Orientalism

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Middle East, the land of snake charmers and belly dancers. So said the Orientalists, and the image stuck.

Edward Said's 'Orientalism' is considered as the foundational, foremost work in postcolonialism. Said himself is considered to be the one who founded the academic field of postcolonial studies.

Orientalism, Said says, entails any and every interpretation, or research work, that a Western 'Occident' may do on the Eastern 'Orient'. In his book, though, he focuses primarily on the Middle East and its representation by the West through the ages, and presents it as a representative case study for all Eastern nations (North Africa, Asia, Far East).

He begins his book with a lecture that Balfour (a longtime member of the Parliament and later a British Prime Minister) gave at the House of Commons in 1910. He said the problems that they have to deal with in Egypt is of a wholly different nature than what they'd encounter in Yorkshire. This was during the time when British imperialism was threatened in Egypt due to a rise of Egyptian nationalism.

Balfour, and every imperialist like him, who think they could talk of Orientals with an air of superiority and determine things for them - this superiority, this power comes from the Baconian theme of Knowledge and Power (an idea later expounded by Michel Foucault in his book Power/Knowledge). Balfour, and people like Balfour, know the Oriental history more than the Orientals themselves. This is their power, and not military or economic might.

Balfour was convinced that Orientals are not capable of self-governing, and Europeans are there to help them achieve it. (This is the curious, ambiguous nature of colonial relationship, where claims are made that what the colonizers are doing is for the betterment of the colonized, for the 'civilizing of the savages').

Said has also presented his case in this book with Foucault's idea that discourses have the power to create institutionalised thinking through words, which is exactly what centuries of Orientalism by Western Orientalists has achieved.

'Oriental' has been canonical in English literature, from Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dryden, Pope; Orientalism also is seen as far back as Greek literature, in the works of Aeschylus's 'The Persian' (where Xerxes, king of Persia, is defeated by the Greeks) or Euripides's 'The Bacchae'. What we see here is a portrayal of the East that is agreeable to the West, while not at all rooted in reality.

Most outrageously, it was represented in Dante's Inferno. In this work, he has shown Prophet Mohammad in the worst light, where he is in the 8th circle of hell, suffering unspeakable, humiliating punishments. Mohammad is shown as an 'imposter', for the real representative of God on Earth was not Mohammad, but Christ.

What is evident is the power dynamics - Orientals are a subject race, dominated by another, 'superior' European race.

'Subject races don't know what is good for them' we're the ones who need to show it to them'. Behind this veil is a self-serving attitude.

What is interesting is that the domination is achieved slyly. It isn't explicit, but systematic, slow, and sure, thus all the more cold and calculated.

Then are the lasting stereotypes that were developed systematically through repeated Western interpretations of the East - that the East is naive, sensuous, sexual, irrational, depraved, childlike, different, exotic, feminine, 'different'; and as a stark contrast is the West, for it is masculine, rational, mature, virtuous, 'normal'. The West is everything superior, that the East isn't.

Orientalism sure is ambitious in its aim to study and characterize so utterly the Orient, because the Orient isnt like someone intending to study only about 'Romance', or 'America'; the Orient encompasses a huge portion of Earth - Near East, Central Asia, South Asia, Far East, Africa.