This article is
about the book ‘Orientalism’ by Edward Said. It is significant
for the EU and its relations with other political entities since ‘Orientalism’ is a strong tradition with a vas t literature (strongly
related to colonialism) that has had a great impact on the mentality of
countless people and on the paradigms that determine the relations between
countries (in this case between the EU and Middle Eastern, North African and
Asian countries and communities and the descendants of people coming from those
parts of the world that are living in the EU right now and such principally
since Orientalism is principally referring to these relations as well as criticizing
some more general attitudes).
It is highly
relevant and vital today since we are currently living in a period in which
nationalist movements (or movements that make racial/national/essentialist references)
are rising and tolerance is declining. People are angry and divided on many issues
and many don’t feel the need to try to
understand the ‘other’. We are in a period in which we need dialogue and
understanding more than ever, and Edward Said’s works
can give us some vital insights. What we must do always as humans is to learn
from our past mistakes and try not to repeat them. These insights (as it is
furtherly elaborated in the last paragraph should not be interpreted as written
in favour of a specific group of people while attacking/blaming another group)
can help us a great deal in building a world in which we can all live together
peacefully, a world in which there are no great sentiments attached to
antagonizing, limiting vague terms , symbols and concepts. As history has showed
us clearly, these attitudes caused great atrocities and pain to humanity and we
can all agree that it is our duty to do our best to prevent their reoccurrence.
Principally, what we must do is to challenge these paradigms that are remnants
of past relations, avoid dehumanization, promote dialogue between different
parties and sincere discussion without arrogance or one party trying to
establish moral superiority and acknowledge the existence of different human
experiences and do our best to understand it.
‘’The only race I know is the human
one.’’
Albert Einstein
‘’There is only one civilization, the
civilization of humanity.’’
Günhan Karakullukçu
‘’It is easy to show that there isn’t a clash of civilizations. The only civilization is
the civilization of humanity, constititued of different cultures and traditions
and different times since not all march with the same pace and walk the same
paths, but certainly what is common to human experience is much more
comprehensive and profound than what divides it.’’
Renato
La Valle / Le Cronache Ottomane
Edward W. Said
was born in 1935 in Palestine, then under British rule, to a Palestinian Arab
Christian father and a Lebanese Greek Orthodox mother. He lived in Palestine
and Egypt until he was 12 and then he was sent to the US by his family. After
getting his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Princeton, he earned a Doctor
of Philosophy degree in English Literature from Harvard University. In 1963, he
joined Columbia University’s
Comparative Literature faculty and taught there until his death in 2003. He
also worked as a visiting scholar at Yale University and John Hopkins
University.
With
his book ‘Orientalism’, which was published in 1978 and
which is regarded as the founding text for postcolonial theory, Said became an
established cultural critic and this work influenced many fields in social sciences
and humanities significantly (postcolonial theory, historiography, Middle East
studies, Arab studies and many more) as well as changing the meaning of the
word ‘Orientalist’ in daily language.
So,
what does ‘Orientalism’ mean? Orientalism, in Western
Europe, traditionally refers to the field of study which studies the languages,
the history and the cultures, and every other aspect about the peoples and the
lands of the ‘Orient’, starting from Morocco to all the way to Japan in its
broadest meaning. Thus, people who are specialized in this field are/were
called ‘Orientalists’. Edward Said considers Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt (1798) as the
beginning of modern Orientalism. He points out that Napoleon did not go to
Egypt with his soldiers only, he also took linguists, historians,
anthropologists, sociologists, and scientists with him.
Orientalism and the
study of the orient and the interest essentially began with the study of the holy
texts of Christianity and the study of the language in the holy books (Hebrew
principally), with the Church of Rome making the first attempt in studying
Oriental languages with the establishment of Studia Linguarum to help the
Dominicans liberate Christian captives in Islamic lands. The first school was
founded in Tunis by Raymond Penaforte in the 12th century, and in 1311, the
Council of Vienne took a decision to create schools for the study of oriental
languages in the universities of Paris, Bologna, Oxford, Salamanca, and Rome,
which are the oldest universities in Western Europe.
In the 19th and the 20th
centuries (The first attempt to understand Islam as a topic of modern
scholarship (as opposed to a Christological heresy) was within the context of
19th-century Christian European Oriental studies), Orientalism became increasingly
institutionalized, and had strong connections with the Imperial Great Po wers and colonial administrations. As Said points out (and he specifically and
mainly talks about British, French and American Orientalist traditions) Unlike
the Americans, the French and the British , Germans (more than others but less
than the French and the British), Russians, the Spanish, the Portuguese,
Italians, and Swiss did not have such a vast Orientalist literature and
traditions. Many chairs at universities, schools, research centers and
associations were established in Western Europe (more so in Britain and France)
in the 19th century in order to study the ‘Orient’, such as
the SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), the Royal Asiatic Society in
Britain, Societe Asiatique and Journal Asiatique in France, the Deutsche
Morgenländische Gesellschaft in
Germany, and the American Oriental Society in the United States.
Interestingly,
this academic field encompasses the studying of a very large geographical area throughout
all history (no limitation of time) that is far from being homogenous with
countless ethno-religious communities with diverse backgrounds, histories, and
attitudes. Therefore, a professor of the Chinese language, a professor of Arab History
and a professor of Hinduism are all called Orientalists.
