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If this book is anything, it is a plea for us to recognise the humanity of the other — of the Arab other in this case. People in west still prefer reading account of their own people travelling to East or immigrants coming from East; rather than people who have lived and continue to live in these regions. But as critics especially Bernard Lewis and Robert Irwin have pointed out, Said took a handful of serious ideas and created his own fantasy world of "Ori Yes in many ways, Said's "Orientalism" is a classic. Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. But believe me, it gets worse. White guys have been doing it for centuries, and we love them for it. In that case, we can't Cuddon, Editor. A tone more for scholars than general readers like myself. Reclaiming Identity: Dismantling Arab Stereotypes. Details if other :. That we are pluralistic, they are clones. How does Orientalism transmit or reproduce itself from one epoch to another? He raises important and thought-provoking questions about interrogating how places are represented, who has An intelligent and insightful book about how the West has stereotyped and dehumanized the East through racist and oppressive representations of the East as backwards, uncivilized and in need of Western revitalization or aid. Granted, the educated and perhaps even pseudo-educated may have had qualms with it, but the average reader would have seen it and believed it. Edward Said died of leukemia on 25 September This was accomplished by grossly over-generalizing "the Other" negatively, whether with a hostile or a benignly condescending mood. I've had it on my bookshelf for years, but I guess I figured I knew what it contained. Preview — Orientalism by Edward W. View all 4 comments. Among the Persians and Egyptians, however, it is still a general proactive, and will no doubt continue, for in those centuries the immigration of foreigners has failed to influence the customs of the natives. These people do not express their pleasure by wreathed smiles. And a relevant evolution is that after Said, a whole scientific branch of post-colonial, "subaltern" studies has started that continue to feed the debate. Of course, it also has something to offer for the view of the West on other cultures: the African, the native American, Chinese, Polynesian and why not: the Russian, those of the Balkans , and so on. And like such scholarship the assumption is that the plays never change — just as it is assumed the Orient and those who live there never changes either. I wrote this review 15 years ago. Also in his personal life, Said did not shy away from polemics, and in the United States in particular, that - as an advocate of the Palestinian cause — has done his reputation much harm. I don't want to do it thoughtlessly, and though I take a great deal of inspiration from Haggard, Kipling, Conrad, and Burton, I don't want to incidentally adopt their shortcomings along with the interesting bits. As Arabs go this is undoubtedly a happy family. Orientalism ignores class interests, political circumstances and economic factors. Essential, and still eye-opening, Orientalism remains one of the most important books written about our divided world. According to Said, in the Middle East, the social, economic, and cultural practices of the ruling Arab elites indicate they are imperial satraps who have internalized a romanticized version of Arab Culture created by French, British and later, American, Orientalists. What we have, instead, is a series of crude, essentialized caricatures of the Islamic world, presented in such a way as to make that world vulnerable to military aggression. He is hailed as hero among worshippers of Arabism, and that repulses me. Knowing the Oriental II. Therefore, Orientalism was a method of practical and cultural discrimination that was applied to non-European societies and peoples in order to establish European imperial domination. Other than Israel, the rest of the region is self-identical. Want to Read saving…. It is also a book that is virtually required reading if you are going to say anything at all about post-colonialism. Jun 04, DoctorM rated it it was ok Shelves: postcolonial , critical-theory. Said , in which the author establishes the eponymous term " Orientalism " as a critical concept to describe the West 's common, contemptuous depiction and portrayal of " The East ," i. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient Writer

This is a fascinatingly interesting book. So why is it so shocking that in studies of the East, a minority has a more relevant view of their culture than a random who only knows of that culture through the vacuum of academia? This book is therefore primarily a topic intellectual history. Simply put, this is a complex book. This, then must be the source of why we were told in critical Indigenous pedagogy class to avoid pronouns such as "us" and "them". Things I saw from both Americans and Iraqis began to remind me faintly of some half-remembered ideas from Said's pen. But still a text nonetheless. One last aside--I would have also liked to have seen more women writers acknowledged by him, although at least in the case of Lucie Duff Gordon , he would have been more hardpressed to criticize her as he could some of the major Orientalists. I'd love an update now that the east is no longer "female" and sexual, but it's male and irrationally angry. Even Bernard Lewis, at one point the most influential Near Eastern Studies scholar in the West, only criticized Orientalism because he was forced to. Rating details. When reading books such as this I find it hard not to fall into misanthropy, as I look at the current political climate the world faces; ultimately, asking myself the question: will man ever learn? And I want to say, dude, we invented reason! View all 14 comments. