Said’s OrientalismIn the book published in 1978, Edward W.
Said’s book Orientalism is believed to have revolutionised the post-colonial field and its understanding of the discourse of the middle east and in general the “other”.
Through the critical application of in its scholarship, influenced the development of , , and the field of , especially with regard to how academics practice their intellectual inquiries when examining, describing, and explaining the Middle East. Moreover, the scope of Said's scholarship established as a foundational text in the field of by denoting and examining the connotations of Orientalism, and the history of a given country's post-colonial period.
The term denotes the exaggeration of difference, the presumption of Western superiority, and the application of analytical models for perceiving the "." This intellectual tradition is the background for Said's presentation of Orientalism as a European reflecting a contrived duality.
(1997) ‘The New Orientalism and the Democracy Debate’, in J.
As such, Orientalism is the pivotal source of the inaccurate cultural representations that form the foundations of and perception of the Eastern world, specifically in relation to the Middle East region.
According to Said, in the , the social, economic, and cultural practices of the indicate they are imperial who have a romanticized version of created by French and British (and later, American) Orientalists. Examples used in the book include critical analyses of the colonial literature of ,[] which conflates a people, a time, and a place into one narrative of an incident and adventure in an exotic land.
Secondly, the scientific disciple in the west according to which beginning in the early nineteenth century one specialised in the study of various oriental cultures and traditions, and third the ideological suppositions, images, and fantasies about a region of the world called the orient.
According to an article published by , the principal characteristic of Orientalism is a "subtle and persistent prejudice against Arab-Islamic peoples and their culture," which derives from Western images of what is Oriental (i.e., cultural representations) that reduce the Orient to the fictional of "Oriental peoples" and "the places of the Orient;" such representations dominate the of Western peoples with and about non-Western peoples.[]
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is a 1978 book by , in which he establishes the term "" as a to describe the 's commonly contemptuous depiction and portrayal of the —that is, the . Societies and peoples of the Orient are those who inhabit regions throughout and . Said argues that Orientalism, in the sense of the Western scholarship about the Eastern world, is inextricably tied to the societies that produced it, which makes much inherently political and servile to .
Edward said theory of orientalism
And third, roughly since the late 18th century, Orientalism has referred to the ‘‘corporate institution for dealing with the Orient—dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, and ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western-style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient’’ (Said 2003:3).
Ideas in the concept of orientalism
In practice, the imperial and colonial enterprises of the West are facilitated by régimes of Arab élites who have the fictional, and romanticized representations of . The idea of the "Orient" was conceptualized by French and English Orientalists during the 18th century, and was eventually adopted in the 20th century by American Orientalists. As such, Orientalist stereotypes of the cultures of the Eastern world have served, and continue to serve, as implicit justifications for the ambitions and the endeavors of the U.S. and the European powers. In that vein, about contemporary Orientalist stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims, Said states:
Edward said theory of orientalism
So far as the United States seems to be concerned, it is only a slight overstatement to say that Moslems and Arabs are essentially seen as either or . Very little of the detail, the human density, the passion of Arab–Moslem life has entered the awareness of even those people whose it is to report the Arab world. What we have, instead, is a series of crude, essentialized of the Islamic world, presented in such a way as to make that world vulnerable to military aggression.
Part I: Orientalism: The Development of a Discourse
Orientalism is the representation of Asian cultures in Western media as exotic, different, and backward (“Orientalism and power: When will we stop stereotyping people?”). Orientalism in itself can be considered hard or soft depending on the stereotypes and ideas expressed. Both generalize the Orient in stereotypical ways, though hard orientalism focuses on negative portrayals such as terroristic acts, murderous sultans, and backward ideology whereas soft Orientalism focuses on portrayals of exotic