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• ISBN13: 9780394740676
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| | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Edward W. Said | | Paperback:
| 368 pages | | Publisher:
| Vintage | | Publication Date:
| October 12, 1979 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 039474067X | | Package Length:
| 7.8 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.2 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.0 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.7 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 82 reviews |
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A Searing IndictmentSep 05, 2010
As a young academic, the now established and successful Edward Said, was young, academic, and angry, as is ever obvious in his best known work "Orientalism." Ostensibly, his target is the reductive Western perception of the "Orient" (it's always unclear where the Orient is physically located, and that's exactly the point of the author) into a scary and sensual, depraved and weak force that permits the West to dominate over it.
In Professor Said's words, here's the cause and consequence of Orientalism:
"[E]very European , in what he could say about the Orient, was subsequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric. Some of the immediate sting will be taken out of these labels if we recall additionally that human societies, at least the more advanced cultures, have rarely offered the individual anything but imperialism, racism, and ethnocentrism for dealing with "other" cultures...My contention is that Orientalism is fundamentally a political doctrine willed over the Orient because the Orient was weaker than the West, which elided the Orient's difference with its weakness."
The prototypical example of Orientalism in both thought and action is Napoleon's march on Egypt, where he brought a lot of academics to map out and research Egypt, but more importantly to intellectually and academically justify his invasion. Here was the first modern example of the concrete twinning of the military and academia in imperial endeavors.
It's obvious that Professor Said is angry, and his book is a searing indictment. But of what exactly?
Is it of human nature? What exactly is the difference in Professor Said's calculus between "Orientalism" and "otherness"? Reading the book, we discover there is none, and so it's not that the West has a tendency to discriminate against the East but that humans have a tendency to discriminate against everything and everyone that different. Londoners may discriminate against Indians and Chinese, but they're just as sure to discriminate against the Scots, the Welsh, and anyone who lives outside London, and I'm sure that London neighborhoods discriminate against each other as well.
Is it of imperialism? Orientalism is part and parcel of imperialism, because power must be justified. But isn't that a bit too obvious? And power relationships can work horizontally (across geography) and vertically (up and down economic strata). In Victorian Engliand, is the Indian lawyer discriminated more, or is the English textile worker?
Or is it of academia? Universities as think-tanks for imperialism? This actually would be a much more stimulating and concrete subject of discussion. The book is often too nebulous and too repetitive, and while it hints how academics have always served the interests of the powerful, a fuller, more intimate discussion would be extremely compelling to read.
 Challenging, but necessary and important to readSep 01, 2010
It's become a total cliché to say this, but I'm gonna anyway: This work is more relevant than ever. If you want an inexpensive, at-home university course on the history of Islam phobia and ways in which the West has appropriated, marginalized, and re/presented (and consequently colonized) the East, this is your book. This is also a scintillating example of literary analysis and how important and germane deconstruction can be in illuminating power dynamics and seemingly benign discourse which is actually damaging and demeaning. Said impressively deconstructs western hegemony and the countless manifestations of an us vs. them (occidental vs. Oriental) mentality.
And not to sound sanctimonious or whatever, but I would take some excerpts from this work and teach them to high school and college kids if I were in the classroom right now. I'd quote it to anyone who actually thought Sex and the City 2: Arabian Nights in Abu Dhabi was a quality film. And it would be my pleasure to force this on backward hicks in both Europe and the United States who are scaring the bejeebus out of people about THE MUSLIM THREAT! Ohmygodthemuslims! I mean, I still know some people who use the word "oriental" to describe Asians. And don't even get me started on the everyday treatment of Turkish immigrants here in Germany.
I know there's a whole slew of academics and others who seem to have some pretty legitimate critiques of this work, but regardless of some errors (and boredom), this is powerful and enlightening reading. Said primarily examines writing and scholarship from the big 3 Eastern imperialist superpowers: Britain, France, and the United States. His major analyses begin in late 18th century Britain and France and span the years through the early 20th century with a focus on the USA, though he goes further back in a few places and further ahead as he discusses orientalism up through the 1970s (and post 9/11 with his 2003 preface). He disassembles hundreds of Orientalist motifs in writings from Disraeli, Flaubert, Kipling, a bit of Homer and Dante and a whole bunch of other DWMs* I've never heard of, but Said also gives us ways of thinking about scholarship in general.
He posits in there somewhere that this work can be applied to women's studies, black studies, and various area studies. If anything, this work constantly calls into question any supposed objectivity we may have, as we're all products of our histories and cultures (and race, gender, class etc etc). And this is pretty standard thinking , but it really began to bother me that Said makes it seem impossible to escape the smothering effect of all this Orientalism. I realize that a solution isn't really within the purview of this work, but I need some alternatives. I also wondered as I was reading how anyone could possibly write about or study anyone else without some sort of cultural positioning or superiority taking over. Said actually does briefly addresses this issue at the very end, and gives some examples of acceptable scholarship and ways of avoiding being trapped in an "ideological straightjacket." But sometimes Said is soooo heavy handed. I'm almost afraid to have an opinion that's critical of aspects of the middle east and Islam for fear of being labeled an Orientalist or essentialist.
