible on the selectiveness in this work: Said only focuses on authors who support his thesis. This can be scientifically justified at the level of hypothesis formation, but not in a final assessment of reality. I notice that very influential works such as Marco Polo’s report of his (alleged?) trip to Mongolian China and Montesquieu's Persian homage in “Lettres Persanes” are completely missing. And that is strange.

But for me, the weaknesses of this work do not entirely outweigh the strengths of it. Perhaps it’s best to view this book as a pioneering work: Said has shown us how the dominant position of the West in the 19th and 20th centuries found its inspiration and justification in a much longer existing way of looking at that 'other' East, and how that ‘Orientalism’ in turn was strengthened and inspired by concrete colonial and imperialist action. More nuances and more context may be appropriate, but you cannot ignore this fact. And a relevant evolution is that after Said, a whole scientific branch of post-colonial, "subaltern" studies has started that continue to feed the debate. That debate is also very varied: sometimes nuanced, sometimes very extreme, but at least it is an intellectual debate, and only through this a multifaceted, enriching view of history and reality can only be won.

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.

I'd heard a lot about Said's influential critique through academic hearsay, but was excited to finally drink straight from the source, as it were. Unfortunately, I found Orientalism both less nuanced and less original than I was expecting. The most compelling of Said's arguments (in the eyes of this relatively ignorant reader, at least) largely echo earlier – albeit lesser known – theorists like Anouar Abdel-Malek. Meanwhile, Said's approach suffers from a number of notable defects, including:

(a) unclear scope (without ever providing a direct definition of his terms, Said seems to distinguish Orientalism, as an academic-political phenomenon, from Romantic visions of the Orient, writing that "for artists like Nerval and Segalen the word 'Orient' was wonderfully, ingeniously connected to exoticism, glamour, mystery, and promise");

(b) perplexing apologetics (of Nerval's 'laison' [!] with an Egyptian slave girl, Said writes that the French author "invests himself in the Orient, producing not so much a novelistic narrative as an everlasting intention—never fully realized—to fuse mind with physical action" – something which amounts, in Said's view, to "a swerving away from discursive finality of the sort envisioned by previous writings of the Orient");

(c) lack of close readings (with one or two exceptions, Said's go-to method is to paraphrase an author's work absent direct quotations and in accordance with the pre-established thesis of the book – hence, "even in Burton's prose we are never directly given the Orient; everything about it is presented to us by way of Burton's knowledgeable (and often prurient) interventions, which remind us repeatedly how he had taken over management of Oriental life for the purposes of his narrative");

(d) possible cherry-picking (as others have noted, Said largely ignores the instances of Orientalism that could challenge or otherwise refine his thesis, such as Orientalism by non-colonial powers or so-called "self-Orientalism"); and

(e) excessive repetition and wordiness (one reviewer has aptly described Said's prose style as "why use one word when ten will do?"), which makes it all the more frustrating when he declines to address certain key topics, such as German Orientalism, for lack of space.

To build upon this last point, Said wraps up Orientalism with a list of questions that he has "attempted to raise" in his book:

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 differences matter more than socio-economic categories, or politicalhistorical 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?

I wish that Said had devoted more time to discussing and theorizing about these questions rather than, say, getting hung-up on the details of Ernest Renan's October 1857 minute for the Journal des débats. Although, to be fair, Said would later describe Orientalism as "a partisan book, not a theoretical machine".