Orientalism

Of all the books I’ve come across, I believe Edward Said’s Orientalism to be one of the most important. Said presents a bulwark of a thesis which primes our minds to resist received narratives, and instead engage in critical analysis. I really must encourage everyone to try to allot the required time and effort to read this book - and it will demand your full application.

Edward Said wrote this masterpiece not as a means of describing the political plight of his own native region of Palestine, nor any other region. His motivation was always to give an account of culture, history and power relations, and how words can shape these topics by being carriers of an agenda.

The use of a humanistic critique is meant as a way of promoting a longer and more comprehensive perspective of thought and thus, in turn, to help explain how certain conflicts can arise. History is created by people and even changeable at the hands of people. Characteristics and manners can be imposed, or invented rather, and this is exactly what Said argues has happened in the case of the Orient. Whilst being coined as something of a geographical space, the Orient has been set up as “their” space whereas we - the West - have “ours”.

To facilitate the reading of the following, I’ll start with the one-line summary; orientalism is about the construction of “the other”. The ramifications of this construction are many, and grave. I’ll leave it to the reader to consider potential cases - they are near endless...

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The book is organised into three main chapters, each of which contributes to building the main argument in distinctive ways. The idea is to consider sides of the topic of orientalism from several vantage points.

• The first part sets up the argument of the work with notions of why the subject of orientalism has grown so strong.
• The second part presents a wide sample of contributing works from mainly the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and serves the purpose of showing how knowledge was passed on and received - through many links.
• The third part revisits some of the points made earlier and carries them into more modern days (the book was originally published in 1978), that way testing the generalisations made from the proceedings of previous times in the twentieth century.

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I will here try to give a summary of Orientalism, before providing a brief critique. The book - to me at least - is challenging reading, and so the writing is too. I’ve tried my best to not lose the main points in jargon or academic language, and hope I’ve managed reasonably well.

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[Some clarifications on my use of terminology: Orientalism in italics refers to the book itself; orientalism refers to the concept; the Orient is the place (although not geographically specified); and an Oriental is a person from the Orient.]

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Chapter 1: The Scope of Orientalism

The chapter lays out the idea of orientalism as it has developed over the years. By the early twentieth century it was the view of scholars and influential officials alike that Westerners were best placed to dominate the Orient.

The concept of orientalism had given birth to a library of knowledge that worked along empowering lines for those who were intent upon getting the upper hand. Seen as such, orientalism is ultimately a political vision. Objects and places are perceived to acquire validity only after meanings and roles have been assigned to them. Herein lies the central thesis of Said’s work – despite the book not being a designated political venture. The Western construction of orientalism establishes polarity as a polity by constructing a familiar space for “us” whereas the unfamiliar space is set aside for “them”.

Orientalism, in its most concise form, is about the creation of “the other”, something that Said would argue has been achieved by a generous mix of imaginative and positive knowledge. The way this knowledge about the Oriental has been put to use over the past few centuries is by Said termed as “a form of radical realism” (p. 72), with the first momentous applied action being Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The consequent construction of the Suez Canal removed some of the remoteness of the Orient and made the Oriental into something more than just an inhabitant of a given area.

Yet a lot of what the Oriental was made into came from knowledge set up in previous writings that also lacked hands-on foundations. Some text ended up creating the ‘reality’ it aimed to describe. The modern Orient “is not the Orient as it is, but the Orient as it has been orientalised” (p. 104) - that is; created.

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Chapter 2: Orientalist Structures and Restructures

The second chapter of the book is an exhaustive outline of how orientalist discourse was transferred from one protagonist to the next. Even modern orientalist theory has retained many essentials from writings of the past without too much original research or observation being undertaken.

Said’s academic training within the field of literature explains his choice of methodology. A bulky sample of literature has been considered and analysed for its content, factual accuracy and originality as well as use of tone and language. Said thoroughly argues the need for such questioning of the underlying theory of the field of orientalism and how its pillars have been set up over the last few centuries, and this nicely summarises the core of the theoretical premise for Said’s argument.

The growth of knowledge is a slow process that builds on the work of those who came before by explicitly utilising their work as cornerstones and blocks of comparison. For orientalism this has in turn been transmitted to policy makers. After the knowledge of the Orient had been firmly set up by scholars, various institutions and governments were assumed to be better suited to bring it further ahead with their ability to manage the regions and peoples in question. Said asserts that much Western study of above all Islamic civilisation was based on political agendas rather than objective study and sums up the second part by remarking how this form of orientalism was consequently inherited by the policies of the twentieth century.

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Chapter 3: Orientalism Now

The final part of the work seeks to convey the assertions made about orientalism into the twentieth century to see how it has all fared in more modern times. Although imperialism in its most manifest form reached its closing stages, Said contends that orientalism remains as a “political doctrine” being forced upon the Orient (and other “others”) because they are “weaker than the West” (p. 204). In the early parts of the twentieth century, studies of the Orient or the Oriental were perceived of as part of the responsibility of the empires as the dominating part. Yet Said would argue that this (in many circles) flawed line of study is still being misused to justify aggressive tactics in the region today.

Said again affords several pages to reassert that such attitudes have not simply happened by themselves. They are merely the latest layer of many bricks placed there by numerous contributors, each of whom (no matter how brilliant) only got to place one brick that in turn blended in with the rest.

While previous times saw a strong shift of main arbiters, from scholars to imperial agents, the present climate again allows more acceptance also for studying oriental topics just for the sake of it.

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A Critique and Some Final Reflections

Said’s treatise of orientalism makes a compelling case. The central argument, which is well presented at an early point, is thoroughly backed up by the heavy use of previous works on oriental topics. It is certainly a rigorously conducted academic undertaking. Though for the common reader, some of the citation is perhaps overly heavy, and Said seems to prefer using ten words where one would probably do.

Although Said, being Arab himself, might forward just claims of possessing inside information, the analysis and ensuing dismissal of the Orientals as “different” would have been well served by the use of another primary source than just himself. This by no means charges Said with complacency, as he sets out to do a humanistic study. Still, I’ll allow myself to comment mildly that when one reads literature with the eyed goal of proving a point, even the most talented may walk into the fall-trap of generalising.

Said fairly acknowledges the potential weakness of not including more writings of other nationalities than British and French (this being due to his own linguistic abilities). But it does not alter the fact that those two nations were the  biggest protagonists of imperialism in the main time period being examined here.

Nevertheless, a critique of Orientalism has to include the latent prospect that the conclusions might (or might not) have been different if a fairer amount of German, Italian or Russian writings had been included.

In the preface of the 2003 edition of Orientalism Said points to the prevalence of scapegoating of especially Arabs and Muslims in his adopted homeland, the United States, as an example of continued vigour in the use of “the other”. Whichever continent we call home, we can all recognise that assertion as a sad truism which leads me back to the point made early on; that the potential ramifications of failed awareness of Said’s argument can be grave indeed.

All in all, Edward Said’s Orientalism, some 34 years after its initial publishing, remains a landmark with its far-reaching historical approach showing how attitudes or mind-sets can influence or be inherited by posterity.

We owe it to all “others” to be aware of just that. A good start is to read Orientalism.