Orientalism 1978 Edward Said 19352003 Born in Jerusalem on 1 November 1935 Palestinian Christian father and Lebanese mother Edward with his younger sister in Cairo Edward left with his mother and elder brother ID: 551815
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Slide1
Edward Said,
Orientalism
(1978)Slide2
Edward
Said
1935-2003Slide3
Born in Jerusalem on 1 November 1935.
Palestinian Christian father and Lebanese mother.
Edward with his younger
sister in CairoSlide4
Edward (left) with his mother and elder brotherSlide5Slide6
What is
The “Idea of
Orientalism
”?
An idea, produced both in and about the West, that holds principally that
the ‘East’ is both ‘other’ and inferior
Slide7
Said’s
Orientalism
(1978) examines the processes by which the “Orient” was, and continues to be, constructed in European thinking. Said argues that “
Orientalism
” is a style of thought based on the ontological and epistemiological distinction between the “Orient” and the “Occident.”
But, most broadly, Said presents
Orientalism
as an institution for dealing with the Orient: dealing with it by describing it, viewing it, teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short,
Orientalism
as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.
Slide8Slide9
Within the framework of
Orientalism
, the Orient is not an inert fact of nature, but a phenomenon constructed by generations of intellectuals, artists, commentators, writers, politicians, and, more importantly, constructed by the naturalizing of a wide range of
Orientalist
assumptions and stereotypes. Slide10Slide11
Conceptual vocabulary created by, or in the wake of Orientalism
An
idea, produced both in and about the West, that holds principally that
the ‘East’ is both ‘other’ and
inferior
1.OrientalistSlide12
Sir William Jones
(1747-1794)
Founded the Royal
Asiatic Society of Bengal (1784), which aimed “to enhance and further the cause of Oriental Research”Slide13
AMERICAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY
From the beginning in 1842, its aims have been humanistic. The encouragement of basic research in the languages and literatures of Asia has always been central in its tradition.
This tradition has come to include such subjects as philology, literary criticism, textual criticism, paleography, epigraphy, linguistics, biography, archaeology, and the history of the intellectual and imaginative aspects of Oriental civilizations, especially of philosophy, religion, folklore and art.
The scope of the Society's purpose is not limited by temporal boundaries: All sincere students of man and his works in Asia, at whatever period of history are welcomed to membership.
Source: http://www.umich.edu/~aos/Slide14
Orientalism describes how the hallowed
image of
the
Orientalist
as an austere figure unconcerned with the world and immersed in the mystery of foreign scripts and languages has acquired a dark hue as the murky business of ruling other peoples now forms the essential and enabling background of his or her scholarship.Slide15
“William Carey (1761-1834),
O
rientalist
and missionary, in the library at Fort William College, Calcutta, India. His spectacles rest upon an open book. To the right is Carey's chief Hindu scholar or pundit
Mritunjaya
. He worked with Carey on translating Hindu texts.
After Robert Home (1752 - 1834).”
Published by the Baptist Missionary Society, London, 4th June 1814.Slide16
Conceptual vocabulary of
Orientalism
Orientalist
Essentialism
--the assumption that groups, categories or classes of objects have one or several defining features exclusive to all members of that category. For people, essentialism is to be found in claims regarding so-called
essential
elements of our identity (e.g., race or gender… or culture). Slide17Slide18
Conceptual vocabulary of
Orientalism
Orientalist
Essentialism
Representation
Representations can never be completely accurate (e.g., a road atlas, or the tube map). For a representation to be useful, it is necessarily selective and creative. Representations create a new reality.
(“representational practices”)Slide19
KEY POINT:
Orientalism
produces knowledge
The relationship between the Occident and the Orient is a relationship of power, of domination
As such analyses of
Orientalist
discourse do not hinge on whether or not knowledge is “accurate” or not Slide20Slide21
ANOTHER KEY POINT:
The identification of
Orientalist
discourse allows its critics to understand how the production of knowledge itself is a marker of the power exerted by the West over the Orient.Slide22Slide23
Edward
Said
1935-2003Slide24
And one last term for today’s conceptual vocabulary:
POST-COLONIALISMSlide25
What is post-colonialism?
Not chronological, but a
conceptual
term
A post-colonial perspective looks at phenomena in the world
in the wake of colonialism
Just as the term ‘post-modern’ denaturalizes the modern, post-colonialism denaturalizes the colonial. In so doing we are able to gain some critical purchase on the colonial
In this sense,
Orientalism
provided a key set of the conceptual tools to create post-colonial criticism Slide26
‘Post-colonial’ scholarship (literary criticism)
Gayatri
Spivak
Self and other
(“Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988)–No)Slide27
Post-colonial studies: Literary criticism
Homi
Bhabha
The hybrid/hybridization; colonialism and its cultures and histories continually intrude onto the present
(Nation and Narration
(1990),
The Location of Culture
(1994); “The Ambivalence of the Stereotype”)Slide28
How is this of any use to historians?Slide29
For the practice of history,
Orientalism
in particular-- and post-colonial criticism in general-- provided new tools for writing history.
This was particularly useful for reading colonial archives ‘against the grain’ in the hope of coaxing the subaltern to speak (Subaltern Studies editorial collective)Slide30
Pointed to new, and radical, questions to ask of history itself. Is modern history-writing an
Orientalist
enterprise?
Dipesh
Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference
(2000).Slide31
Pointed to new forms for history-writing…
wary of totalizing historical narrativesSlide32
And two final questions to ask yourselves between now and your seminar:
Do I really need to worry about all this if I am not interested in the history of far-away places?
And/or: I am only interested in a period of history that preceded what Said describes as “
Orientalism
.” Why should I bother?Slide33