This work isn't purely comparative literature or pure academia, though. Said chronicles the political impact of Orientalist thinking and looks at everything from Henry Kissinger's polarizing foreign policy analyses to Napoleon's swindling and pilfering in Egypt to Britain's liberal -utilitarian colonial administration in India. Scholars often work hand in hand with governments to form imperialist policies, Said points out, and even the most neutral sounding essays serve to further reinforce differences between east and west and create literal or ideological battle lines.
Michel Foucault's ideas about power and discursive formations (though he rejects the idea that individual authorship is irrelevant)form a framework for Said's study and he depends on Antonio Gramsci's ideas of cultural leadership and consent(hegemony). So you're also getting all sorts of refreshers and perhaps some new lessons from sociology and philosophy here. Honestly, though, I think to fully grasp the entire work, like every last little citation and reference, one would need some formal academic training in oriental studies, postcolonialism, or transnationalist studies, because Said is quite a challenge at times. I still have no idea who some of the more obscure authors or great 18th century philologists he mentions are and I`m not sure I'm motivated enough to look them up on wikipedia. (This might be a good argument for an e-reader: instant explanations for unknown allusions.) Chapter 2 Part II ("Silvestre de Sacy and Ernest Renan") gets especially stuffy and slow and recondite and I had to force myself to keep reading.
Things begin to sound the same after a while; there are only so many metaphors one can use for how the West subjugates and oppresses the East. Moreover, I found the writing challenging not because Said necessarily uses lots of big, sophisticated words, but because he jam packs every paragraph full of ideas and analyses and philosophy. I wanted to underline too much.
I do think this should be read, all or in excerpts, by most everyone with the intellect and willpower because it forces westerners to confront what have become ingrained collective notions about the East. We've grown up with Orientalism crammed into the unlikeliest of places. Indiana Jones, children's books and movies, Jane Austen, the Louvre and Bristish museums, all of these things have furthered Orientalism's aims of "otherizing", creating, and marginalizing a rather large group of people. Said ends up coercing us into examining ourselves and our own culture and pushes us to call into question all essentialist views. That may just be the most dangerous/radical aspect of all.
*dead white males, acronym borrowed from DFW, David Foster Wallace
ElectrifyingAug 18, 2010
If you are hesitating between 'Orientalism' and 'Culture and Empire', 'Orientalism' is probably the book to get. It was Saïd's first and original contribution, and it is about culture, his field, more than about history, in which he was not a specialist.
Saïd argues that Orientalism paved the ground for, and was later sustained by, colonialism in that it created fixed categories by which the Orient became known to Europeans. These stereotyped views emphasizing, say, fatalism, superstition, or a lack of a conception of liberty, predisposed Europeans to rule over the peoples they classified as Oriental. Saïd's point is that Orientalism owed more to textual analysis than to actual conditions in the East, enabling Europeans to project their own fantasies, wishes, and prejudices onto Orientals. History and archaeology, for example, interpreting the Orient through its classical cultures (ancient Egypt, Sanskrit, Sufi poetry, etc..), supported perceptions of Orientals as impervious to progress and at the same time of civilisations in decline and therefore in need of regeneration through European power. While some of Saïd's references are obscure, especially of some twentieth-century Orientalists, many draw from mainstream literature (Dante, Flaubert, Edward William Lane) or immediately graspable travel, historical, and political works. Most are entertaining and thought-provoking, sometimes hilarious, and Saïd's exegesis is consistently witty and incisive.
Saïd's is no doubt a partial view, and it has been criticized as well as emulated. But the author himself makes no total claim on his sources, many of which he professes to admire. This is a book about culture, not history: it brings to light a certain undercurrent in a body of work and literature, it does not aim to explain colonialism. (Indeed, this is probably why 'Orientalism' is less problematic than 'Culture and Empire': Saïd's work as history faces issues of chronology - Orientalism in art, for example, was in terminal decline when Britain and France began to grab the Middle East in earnest - and it is weaker at connecting representation to agency.) Finally, nor is 'Orientalism' about the evils of colonisation as such, or even the truthfulness of Orientalist writing. It is a decoding of a 200+ year-long academic and artistic tradition, no more or less. Saïd's interest is in studying Orientalism as cultural phenomenon, not an Orient which he argues is, as a category, mythical anyway. But it is best to quote the author: 'One scarcely knows what to make of these caricatural permutations of a book that to its author and in its arguments is explicitly anti-essentialist, radically sceptical about all categorical designations such as Orient and Occident, and painstakingly careful about not "defending" or even discussing the Orient and Islam.' This book is a must for anyone interested in the meaning of cultural difference, and it is an exhilarating, sometimes electrifying read.
0 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 Excellent for suckersJul 30, 2010
Here in Brazil, I tried to read this trash-book online and after a dozen of pages, I decided not to read more. This book is excellent for suckers. This book has lies about everything: Islamic past, then present and future. A group of pro-Islamic lies is ever described as truth in this book.
Excellent BookMay 03, 2010
Great book. I started reading it, but due to school, I couldn't dedicate anytime to it until after I had my finals. In any case, it was definitely an interesting book and have already recommended it to a couple people.
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