A Review Of Edward Said

A Review of Edward Said’s Orientalism written on 4/21/1991 by Muhammed al-Ahari Orientalism by Edward Said is a survey of the “science” of Orientalism in three parts: the scope of Orientalism, Orientalism’s structure and restructures, and Orientalism. He covers this wide field by dividing each section into four parts. The history, language, dynamics, vision, and the hidden and apparent agendas of Orientalism are covered. This work is the most severe of all criticisms of Orientalism. It is a comprehensive covering of the Orient and the development of the West’s opinion of it. His view is a fight against the confrontational and regurgitating old lies style of past and current Orientalists. Orientalism is a part of the social and political dynamics of the West and its interaction with the East. It always demeans the East and tries to put the West and “socalled” modernism in an exalted position. The conflict between gaining knowledge of the East verses control and exerting power over the East was the basic thesis of the Orientalist. The Orientalist does not truly wish to gain any knowledge of the East unless that knowledge is one derogatory, harmful, and aides in the Orientalist’s trial of subjection of the East. The importation of Western values, literature, and language into the East was one widely used method. Normally it went hand in hand with the Missionary, his mission, and schools. The Oriental, in turn, rarely tries to understand themselves, answer the critic of the Orientalist, or analyze the west or the views of the Orientalist. Its’ claims of being Abrahamic, Prophetic, and Universal challenge the West’s view of its’ existence. Thus, for centuries the primary aim of Orientalism was against Islam first, then against truly Oriental religions of the Far East. Islam was in fact the cradle of the Renaissance of Europe and of the uncovering of Ancient Greek philosophy and literature. The cultures of Spain, the Mediterranean, and Eastern Europe owe much to Islam. In their closeness they developed the most hateful, scathing form of Orientalism. One that wishes only to perpetuate hatred, mistrust, and lies instead of what Islam is in actuality. The tendency was to make Islam a form of Christianity (a heresy) or a religion born of an anti-Pope (the Caliphs) or a false-prophet/ anti-Christ (Muhammad). None of these views were at all accurate (even though Islam and Christianity both had much in common). Edward Said’s main counterpart is Foucault. The power of Orientalism was inbreed in the discourse against the Orient. The language of Orientalism was one in which a discourse of old not new was supreme. The discourse was never fresh. It was a discourse of discourses. This problem of Orientalism was vehemently attacked in Edward Said’s work. One means to overcome Orientalism is to focus more on sameness and universal truths instead of on differences. Every discourse on the East ought to be fresh and using a method grounded in primary research, trying to understand the Orient, and one of uncovering lies and half-truths in old discourses. The language of Orientalism is one of representative figures, generalities, and of stereotyping of all things the West opposes. The language is frequently stiff, manufactured, and conjured like a rabbit from a hat – having no grounding in reality.

