Postcolonialism

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Postcolonialism

• Orientalism and the other

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Edward Said

• The Palestinian-American Scholar Edward Said
  (1935-2003) is one of the most important
  contributors to postcolonialist thought and
  theory. His book Orientalism (Said, 1978) is a
  certainly a key text. He argues that the

Western colonisers of the Orient (the East) had
little interested in exploring or understanding
the cultures they encountered. Instead, they were
more interested in reinforcing a set of misguided
assumptions that said more about the west than
the east.
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Saids view of the colonisers

• ... they recorded their observations based upon
  commonly-held assumptions about the Orient as a
  mythic place of exoticism, moral laxity, sexual
  degeneracy and so forth. These observations
  (which were really not observations at all) were
  presented as scientific truths that in their turn
  functioned to justify the very propriety of
  colonial domination.

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Odalisque with a Slave, Jean-Auguste Dominique
Ingres, oil on canvas, 1839-1840
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The Snake Charmer Jean Paul Gerome
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French harem fantasy with a black eunuch servant.
The link between popularized orientalism and
libidinization is obvious. "Les petits voyages de
Paris-Plaisirs."--Paris Plaisir, Feb. 1930
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The Other

• The Orient, then, became an idea that benefitted
  the West by holding up a mirror-image of dominant
  western values and beliefs. It stood for all that
  was regarded as alien and inferior the Wests
  other. Crucially, the economic and military
  power of the imperialists was matched by their
  cultural power they were able to convert this
  set of commonly-held assumptions, beneficial to
  themselves, into the truth through their
  enormous capacity to produce and circulate
  representations.

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The Oriental

• The Oriental is the person represented by such
  thinking. The man is depicted as feminine, weak,
  yet strangely dangerous because poses a threat to
  white, Western women. The woman is both eager to
  be dominated and strikingly exotic. The Oriental
  is a single image, a sweeping generalization, a
  stereotype that crosses countless cultural and
  national boundaries.

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Not the other ..
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Othering

• Examples of othering are still very prevalent
  in contemporary culture. For example, advertisers
  may offer consumers a taste of the East or the
  mysteries of the Orient whilst film producers
  scour the globe for locations (and attendant
  extras) to serve as a tastefully exotic
  background to the latest action adventure film.
  Similarly, architects and designers may
  incorporate hints of mystery, difference or
  otherness in their work by utilising symbols
  such as a palm tree or a pagoda shape.

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Exotic Holidays

• Faraway Holidays