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Said enumerating the major aims of the book, which is exciting and challenges the Western knowledge about orient. Besides being an academic, Said also was an accomplished pianist, and, with Barenboim, co-authored the book Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society , a compilation of their conversations about music. The history of European colonial rule and political domination of Eastern civilizations, distorts the intellectual objectivity of even the most knowledgeable, well-meaning, and culturally sympathetic Western Orientalist; thus did the term "Orientalism" become a pejorative word regarding non—Western peoples and cultures: [13]. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. He would probably look much worse should he attempt to smile. Particularly in these troubled times with racial slurs against Muslims becoming common currency amd electoral policy , it remains relevant and eye-opening. Why The Stereotypes? Often people of East are shown in Hollywood movies as caricatures of Western idea of them Indiana Jones movies. View all 5 comments. No one ever thought of checking the truthiness of the taught information or they saw what they hoped to saw, rather than what was. So it was religion that became the identity prejudiced. Visitors to the actual geographical Middle East were disappointed not to find the world described in classic orientalist texts, and interpreted this as the further, because orientalist dogma starts from an assumption of faded glory degeneration of the Orient! They change, morph, and grow new faces to suit some urgent need by those using the institutions housing the ideas. Read more. In this wide-ranging, intellectually vigorous study, Said traces the origins of "orientalism" to the centuries-long period during which Europe dominated the Middle and Near East and, from its position of power, defined "the orient" simply as "other than" the occident. Mar 08, Mehrsa rated it it was amazing. They operate off of the same self-serving justifications for their rule: that the population is childlike and irrational, easily manipulated, and in need of governance. Jan 13, Rob Salkowitz rated it it was ok. Lists with This Book. London: Methuen. The part that made me gasp out loud was when he talked about how Western scholars have claimed reason and rationality as the sphere of the west and unreason and softness as the sphere of the orient. And he's right about some things: Western art and literature created a whole fantasy world about "the Orient" which included the Balkans and Russia over the last few centuries; Western scholarship about North Africa or the Middle East or India could be and was used by colonial powers. Mar 24, Bob Newman rated it it was amazing Shelves: anthropology , arab-world , political-commentary. Through this work Said tried to liberate the intellectuals from the shackles of orientalist discourse, which knowingly or unknowingly imposed limitations on their consciousness, imagery and thinking about the orient and its peoples. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient Reviews Perhaps in the first shock of publication it seemed so. A necessary read, but one that has to be complemented with a reading of Lewis' critiques and the debates between the two, and perhaps since the critique is from the Left even more so by reading Robert Irwin's "Dangerous Knowledge". Some of his scholarship is also a bit off mistaking certain writers for other people with the same name, that sort of thing , but still, a seminal work. Selim has his hookah stem in his mouth and his scimeter in one hand, and though he is scowling fiercely it is no doubt his habitual expression. So, to explain this we need to see Islam and the Orient as a culture in decay, a culture that is degenerating. Where did their information come from? It was the fact that I found myself mildly depressed at the topic. So much of the last few pages was quotable! From Orientalism Delacroix to Klee. Arab American National Museum collection. For example, when I hear that the USA spends more on healthcare than any other nation or how much an average Australian spends on education, I become worried. This is a fascinatingly interesting book. This publication includes photographs of recreated Arab streets, accompanied by captions that capture the Orientalist thinking of the time. One should focus on his desire to explain how both sides of the globe have traditions and intellectual achievements, and at the same time the lack thereof of it, not simply a West versus East ideal. That debate is also very varied: sometimes nuanced, sometimes very extreme, but at least it is an intellectual debate, and only through this a multifaceted, enriching view of history and reality can only be won. I think, if I only wanted to get an idea of what the book This is a fascinatingly interesting book. As some have said, the ideas in this book are often acknowledged by many intellectuals with various degrees of acceptance depending on ideological persuasion. Reclaiming Identity: Dismantling Arab Stereotypes. This was a particular issue given Said treated Western colonialism as unique, which Landlow regarded as unsatisfactory for a work of serious scholarship. Ernest Gellner , in his book review titled "The Mightier Pen? And so — a terrible game of Chinese Whispers got started, and you know wonderfully good such a game is at preserving information. The ascendency of area studies in western universities is recurring pattern of orientalist discourse that tries to dominate the discourses on the respective regions e. The Orient really reached its glory days a long time ago — you have to remember that much of our mathematics and virtually all of our Classical Philosophy came from Islamic scholars. Something like "orientalism" was so taken for granted over the centuries that it took someone like Said to simply take a step back and say "dude, what the fuck. Jan 07, J. Said notoriously got the careers and beliefs of the great Orientalists of the 18th and 19th centuries wrong, and, despite some fine writing, produced in the end a book that conflated artistic and literary visions with intelligence gathered for conquest or rule and which came close to saying that only scholarship with a "correct" political message about the Middle East could ever be acceptable. Mar 24, Bob Newman rated it it was amazing Shelves: anthropology , arab-world , political-commentary. Therefore, Orientalism was a method of practical and cultural discrimination that was applied to non-European societies and peoples in order to establish European imperial domination. That is why the process by which we get that knowledge and the actual contents of that knowledge are so important. Jean-Leon Gerome Cover Artist. The following is a true story: Me, in a San Franscisco bar reading Orientalism. As I read, it seemed that what Said was saying was clearly true, but not in a revelatory way. Confrontation with reality has not disrupted the othering construction of orientalism; everything is digested and processed by it. Though this isn't his stated purpose, it's no wonder many misinterpret his purpose to be one of wholesale condemnation of the West, despite his protestations to the contrary in the Afterword. