Here is a video through which we can make out the basic concepts of Orientalism.
On 'Orientalism': Edward Said
Executive Producer & Director:
Sut Jhally
Producer & Editor: Sanjay Talreja
Assistant Editor: Jeremy Smith
Featuring an interview with Edward
Said Professor, Columbia University and author of
Orientalism
Introduced by Sut Jhally University
of Massachusetts-Amherst
Source: http://www.mediaed.org/
Orientalism’ is a significant work by Prof.Edward Said (Columbia
University) in the field of Postcolonialism.
1.) “Orientalism tries to answer
the question of why, when we think of the Middle East for example, we have a
preconceived notion of what kind of people lives there, what they believe, how
they act. Even though we may never have been there, or indeed even met anyone
from there. More generally Orientalism asks, how do we come to understand
people, strangers, who look different to us by virtue of the colour of their
skin?”
The misinterpretation of identity through preconceived notion we have in
our mind. For example is misinterpretation of Muslims.
2.) “The Orientals are all the
same no matter where you find them, whether it's in India, or Syria, or in
Egypt, it's basically the same assets. So there develops a kind of image of the
timeless Orient, as if the Orient, unlike the West, doesn't develop, it stays
the same. And that's one of the problems with Orientalism is it creates an
image outside of history, of something that is placid and still and eternal,
Which is simple contradicted by the fact of history. In one sense it's a
creation of you might say, an ideal Other for Europe.”
For the entire west, all the rest are the same assets which they use just
for their advantage. Orientalism questions the creation of Other; means the
third world countries.
3.) “To produce knowledge you
have to have the power to be there, and to see in expert ways things that the
natives themselves can't see.”
Edward Said explains this point by giving example of Napolean, the way he
invaded Eygpt in 1798 through scientific survey. The way we acquire knowledge
is not innocent, a power structure works behind this. Knowledge is constructed.
4.) “The difference between British and French Orientalism on the one
hand and the American experience of the Orient on the other is that the American
one is much more indirect, much more based on abstractions.”
In the past, British and French Orientalism was direct and now the
American Orientalism is indirect. It questions the power system in terms of
media, popular culture and globalization.
5.) “Said draws upon the work of
Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, “Therefore the task at the outset, is to
try to compile an inventory,” in other words to try and make sense of it. And
this seems to me to be the most interesting sort of human task. It's the task
of interpretation. It's a task of giving history some shape and sense, for a
particular reason, not just to show that my history is better than yours, or my
history is worse than yours. I'm a victim and you're somebody who's oppressed
people or so on, but rather, to understand my history in terms of other
people's history, in other words to try to understand, to move beyond, to
generalize one's own individual experience to the experience of others. And I
think the great goal is in fact to become someone else.”
Mine is better than yours – this creates superiority and inferiority.
Thank You.
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