Orientalism
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Average rating4.2
Orientalism is a 1978 book by Edward W. Said, in which the author discusses Orientalism, defined as the West's patronizing representations of "The East"—the societies and peoples who inhabit the places of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. According to Said, orientalism (the Western scholarship about the Eastern World) is inextricably tied to the imperialist societies who produced it, which makes much Orientalist work inherently political and servile to power.
According to Said, in the Middle East, the social, economic, and cultural practices of the ruling Arab elites indicate they are imperial satraps who have internalized the romanticized "Arab Culture" created by French, British and, later, American Orientalists; the examples include critical analyses of the colonial literature of Joseph Conrad, which conflates a people, a time, and a place into a narrative of incident and adventure in an exotic land.
The critical application of post-structuralism in the scholarship of Orientalism influenced the development of literary theory, cultural criticism, and the field of Middle Eastern studies, especially regarding how academics practice their intellectual inquiry when examining, describing, and explaining the Middle East. The scope of Said's scholarship established Orientalism as a foundation text in the field of post-colonial culture studies, which examines the denotations and connotations of Orientalism, and the history of a country's post-colonial period.
As a public intellectual, Edward Said debated Orientalism with historians and scholars of area studies, notably, the historian Bernard Lewis, who described the thesis of Orientalism as "anti-Western". For subsequent editions of Orientalism, Said wrote an "Afterword" (1995) and a "Preface" (2003)addressing criticisms of the content, substance, and style of the work as cultural criticism. (Wikipedia)
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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.
This feels like a textbook so I find it hard to rate and review. overall, I can see why this book was and still is very important and I kinda wish someone would condense the messages in here to make it more accessible to others who aren't in academia because the messages in this one really should be read by everyone. it's almost disheartening how relevant and relatable Said's critique of global power structures still is even today, almost half a century after this book was published... I have to admit that I didn't quite understand or I wasn't in the headspace to dissect, especially in the latter half of the book, but overall it was still an impactful read, I feel like I look at society and pop culture, and all these daily things that we take for granted a bit differently now and see how Orientalism (though it is an outdated term and stems from antiquity) informs so much of our daily lives, even modern-day conflicts from WW2 to the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and most recently the conflicts in Syria and the tension between China and many other countries. This was just so eye-opening. 4/5.
An absolutely fantastic book that was as relevant in 1978 as it is in 2024. In light of recent events, some of the old stereotypes and attitudes that appeared in early western academia about the Orient have only continued to pop up in the media and government propaganda. Said's writing is captivating and somehow managed to get me interested into the history of how the Europeans built the foundations for how the Occident sees the Orient. Although the section on Orientalism in the mid-to-late 20th century is quite short, it was still quite eye opening to see why and how this book made the impact that it did in the geopolitical climate at the time it was written in especially given the author himself whose academic and personal reasons for writing the book are just as fascinating as the text itself. As someone who was both from a country subject to Orientalism and then going on to work in one which was perpetuating it (and continues to do so today), I think Said's perspective is unique in that it is one that has come from his experiences on both sides.
As someone who has taken this as a starting text into reading further and more widely into politics and history, I now wish to read it a second time after a while to open this book again with new eyes that are more exposed to more knowledge and other perspectives.
I will admit that going into the book, I expected some sort of intricate and hostile attack on American foreign policy in the middle east and analysis of the time's media on Arabs but I was instead greeted with descriptions of research institutes in France and the United Kingdom while I wondered when it was going to get into the good part.
I came out of this book with a newfound background on how core countries have seen and now see those in the periphery. As not only someone from Asia but also a Muslim, this book was personally interesting to me as much of it touches on specifically how this phenomenon has affected Muslims others living within Muslim-majority countries. As mentioned previously, I think this aspect is incredibly relevant today when many from Europe and North America group Arabs and Muslims together under a monolith, completely ignoring the existence of other religious groups living in that area of the world, forever condemning them to just be other Mohammedans due to where they were born.
One of the quotes that stuck out to me was,
“Cliches about how Muslims (or Mohammedans, as' they are still sometimes called) behave are bandied about with a nonchalance no one would risk in talking about blacks or Jews.”
which I believe is a phenomenon that has continued to be prevalent as the image of the Salafi extremist continues to be the one that is used by far-right politicians to scare those in the west about the everyday Muslim. Said's analysis on how Orientalism functions, as something that is for the good of the people subject to it is truly profound and something that is demonstrated well from the various examples that he brings up. Another quote at the end which encapsulates what Said was attempting to do with Orientalism is,
“I hope to have shown my reader that the answer to Orientalism is not Occidentalism.”
Said makes it clear in his text that this division that has been established is not rooted in any reality, and that instead academics should seek to get rid of this barrier that has been superficially placed between people.
