Edward%20Said%20on%20Colonialism%20and%20

1
Edward Said on Colonialism and Othering

• Who Was Edward Said?
• - very influential writer on colonialism.
• - a scholar in the humanities who grew up in
  Egypt and Palestine, but whose entire education
  was Western
• author of over 20 books, including
• Orientalism (1978) Culture and Imperialism
  Blaming the Victims and
• The Politics of Dispossession
• - died in 2003 at age 67

2
Purpose and Value of Saids book Orientalism

• Purpose
• to advance our understanding of the way
  cultural domination of oppressed people has
  operated.
• Value
• - offers insights about colonialism from
  the perspective of one who has been
  colonized.
• We can often generalize what he says about
  The Orient and Orientalism to the
  relationship of Indigenous peoples with
  colonizers elsewhere in the world.
• - forms the basis of many Indig intellectuals
  challenges to cultural colonialism

3
Some Questions Raised by Said

• How did/do different academic disciplines come to
  the service of Orientalisms broadly imperialist
  view of the world?
• How does Orientalism transmit or reproduce itself
  from one epoch to another?
• How does authority operate what ideas does it
  dignify as true? What perceptions and judgements
  does it reproduce and transmit? Who are the
  pioneers whose texts became authoritative and get
  cited frequently in the academic literature?
• How do the colonizers depictions of the
  colonized society reflect the strong ideas,
  doctrines, and trends of the colonizers own
  society?
• e.g. Darwins influence, Freuds influence,
  racist authors (e.g., de Gobineau)
  influence?
• Can one divide human reality into such clearly
  distinct categories we and they and
  survive the consequences humanly? (i.e., avoid
  creating hostility)

4
Saids Approach in Orientalism

• Analyzed the writings (texts) of others,
  especially how they present colonized societies
  to their readers in
• political tracts,
• journalistic stories,
• travel books,
• religious books,
• scholarly works,
• poetry, and
• novels.
• (Said calls this an analysis of the texts
  surface or exteriority, as opposed to an analysis
  of what lies hidden in the text. )
• Looked at style, figures of speech, setting,
  narrative devices (e.g., binary opposites).

5
Saids Different (and Overlapping) Uses of the
Term Orientalism

• A Mode of Discourse for Representing the Other
  - with supporting images, vocab, etc.
• 2. A Style of Thought - based on a
  distinction between East West (Orient
  Occident)
• - The essence of this style of thought is the
  ineradicable distinction between Western
  superiority and Oriental inferiority. - That
  belief in a radical difference between the two
  creates an on-going state of tension in the
  relationship between the two.
• 3. A Corporate Institution and Network of Vested
  Interests e.g., congresses, universities,
  foreign-service institutes

6
What is The Orient to Said?

• at one time referred mainly to the lands of the
  Bible (the Middle East) and to India. Only later
  was it extended to include China, Japan, etc.
• So, Said uses the term the Orient to refer to
  Arabs and Islam, which, as he points out, for
  almost a thousand years together stood for the
  Orient. Britain and France dominated the
  eastern Mediterranean region from the late
  1600s on and American imperial influence has
  been prominent since the end of World War
  II.
• a contrast conception for Europe (see next slide)

7
The Importance of The Orientto Europes
Self-Definition

• CONTRAST CONCEPTION - is the
  source of one of Europes deepest and most
  recurring images of the Other -
  has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its
  contrasting image, idea, personality,
  experience.
• European culture gained in strength and
  identity by setting itself off against the
  Orient as a sort of surrogate and even
  underground self.
• SUPERIORITY / INFERIORITY - Those in
  the West saw themselves not just as different,
  but as superior in comparison to all
  non-European peoples and cultures.
• That became hegemonic (dominant and accepted
  by consent as conventional wisdom or common
  sense) in Europe. (A. Gramsci)

8
The Colonized as Object to the Colonizer

• To Said the colonized people are something one
  judges (as in a court of law), something one
  studies and depicts (as in curriculum), something
  one disciplines (as in a school or prison),
  something one illustrates (as in a zoological
  manual.
• The point is that in each of these cases, the
  Oriental is contained and represented by
  dominating frameworks.
• Mere Object of Study The Orient and Orientals
  are considered by Orientalism as an object of
  study, stamped with an otherness. - passive,
  non-participating, above all, non-active,
  non-autonomous, non-sovereign with regard to
  itself. Thus one ends with a typologywhich
  makes of the studied object another being
  with regard to whom the studying subject is
  transcendent.

9
Nature and Use of the Colonizers Knowledge
About the Colonized (drawing from Foucault)

• Knowledge Power/Domination For the colonial
  regime to have knowledge about a colonized
  people is to dominate it, to have authority over
  it.
• Knowledge As Stable (Unchanging Orthodoxy)
• Lack of Objectivity of the Orientalist The
  Orientalist does not stand back and view the
  Orient and its people objectively, even though
  (s)he might think (s)he does.
• Instead, his so-called detachment is
  weighted heavily with all the attitudes,
  perspectives, and moods e.g., fear of
  Orientalism.
• Uses of the Orientalists Knowledge -
  Orientalists loyalties lie with the West -
  Orientalists knowledge of the colonized gets
  put to use in ways that are inherently
  political

10
Orientalism as an Academic Discipline

• Expansionism Orientalism (c.f. Native
  Studies) increases in geographic and disciplinary
  scope/ inclusiveness /eclecticism, rather than
  moving to greater selectivity. e.g., takes in
  history, archaeology, economics, literary
  studies, sociology, etc.
• Blind Spots - often the contemporary.
• Involves Two Kinds of Knowledge empirical
  and imaginative. That is, the Western
  imagination is involved in characterizing the
  colonized people.
• Over-Generalization The Orientalist, Said
  says, makes a generalization out of every
  observable detail and out of every generalization
  he makes an immutable law about the Oriental
  nature, temperament, mentality, custom, or type.
  The imaginative knowledge, which is often
  highly romanticized, takes on a life of its own
  (myth) and some who think those myths are
  truths are very disappointed when they actually
  encounter the Orient first-hand and have it
  de- mystified.

11
The Orientalists Vision

• Rigidly Hierarchical Place and position are
  important.
• Includes Grand Projects e.g., Napoleons
  encyclopaedia of Egypt James Bay
  project of the century