Orientalism

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Lecture 5

• Orientalism

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Colonialism

• Creation, maintenance, rule and exploitation of
  colonies by powers based in Europe. (e.g.
  Commonwealth countries).
• Word colonialism derived from Latin, colonia,
  settlement of Roman citizens in newly conquered
  territory.
• Compare with imperialism (the establishment of
  empires, late 19th and early 20th centuries).
• Neo-colonialism as informal economic domination.

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Introduction

• How Europe has thought about and represented the
  non-west.
• Break down dichotomies.
• Implications for culture, (Western culture and
  the culture of the rest). How are these
  differences represented? What purpose and whose
  interests do they serve?

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Lecture outline

• Representations of culture of the Orient in the
  19th century (Said, Kabbani).
• More contemporary legacy (books and film).
• Representations of other cultures
  primitivism.
• Attempts to subvert dominant representations

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Edward Said 1935-2003
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Orientalism (1979)

• Compare to Foucault (power-knowledge) in European
  history.
• Focus mainly on ideas about and representations
  of Islamic societies.
• The Orient was almost a European invention, and
  has been since antiquity a place of romance,
  exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes,
  remarkable experiences. Now it was disappearing
  in a sense it had happened, its time was over(1).

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How is Orientalism defined?

• A corpus of writings and academic productions
  about the Orient
• A style of thought based upon the distinction
  between the Orient and the Occident.
• A Western style for dominating, restructuring,
  and having authority over the Orient

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Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres (1862) Le Bain Turc
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Jean-Leon Gerome (n.d.) Le Marche dEsclaves
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20th Century Orientalism
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Imagining India

• E.M. Forster (1924) A Passage to India

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Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1975) Heat and Dust.
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The Royal Pavilion

• What do we learn about the Prince Regent?
• What does Jonathan Meades tell us about
  exoticism?
• What do we learn about the pavilion?

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Extensions of Orientalism

• Representations of Africa (barbaric, savage,
  noble, innocent). Primitivism.
• Differences between western representations of
  the Orient and Africa/Latin America

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Primitivism in novel and film

• Re-reading classic novels
• Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
• Apocalypse Now
• Apocalypto

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Robinson Crusoe
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Critique of Orientalism (Clifford)

• Is everything representation or can there be a
  more faithful reality of the so called Orient?
• Reproduces the generalising discourse it attacks.
  
• No developed theory of cultures as
  differentiating.

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Implications for Culture

• Critiques from the formerly colonised.
• Westerners had for centuries studied and spoken
  for the rest of the worldthe reverse had not
  been the case (Clifford 1988256).
• Link to other movements (feminists, subaltern,
  marginalised, minorities)
• Multicultural, multiracial, urban environments.

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Ad-busters
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Kara Walker