45 | Orientalism: discourses of the East The idea that identity (p. 224) is built upon the characteri from oneself is au ion of others as different ful one. Ie ties into how we might think about the cultural geographies of the differences between people and places in terms of power relations, and allows us to think about the city and the countr as well as nationalism and national identi, We can also see it at work elsewhere. One of the key uses of this idea is in Edward Said’s (1978) notion of Orientalism which addresses how representations of the East made by those from the West have been involved in the identification of cultural differences and the making of a set of unequal power relations. In doing this he makes use of theories of discourse (p. 30) to think about how power and knowledge are connected in the representation of places. What we want to de here is to think through what Said tells us about geography, representation and power, as well as look at some of the criticisms of his work. Edward W. Said (1935-) Said was born in Jerusalem in 1935 and educated in Cairo. Like millions of other his family became part of the Palestinian diaspora after the foundation “ the it in 1948. He completed his education in’ the United States of L rd universities. As Professor of Comparative Literature at ed on nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and music, and of inians. hens oe po cee nite siege! Bie offered a wayet undTopographies of culture: geography, power and representation 169 sai - ‘other work has attempted ‘to publicise and analyse the plight of the Palestinians. done through historical and political writings (some of which use ideas of ism’ to understand the history of Palestine); through attempts to show how they n misrepresented in a range of texts and images; and through the production of es which offer another view. For example, Said’s After the Last Sky. ), photographs by Jean Mohr, is an attempt to netted ; ople who have been displaced and dispossessed. AS 4.5.1 | Orientalism Said's Orientalism is a study of ‘the West's’ representations of ‘the East’ and, in particular, how they underpinned imperialist political ambitions and administrations. There are, however, some limitations on this. It is primarily a study of the Arabic or Islamic world rather than other ‘Orients’; it deals almost exclusively with textual sources (for painting, see Nochlin, 1991a, and Heffernan, 1991; and for photography, see Schwartz, 1996); and it is concerned mainly with English, French and North American representations in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. What Said is challeng- ing is the way in which these representations divide up the globe, assuming that there is some real meaning in the notions of ‘West’ and ‘East’ (or ‘Occident’ and ‘Orient’). As he says: ‘the notion that there are geographical spaces with indigenous, radically “different” inhabitants who can be defined on the basis of some religion, culture or racial essence proper to that geographical space highly debatable idea’ (Said, 1978; 322). What he is questioning is what we can call ‘geographical essentialism’ (p. 138): the absolute fixing of a singular set of meanings to a portion of the globe and its people. This objection is not just a theoretical one but an ethical and political one too. He asks us to consider what the consequences for humanity’ are of these forms of division and representation. Said’s argument is that the ‘Orient’ is a Western invention: ‘a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences’ (1978: 1). This imaginary quality distinguishes it from the more prosaic ‘East’. It is, he argues, produced within the discourse he calls “Orientalism’, a way of talking about the world that has operated in a gyeat variety of ways over a substantial period. Orientalism is a way of thinking about, talking about and representing the world that makes sense of it, and makes statements about it, based on a division of it into two parts: West and170 Introducing Cultural Studies can say that Orientalism dichotomises, Second, there is an assumption that one can speak about these parts in general terms. As Said notes, ‘One could speak in Europe of an Oriental personality, an Oriental atmosphere, an Oriental tale, Oriental despotism, or an Oriental mode of preduction, and be understood’ (1978: 32). This allows statem such as that made by Lord Cromer (‘Egypt's master’ (1978 rule) in 1908 to be acceptable: Want of accuracy unwuthfulness, is in fa 1978: 38). Humanity 36). So we can nts ) under British imperial which easily degenerates into istic of the Oriental mind’ (quoted in Said, is sipped down to ‘ruthless cultural and racial essences’ (1978: y that Orientalism essentiatises. Finally, there is in all of this a strong sense that East and West are to be compared, with the East eventually coming off worse, even though this may be tinged with nostalgia. As Lord Cromer continued: “The European is a close reasoner; his statements of fact are devoid of any ambiguity. (quoted in Said, 1978: 38). So we can say that Orientalism creates hierarchies. These, then, are the ‘rules’ according to which this discourse works. ct the main characte! Box 4.3 shows some of the characteristics of Orient and Occident produced within this discourse. It is important to note that as it dichotomises, essentialises and creates hierarchies, Orientalism is talking about the West as much as about the East. It is creating the East as the West’s ‘Other’: the place that it uses to distinguish its own identity. The pairs of words show how the E st is produced as both something dangerous and something desirable. In turn the West is both powerful and unexciting (this parallels the ambiguous meanings of the counuy and the city above). You should also note the way in which the discourse wor! the binary divide meaningful by associating the East with women and the West with men (Kabbani, 1986). Delacroix's painting The Death of Sardanapalus (1827) dramatises and develops many of these i s through gendered categories, making ues (see Figure 4.8). Based upon a theme from Byron, it represents Sardanapalus lying on a magnificent bed on top of a funeral pyre. He is commanding his eunuchs and officers to cut the throats of his wives, his attendants, his horses and his dogs so that they will not survive him, It represents the East as a place of sex, death and power and you might think about