In Edward Said’s view, Islam and philosophy are inherently Occidental and are vaguely Oriental (by geography only). He calls this dis-Oriental. They are only Orient to the extent they are not understood (or tried to be understood) and to the extent any Oriental culture was absorbed as Islam spread east. As stated above, the only improvement comes when Arabic and Islam are seen as independent fields and studied as such. The only new approaches from the West are Marxist or Orientalism internalizing itself. The view of the Mosaic society of the Muslim city is another weaker trend. This Mosaic view also has its roots in Marxism. The Marxist view, in brief, is one of cause and effect and of revolution every time society is unbalanced in some form or fashion. The Marxist view is only recently raising its head and may fall out of favor as the realm of Marxism and politics are doing. Europe is once and the same time closer and further from the Muslim Orient than America. Its’ close ties to Islam were never intellectually or publicly accepted. Europe always fought to be Europe and culturally separate from the East and at the same time setup colonies and vacation resorts and clients in the Muslim Orient. The term Orientalism is losing its’ flavor as it is now being viewed as being highhanded, colonial, and non-objective. The only new tendency is to change its’ name, not its’ language or mode of expression. The dividing line of East and West always is a starting point for any theory of Orientalism. As stated above, differences and not similarities are the focus. The flow of information between scholar, novelist, and journalist is a free flowing one. The literary view of the Muslim East is one that arose from Orientalism and stayed close to it. If one was writing of the East, they had to use the modes and styles of Orientalism because until recently even the Muslim East offered no clear-cut alternatives. The writers on the Orient, in any field, had to rely on Orientalism in order to be able to express themselves and be understood and appreciated by the West. The British felt they were the God blesses Empire builders. Their scholarship and that of other Orientalists gave them knowledge of the Ancient World and of the current Orient that the underdeveloped, illiterate Muslims, and other Orientals, did not obtain due to their “inherent inferiority” because they were non-European and non-Aryan. Orientalism saw its scholarship as being accurate and that of the Orient as not being accurate due to their abhorring accuracy. This lack of accuracy degenerated into untruthfulness. Thus the Orient could never be an accurate witness nor could any of their accounts be worthy of acceptance of one prepared by the Aryan, Orientalist European. The stereotype of the lazy, shiftless Muslim came from Orientalism. The amorous sheikh also came from this realm. Intrigue, discourtesy, and cunning are the characteristics of the Muslim in Orientalism. The European colonialists, and governors they set in place, set out to study the Orientals and Muslims not to understand them, but in order to find ways to subjugate them. Any original idea in the Orient, in the view of the Orientalist, had to have been imported in some form or fashion. Colonialism was advanced before Orientalism and in many cases Orientalism came to support it. All this became part of the Orientalist canon. Yet at the same time voyages of trade and discovery were made and there was contact through trade and war. This knowledge was not used as knowledge for the sake of knowledge. It was used to further

Orientalists desires and aims not to just gain a better understanding of the Orient and of Muslims. The field of Orientalism encompassed all non-European – China, India, Africa, the Near East, and all the Muslim areas of Europe. The Chinese translator from England was as much an Orientalist as the Egyptologist from France. Both used viewpoints and language that made what they were studying as something inferior to their own culture. Historically its’ realm became wider rather than becoming more selective and specific. The Orient is at once exotic and forbidding, mysterious, profound, and seminal or impossible for the thinking, rational Orientalist mind to truly understand. Orientalism covered all realms from Linguistics and Archeology to Sociology, Politics, and Economics. Everything not born, raised, and currently only in Europe became Orient and a part of its’ ever increasing field of study. The Orient was made pagan. At once a worshipper of Ancient Greek and Roman Gods and their own heroes and Prophets!!! Orientalism strove to explain the spread of Islam and the continuance of other non-European systems. When it failed, it strove to place all evils upon its’ studies of the Orient. The longer Islam survived, the more vicious Orientalists’ attacks upon it became. Islam became Mohametism and Muhammad became Mahound. Muslims became followers of a false heresy. These views later became one of people that were all evil inside but all good and pure outward, the exact opposite of the violent, unbathed European. The more that was known of the East, the more the truth was distorted. Without a consumer, the Orientalist view and research would have stopped. Holy War, missions, and colonization were popularized among the common people of Europe. Now the Orientalist had an audience and could continue their tirade against Muslims and the Orient. Pilgrims to the East provided the bulk of “scholarship” after the clerical classes. This came hand and hand with Colonialization and in most instances only furthered the aims of Orientalism. If they did otherwise they always spoke in the language of Orientalists and failed to let the Orient speak for itself. To sum up Said’s points: Colonialization came not as a result of Orientalism even though Orientalism supported it, the Orientalist had set modes and styles of dialogue and discourse and seldom deviated from it, the corpus of Orientalism was always finding ways to distinguish the superiority of Europe and never used new research to the benefit of the Orient, the Orient was never allowed to speak for itself, and anything Europe did not at once accept as its’ own and try to understand became Orient and worthy of all the attacks inherent in the realm of Orientalism.