Week 13 Edward Said and Orientalism PDF

Foundations of sociological thought Poststructuralism (2): Postcolonial studies and Orientalism in the thought and work of Edward Said (1935 – 2003)  Postcolonial studies  explore relations of power that develop in the wake of colonial conquest, and their long-term...

Foundations of sociological thought Poststructuralism (2): Postcolonial studies and Orientalism in the thought and work of Edward Said (1935 – 2003)  Postcolonial studies  explore relations of power that develop in the wake of colonial conquest, and their long-term consequences  Explore the psychological impact of colonialism on the colonized and the colonizers  how colonizing powers use language to fix the meaning of the colonized “Other  Precursors: Frantz Fanon (1925-61), Gayatri Spivak (1942 -); “Can the subaltern speak?”, 1988  Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, b. 1942 Source: https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/interview-gayatri-chakravorty-spivak/  The Other Colonization  the colonized Other is characterized as inherently inferior, weak, and evil. The notion of the Other turns our attention from the colonizers to the colonized. (ADE 2021) The “West” (Occident) can only define itself against “the Orient” Psychological dimension of colonialism  Fanon Edward Said (1935 – 2003) Credit: Peter Bornell  Dimensions of Orientalism Orientalism has three dimensions to it:  all the scientific and academic disciplines whose purpose is to study "Oriental" cultures and customs (ADE 2021)  In a more general sense, a “style of thought,” the “ideological suppositions, images, and fantasies about a region of the world called the Orient” (Said 2000:199)  a source of power for “dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (Said 1978:3)  Orientalism as knowledge and power The Orient is a “mythical place”, an “imaginative geography” created by “experts” – politicians, diplomats, writers, painters, scholars… Using a “vocabulary of images”, the “mythology of the mysterious East” and “notions of Asian inscrutability” legitimized by a variety of experts (Said 1978), it fixes the Orient as exotic, sensual, irrational, childlike, and lacking sophistication; savage and barbaric  as opposed to “the West” Foucault’s knowledge/power dynamic!  Orientalism as knowledge and power “The European is a close reasoner; his statements of fact are devoid of any ambiguity; he is a natural logician (…) his trained intelligence works like a piece of mechanism. The mind of the Oriental on the other hand, is eminently wanting in symmetry. His reasoning is of the most slipshod description”. Lord E. Cromer, consul general of the British-ruled Egypt from 1883, cited in ADE 2021  Imaginative geographies “A group of people living on a few acres of land will set up boundaries between their land and (…) and a land beyond theirs which they call the “land of the barbarians” Imaginative geography is: “a relationship between knowledge and geography” “the universal practice of designing in one’s mind a familiar space which is “ours” and an unfamiliar space which is “theirs”  arbitrary! Said 1978 cited in ADE 2021: 722). Orientalist representation of “the East” “The Oriental” is characterized as: Irrational, infantile, and uncivilized, Lazy and irresponsible The Orient is often feminized  emphasis on sensuality and sexuality; portrayed as submissive and passive, in contrast to the “masculine” and aggressive “West  The “Othering” of the colonized As if to show the totalitarian character of colonial exploitation the settler paints the native as a sort of quintessence of evil. Native society is not simply described as a society lacking in values. (…) The native is declared insensible to ethics; he represents not only the absence of values, but also the negation of values. He is, let us dare to admit, the enemy of values, and in this sense he is the absolute evil (Fanon 1961) Out of the blackest part of my soul, across the zebra striping of my mind, surges this desire to be suddenly white. I wish to be acknowledged not as black but as white (1952)  The “Orient” as Europe’s Other The East The West Inferior Superior Unintelligent, simple, Rational and mature infantile Civilized Savage, uncivilized “Normal” Exotic, sensual Masculine and aggressive  Feminine colonial expansion and Passive subjugation Orientalist movement in 19th century art “Harems, fezes and monkeys. Long shisha pipes are entwined around the hands of beguiling pale nudes like snakes, and turbaned guards loiter uselessly nearby. If any of these images are familiar to you, it’s hardly surprising. A world-famous 19th-Century art movement was responsible for these depictions of the Arab world being imprinted on your mind” (The quote and the images below are taken from: S. Smith Galer, How art created stereotypes of the Arab World, 2019) The tales of one thousand and one nights, https://funci.org/hanna-diyab-and-the-questions-surrounding-the-thousand-and-one-nights/?lang=en, accessed March 24th, 2022  Orientalism as a myth The Orient is therefore a mythical and fictitious (but still powerful) representation of the Orient in the eyes of and for the benefit of Europe  literature and art become an instrument of imperial power (Foucaultian knowledge/ power dynamic) “Objective” or “scientific” truth, as well as what the the people have to say, is deemed irrelevant and ignored. It treats a multitude of diverse cultures as if they were one unsophisticated collective  Orientalism today Orientalism can be understood as a mechanism or attitude applicable not just to “the Orient” but to cultural and social difference in general “foreign” “non-Western” cultures: The “West”/the global North as benchmark of “civilization Orientalist attitudes rooted in colonialism still prevalent today  racism; stereotypical representation of Muslims as terrorists; fears about the cohesion of European states with significant Muslim minorities  Summary The importance of wider postcolonial studies for uncovering imperialist and colonialist power The dominant colonial powers imposed entire systems of knowledge (epistemes) and discourses onto the colonized subjects, thus rendering them silent and trapped in a logic not of their own making Orientalism as a system of thought - a collection of ideas and representations of the Other, an academic field of study, and a source of power; literature as a tool of imperial and colonial expansion