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient with a new afterword. Specifically: the conception of the Orient a very broad and constantly fluctuating concept as mysterious but also passive, backward and at the same time threatening became the source of inspiration and the justification of a colonialism and imperialism that in turn reinforced the Orientalist view. From the beginning of Western speculation about the Orient, the one thing th orient could not do was to represent itself. However, the work I just finished reading was one I wrestled with intellectually throughout. God Bless Edward Said For those who may ask why one should pick up and read Edward Said's Orientalism, my response would be a difficult one to articulate. The Orient has long been a place where Westerners have projected their lusts, their dreams and their nightmares. And like such scholarship the assumption is that the plays never change — just as it is assumed the Orient and those who live there never changes either. The idea of the "Orient" was conceptualized by French and English Orientalists during the 18th century, and was eventually adopted in the 20th century by American Orientalists.

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As I read, it seemed that what Said was saying was clearly true, but not in a revelatory way. It struck in the inner core of knowledge created by the West on Orient which challenged the orthodox misconceptions about the Orient. Oil on canvas. View all 13 comments. Orientalism ignores class interests, political circumstances and economic factors. I agree with another reviewer here that this is a book primarily aimed at academics. People in west still prefer reading account of their own people travelling to East or immigrants coming from East; rather than people who have lived and continue to live in these regions. Methodological failures of orientalism cannot be accounted for by saying the real Orient is different from orientalist portrayals or that orientalists, being Westerners, can have no inner sense of what the Orient is all about: Orientals are now educated in native lands in colonial founded underfunded universities with no good libraries and too many students. I am not referring to Said, I refer to the work he exposes. Confrontation with reality has not disrupted the othering construction of orientalism; everything is digested and processed by it. A tone more for scholars than general readers like myself. So we get We There's a curious double-standard between what we expect from White guy authors compared to authors of any other background. How many people will actually read this in their lifetime? Skip to main content. It is the deliberate "distillation of essential ideas about the Orient — its sensuality, its tendency to despotism, its aberrant mentality, its habits of inaccuracy, its backwardness — into a separate and unchallenged coherence" Louis: Historical Publishing Co. The West is rational, developed, humane, superior while the Orient is underdeveloped, aberrant, inferior 2. In the article, "Edward Said's Shadowy Legacy" , Robert Irwin says that Said ineffectively distinguished among writers of different centuries and genres of Orientalist literature. Comparative Studies in Society and History. The point is, this book portrays an erudite scholarly voice. In reality, I found this to be an incredibly difficult book to read. This can be scientifically justified at the level of hypothesis formation, but not in a final assessment of reality. These people do not express their pleasure by wreathed smiles. This is an academic work with a very narrow scope. He would probably look much worse should he attempt to smile. Reality Check Jabri Family. A necessary read, but one that has to be complemented with a reading of Lewis' critiques and the debates between the two, and perhaps since the critique is from the Left even more so by reading Robert Irwin's "Dangerous Knowledge". There is only the unchanging oriental character to consider. Philip Metres on Orientalism at Forty. Such a binary relation, in a hierarchy of weakness and strength, derives from the European psychological need to create a difference of cultural inequality, between West and East, which inequality is attributable to "immutable cultural essences " inherent to Oriental peoples and things. Orientalism can be recorded more effectively. Said's tone throughout the book is exceedingly dry and cautious--too much so, for my taste, I've been known to enjoy a good diatribe--so any prejudicial anger a reader might find in this book is only what they brought in with them. This book is a feat of thought that probably has its little inexactitudes as his detractors like to point out. May be there is something in soil. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. Selim has his hookah stem in his mouth and his scimeter in one hand, and though he is scowling fiercely it is no doubt his habitual expression. This vision in a sense created and then served the two worlds thus conceived. Hermes and Anne Richards. Said does not hate the West, in fact, his writing barely carries any emotion towards either side when it comes to non-fiction works, as he rather give a good introduction to people from both sides.

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