This blog is a part of my academic activity which was given
to us by professor in a paper of Post-colonial study. Click Here to get the task link..
Edward Said on Orientalism
Edward Said is a well known scholar and an important
figure in postcolonial studies.His signature contribution into the field of
post colonial study is his book Orientalism which was published in 1978 and was
discussed about the term Orientalism which was coined by Edward Said. The book
was translated in 26 languages.
What is Orientalism?
According to Said,
"Orientalism revolutionized the study of the Middle East
and helped to create and shape entire new fields of study such as Post-colonial
theory as well influencing disciplines as diverse as
English,History,Anthropology,Political Sciences and Cultural Studies"
Edward Said’s Orientalism deals with that views of
Western attitudes which views Eastern societies as primitive and some how
inferior. This Western structuring oriental mindset always looks at Eastern
world as the other.The Oriental is defined as barbaric,devoted to submission
and lacking high civilized culture.
Here I am going to point out some of the points and
concepts, on which Edward Said was pondering in his interview with MEF. In this
interview he presented detailed discussion on his book “Orientalism”.
He mentioned in the interview about his own personal
dimension and biographical interest behind writing this work. There were two
reasons behind his interest,the very first is the Arab-Israeil war of 1973;
another one is his own personal experience of constant sort of disparity which
he felt between what his experience of
being Arab was and the representations of that one saw in art.
Orientalism involves a way of seeing the Arabic world
which justifies an ongoing system of domination.
Edward Said’s Orientalism seems to rely heavily on that
of Michel Foucault’s concept of knowledge equation and concept of discourse as
well as the concept of hegemony derived from the philosophy of Antonio Gramsci.
Orientalism and Empire
He talks about Orientalism and Empire with
the reference of kind of break which occurred after Napoleon came to Egypt in
1798 who came with scientists, botanists, architects,philologists,biologists,historians
whose job was to record Egypt in every conceivable way. In a way he talks about
Napoleon and his power to create knowledge about place.Natives of the Egypt
have not any idea about Napoleon while he was using his knowledge as a agenda
and creates a kind of image by using particular information.As he pointed out
that French did not invaded like Spaniard invaded the new world which was
particularly looking for loot. In a way he brings out that idea of imperialist
through this.
Direct and Indirect Orientalism
Moving further, he talks about differences of different kinds of Orientalism as well as
about the difference between understanding of Orient. He talks about direct and
indirect orientalism by giving a exapmles of orientalism of Britain and America.While
talking about British and France colony, they had a long standing relationship
and imperial role in India, in a sense British has its colony over half of the world and they were in East,so
what they think about east is direct orientalism. While on the other side
America had never been in east because of this their knowledge about east is
considered as indirect to them and known as indirect orientalism.
Idea of discourse
As I earlier mentioned that, this concept of Orintalism
is relied on the idea of discourse. In the interview Edward Said pointed out
that,
“Discourse is a regulated system of producing knowledge
within certain constrains whereby certain rules have to be observed”
If we locate
Arabian in this discourse, they have been living in this discourse. Generally
Arab world is considered as full of terrorist and they neither try to change
this stereotypes of people to look at their country. But in actual all the
Arabic countries are not involved in this terrorist activity.
Stereotype towards Islamic
This discourse seems quite powerful and plays a vital
role in constructing a particular image. If the continuously one matter is coming
up in front of us in negative manner, surely we start to think about it in
negative way, though it is not true. The same issue can be observed with Middle
East and with Islamic tag. In movie, newspaper or even in any media, Muslim
character is always portrayed as terrorist. Because of this, they lost their
diversity also. The word terrorism is generalized with Muslim. Whenever the
word terrorist appears, the second word Muslim comes in mind with it. Because
of this we forget that, if the terrorist is everywhere, everyone is not
terrorist. Only by seeing one side of coin we construct in our mind particular
stereotype towards Islamic identity.
Palestine Issue
Said is talking about Palestinian which is referred to
Israel and Occupied Terrorist. He talks about Palestinian’s local complexities
and about mixed backgrounds of Arabs and Jews, Arab Muslims and Arab Christians
and Israeli Jews. These Palestinians now mostly live under the control of
Israel or in refugee camps in the surrounding countries. These people are
constantly in quest for justice and homeland as they were forcefully occupied
in Israel. It is a conflict between people of same territory.
Furthermore, he says that, these all things are keep on
happening because form orient there is no inventory.
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