Lit Theory - Said - Orientalism

Edward W.  Said

1.     Orientalism I

a.     Orientalism: A way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in European Western experience.

b.     The Orient is Europe’s

                                               i.      Greatest riches and oldest colonies,

                                             ii.     The source of its civilizations and languages,

                                            iii.     Its cultural contestant, and

                                            iv.     One of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other.

c.     Orientalism is a style of thought based upon the ontological and epistemological distinction made between “the Orient” and “the Occident.”

                                               i.     The Orient is a paired term relative to the West.

d.     Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient:

                                               i.     By making statements about it.

                                             ii.     Authorizing views of it

                                            iii.     Describing it, teaching it, settling it. And in short,

                                            iv.     Ruling it.

e.     One has to use discourse to understand the Orient rather than the approach of systems.

f.      European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self.

g.     There is a close association between the Orient and Britain and France.

h.     Historical generalizations will the methodological approach to discussing the Orient.

2.     Orientalism II

a.     The Orient is not an inert fact of nature.

                                               i.     It is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality.

                                             ii.     The same notion applies to the West

                                            iii.      In which both reflect each other.

b.     Some qualifications.

                                               i.     The Orient has a corresponding reality.

                                             ii.     The ideas, cultures and histories must be studied in tandem with the configurations of power.

                                            iii.     Although the Orient is an idea, it has substance and it has reality. 

c.     Hegemony: the predominate culture.

                                               i.     Hegemony of Europe encompassed the notion of Europeans and ‘not’ Europeans.

                                             ii.     Hegemony of Europe shared the idea that European culture was better than any other culture.

                                            iii.     These beliefs led to identity distinctions between Europe and The Orient.”

3.     Orientalism III

a.     Three aspects of contemporary reality.

                                               i.     The distinction between pure and political knowledge.

a.     Non-political knowledge is that generated without the notion or intent of using it for policy.

b.     Political knowledge is that generated for policy in mind, or charged issues with a likely hood of being used for policy decisions.

c.     True knowledge tends to be non-political.

d.     Said proposes that politics was always near to people in the colonies.  As such, most of the material from that time is tinged with political influences that might question the validity of the material.

e.     Europeans and Americans in the colonies were aware they were members of the dominant power.

2.     The Orient is a distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, economic sociological, historical, and philological texts.

3.     The Orient is a series of interests.

4.     Because Orientalism is a cultural and a political fact, then it can be discussed along intellectual lines.

5.     The point is that one must consider historical texts with a context.

a.     It becomes important in issues pertaining to superstructures and the base.

b.     It is highlighted in Orientalism because political imperialism, throughout all the institutions, was pervasive.

6.     Said studies Orientalism as a dynamic exchange between individual authors and the large political concerns shaped by the three great empires – British, French and American – and their respective imaginative territory.

a.     This opens and releases many, many questions.

b.     Said’s argument is that each question links together and must be viewed specific context and historical circumstances.

7.     Due to the breadth of the subject, the author had to narrow down the primary dominant cultures, the physical geography of what was to be studied, and the time frame of study.

b.     The Methodological Question.

                                               i.     There is no such thing as an identifiable starting point.

                                             ii.     A starting points is enables what to follow.

                                            iii.     This notion applies to the study of Orientalism.

                                            iv.     Due to the breadth of the subject, the author had to narrow down the primary dominant cultures, the physical geography of what was to be studied, and the time frame of study.

                                             v.     Thoughts on authority are revealed when discussing the influence of other countries over the Orient.

1.     Authority is:

a.     Formed, disseminated,

b.     It is instrumental and it is persuasive,

c.     It has status and becomes true, and it

d.     Reproduces.

2.     Authority is one contextual form that must be accounted for in any review.

3.     Strategic Location: A way of describing the author’s position in a text with regard to Orientalism.

a.     How the writer orients themself.

4.     Strategic Formation: A way of analyzing relationships between texts.

5.     Written language is not about the truth, but about representations. 

a.     Language is an encoded system with many devices to express and exchange information. 

b.     There is not a delivered presence, but a representation.

4.     The Personal Dimension.

a.     When writing, it is important to know who you are and how you are influenced with the subject matter.

b.     One who has been in the west since the 1950s has experience turbulence in the Arab Nations.  The formation of bias.

                                               i.     The history of popular anti-Arab and anti-Islamic prejudice in the West.

                                             ii.     Issues between the Arabs and the Jews.

                                            iii.     The absence of cultural positions make it impossible to identify with their culture.

5.     The point is that society and literary culture can only be understood and studied together. 

  

  

Works Cited

“A Private Little War.” Star Trek. CBS Television Distribution. August 23, 1968. Television

Fanon, Frantz.  The Wretched of the Earth.  Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al.  2^nd ed. New York: W.W.Norton & Co., 2010. 1437-1446. Print.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.  Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al.  2^nd ed. New York: W.W.Norton & Co., 2010.  1861-1888. Print.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason.  The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.  Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al.  2^nd ed. New York: W.W.Norton & Co., 2010.  2110-2126. Print.