‘’The
East is a career.’’ Benjamin Disraeli, Tancred
After
Edward Said’s book, the term Orientalism
came to mean a specific patronizing Western European (and American) attitude
towards Middle Eastern, Asian, and North African societies, thus having a
negative connotation. According to Said, the ‘West’ essentializes these cultures and
peoples as static and undeveloped (like how Renan viewed Semitic languages as
dead and Indo-European languages as organic) manufacturing the view that the
Orient and its peoples can be studied, depicted, and reproduced. He states that
this implicitly implies the idea that Western society is developed, rational,
flexible, and superior.
As it can be understood from the
name of this field (Orientalism), this view of the world implies that the world
consists of different civilizations divided by definitive, absolute lines, much
like Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’, which can be regarded as the
continuation of the orientalist literature and tradition in the 20th
centur y. There is a ‘West’ and an
‘East’.
However, in his work, Edward Said states that the orient is a constructed
concept, and the claim, based on the geographical area and the religions, cultures,
and the racial qualities specific and unique to this area, that that part of
the world has native and by nature ‘different
and alien’ inhabitants can be
questioned, immediately adding that he doesn’t agree
with the idea that ‘We know about ourselves the
best.’ either.
Starting from Sophocles’ representation of the Persians in
Ancient Greece, Said traces the history of the representations of the Orient
and the Orientals and gives us the following insights essentially;
Orientalism
took a part of the world as completely ‘alien’ to itself, constructed unchangeable,
permanent statements (and prejudices) about it, these statements were quoted and
transferred in the Orientalist literature throughout generations. Orientalism,
rather than trying to really understand these human experiences of others, didn’t consider it a human experience, and
thus took all the peoples of the Orient like objects to study and in an
oversimplifying and reductive manner. Broad geographical areas, countless
ethno-religious groups, many different communities were reduced into dead,
static categories, seen as homogenous and static throughout ages and studied in
some rooms and offices in Western European capitals. While the main goal of
this field should have been to understand these human experiences, studying of
the Orient mainly relied on old texts as central sources. Should one read the
Quran first to understand a Modern Egyptian? It is striking that even in the
late 20th century it was possible to speak about the ‘Arab mind’ (interesting, how absurd it would sound to many if one
wanted to talk about the ‘American
mind’ or the ‘British mind’) and write articles and books about how the Arabic
language doesn’t let the Arabs think
rationally and clearly. (The Influence of the Arabic Language on the Psychology
of the Arabs by
E. Shouby). Thus, peoples of the
Orient ceased to be individuals, little communities were disregarded, and
everyone was put under some broad category such as ‘Oriental’ or ‘Muslim’ which
have vague meanings.
On
the other hand, Orientalism was used to justify colonialism and domination over
those lands (White Man’s Burden,
‘’La Mission Civilisatrice’’, and the concept that Europeans are
a superior race, colonialism was in the benefit of the colonized and Europeans
had the duty to civilize other peoples) and facilitate colonial
administration. Like Said states, we
cannot understand the Orientalist literature without considering the close
relations between some important Orientalists and imperial states and their
institutions.
On
most of the encounters between the ‘Westerner’ and the ‘Oriental’, the ‘Westerner’ had been in a superior position, a kind of an
administrator or in a somewhat privileged position (Foucault’s power relations), and these power
relations were naturally very influential on the representations of the ‘East’. ‘Westerners’ examined, observed, studied, represented and spoke on
behalf of the ‘East’ (The Indian characters in Kipling’s novels could be an example)
While
Said takes us on a journey in Orientalist literature and mentality starting
from the representations of Persians in Ancient Greece, to the representations
of Saracens/Muslims in Medieval Europe, to Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt, to the image of Arabs in American
popular culture, he criticizes some more general attitudes. The view he
defends, is that the world does not consist of different civilizations that are
different by nature and divided in absolute terms. He states that every part of
the world had contacts with other parts of the world and limiting definitive
terms such as the ‘Orient’, ‘East’, ‘West’, ‘Islam’ and ‘Arab’ have vague meanings and these
attitudes have dire consequences on humanity. These prejudiced attitudes
construct antagonists and an image of history and the world that is far from
reality in people’s minds.
In
the preface to the 1995 edition of the book, Said talks about how the book was
received in different parts of the world by different groups. While some American and British professors,
especially Bernard Lewis, called the work ‘Anti-western’, in the Arab world it was perceived
as a book written in defense of Arabs against the ‘West’, so
both missing the point of the work. Said
states in the preface to the 1995 edition that he doesn’t know how to respond to all these criticisms to a book
that carefully doesn’t try
to neither defend or discuss the ‘Orient’ or ‘Islam’, by an author who is obviously
against essentialism, skeptical towards all categorical labels such as the ‘Orient’ and
the ‘West’. ‘’Orientalism’’ was perceived as a systematic
defense of the Arabs and Islam in the Arab world, the reviews that were written
reflect this perception, however in the book he states that he is not
interested to show what Islam or the Orient really is, and clearly states that
he doesn’t have the capacity to do it
as well.
Some interesting videos :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPS-pONiEG8
The Myth of the "Clash of Civilizations". Edward Said
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZiyXEF1Aas
An Introduction to Edward Said's Orientalism- A Macat Sociology Analysis
The author was born in İzmir,Turkey in 1996 and is now living in Milan, Italy. He is currently studying International Economics and Management at Bocconi University. His fields of interests are history, politics and languages , and he is generally interested in social sciences. He speaks Turkish, English, Italian and a little bit of German and Russian. He started this blog in order to share his thoughts with people, to reach people who share similar interests and to create a platform for discussion. You can reach him via e-mail.
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