Occidentalism

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Lecture 6

• Occidentalism

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Lecture Outline

• What is Occidentalism and how does this relate
  to Orientalism?
• What are the repercussions of (1) for culture and
  representation?
• Examples
• Far East
• Islam

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OccidentalismOrientalism
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OccidentalismOrientalism
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What is Occidentalism?

• Stylised images of the West
• Anthropology aims to produce knowledge of
  peoples and cultures outside the West
  Occidentalism the silent partner in this
  project
• Critique of anthropology
• Orientalism and essentialism

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Dialectical Definition

• Orientalists promoted the difference between the
  familiar (Europe, the West, us) and the strange
  (the Orient, the East, them) (Said 1978 43)
• Intensify sense of self by dramatising the
  distance and difference between what is close and
  what is far away
• Against what are traditions invented?

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We (Japanese) Them (Westerners)

• Emotion
• Analogical
• Software
• Fuzzy
• Ambiguous
• Human
• Polytheist
• Nature-following
• Vegetarian
• Villagers
• Wet
• Repressed
• Dependent
• Forgiving
• Average

• Reason
• Violent emotion
• Digital
• Hardware
• Exact
• Clear
• Machine like
• Monotheist
• Carnivore
• Cosmopolitans
• Dry
• Easy-going
• Independent
• Vindictive
• Exceptional

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Noble Savage
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The Death of Jane McCrea by John Vanderlyn (1804)
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Barbarian Art (Liam Sharpe)
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Radical difference is not so far away

• Processes of segmentary opposition.
• humans animals
• Westerners Easterners
• Chinese Japanese
• Northern English Southern English
• Working class Middle class
• Urban rural

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The essentialisms of Orientalism and Occidentalism

• Differences are created in a process of
  essentialising others
• Positive and Negative differences
• Reflexive differences

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Japanese Occidentalism/Orientalism

• How do Japanese represent themselves?
• Myth of uniqueness (unikusashindoromu)
• How do we represent Japanese?
• Myth of deference
• Group model of society
• Language
• Critique of West

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China

• Marshall Sahlins (Cosmologies of Capitalism the
  trans-pacific sector of the World System)
• Chinese Emperor understood European desire to
  trade as homage to his celestial person
• Europe had need of silk, tea, spices
• Chinese had no need of European goods Chinese
  Emperor already had them
• Europe placed within and understood through
  Chinese cosmology
• World Turned Upside Down

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Islam, the West and Gender Politics
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Propaganda Wars

• The War on Terror
• War on American Imperialism
• Al Jazeera
• Samuel Huntington (1996) The Clash of
  Civilizations
• Edward Said (2001) The Clash of Ignorance

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The Politics of Fear

• What Orientalisms and Occidentalisms can you
  identify in the film?

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Conclusions

• Orientalism and Occidentalism are important in
  understanding the relation between power,
  meaning, culture and representation
• Part of a more general process by which the
  other may be lauded or villified to create
  meaningful worlds
• Western Orientalisms actually tell us more about
  the West
• Eastern Occidentalisms tell us about the East
• Part of a more general process of meaning making
  we only have cultures and need to represent
  them because we know about others with other
  cultures
• Essentialism what happens when this breaks down?