how this painting (now in the Louvre in Paris) repre of political power through ideas of ‘Oriental despotism’, issues of gender through ideas of ‘Oriental eroticism’, and issues of history through mythical ‘Oriental past’. You might also think about how such an image would have been seen by a nineteenth-century French audience as both pleasurable and as a justification for European imperial expansion. Yet this is not simply a matter of words: it is also about power. Orientalism is not just away of describing the East: it is ‘an institution’ which has three parts. First, it is the style of thought as set out above. Second, it is an academic discipline. Academics associated with institutions such as the Royal Asiatic Society identified themselves as ‘Orientalists’ and set out to produce knowledge about the Orient. Indeed, the sorts of knowledges that they produced were prioritised. The West's intellectuals spoke for the East. Finally, it is what Said calls ‘a corporate institution for dealing with the Orient’ (1978: 3). This certainly involved words and knowledge since a large part of dealing with the Orient was about ‘making statements about it, authorising views of it, describing it’, yet this was also connected to a set of other institutions and mate ts issues jal practices of education andTopographies of culture: geography, power and representation 171 Box _ | or 43 Some characteristics of ‘East’ and ‘West’ within Orientalism | East splendour Despotism Democracy | Gruelty Fair treatment | Sensuality Self-control | Nosel€government Self-government i Artistic Practical i Mystical Sensible i Irrational Rational » Mlogical Logical Intrigue Straightforwardness | Cunning Trust | Lethargy Activity i | Depraved Virtuous i | Childlike Mature Exotic Unexotic Fatalist/passive Active Mysterious Obvious Silent Articulate | Weak Surong © Dark Light Do you think that these differentiations establish the West as ‘normal’ and the Do these categories define the | Orient as feminine and the Oceident as masculine? | East as ‘different’ in the discourse of Orientalisn Adapted fre id (1978) imperialisin. The Orient was to be dealt with by ‘teaching it, settling it, ruling over it (1978: 3). Using Michel Foucault's (p. 28) ideas of discourse to understand Orientalism has important implications. It means that Said is not treating the statements made about the Orient as lies that can be disproved; instead he is arguing that Orientalism as a discourse creates the Orient. It only really exists for the West within those statements about it and the actions that flow from them. That, however, docs not make the consequences of imperialism any less real. The representations of the East that Orientalisin makes are part of a relationship of power between East and West which sets severe limitations on the autonomy and freedom of those being represented.172 Introducing Cultural Studies Figure 4.8 — The Death of Sardanapalus (1827) by Eugéne Delacroix. (Source: by permission of The Louvre, Paris.) 4.5.2 i Power and geographical representation Representation is a crucial part of the ways in which the making of identities is a matter of the power of some groups over others. In this context Said (1978) talks about what is involved in the creation of what he calls ‘imaginative geographies’. This process of making geographical distinctions between places, of drawing boundaries and of naming places is part of the imaking of identities through oppositions between ‘us’ and ‘them’. As he says, “There is no doubt that imaginative geography and history help the mind to intensify its own sense of itself by dramatising the distance and difference between what is close w it and what is far away’ (1978: 55). As such, Orientalism is not simply a process of description, but a relation of power and domination whereby one group gets to define identities for all by defining the ‘Orient’ and ‘Orientals’ in certain ways. Yet the sorts of knowledge produced within these representations are connected to the power of the West over the East in a much more direct sense. We need to understand the ways in which knowledge of the Orient was the basis of imperial domination, It provided a set of ideas that were vital to the process of conquering,Topographies of culture: geography, power and representation 173 settling and governing the East. For example, Said (1993) writes of the Description de (Egypte. This was a 24-volume product of Napoleon's 1798 expedition to conquer Egypt which legitimised French conquest with an account of Egyptian history, derogated contemporary Egyptian culture by obsessive attention to a ‘glorious past’ and provided the grounding for administration, settlement and exploitation in its exhaustive survey of land and resources. The French had to know Egypt in order to possess it and to this end they marched on Egypt with an army of Orientalists as well as a regular army (Godlewska, 1995). In this and many other instances the connections between Orientalism and imperial power are clearly made (Driver, 1992). 4.5.3 | Critiques of Said’s Orientalism However, Said's work has not escaped criticism. The following section outlines some of the difficulties with it and looks at the ways forward that athers have found. The problem of agency This is, in part, a matter of how Said deals with the Orientalists. Although he claims to be wying to hear the different voices of different people within the discourse of Orientalism, his critics have said that he fails. They argue that there is not enough attention to how there were many strands to Orientalism (including a selfconsciousness on the part of Orientalists about how they were creating the Orient), how there were conflicts within it, and how national waditions and change over time meant that Orientalism spoke with many voices rather than the single voice that we hear in Said’s book. It is also a matter of how he deals with those being described as ‘Orientals’, Here he gives them no room to reply ot to shape the forms that the discursive and real relations between East and West took, Their voices need to be heard too in making descriptions of themselves and descriptions of the West (Mitchell, 1989). Indeed, the important place of Said’s work in the development of postcolonial (p. 189) cr and subaltern studies (colonial histories written ‘from below’), as political activism, suggest that these voices are forceful ones. ism well as his own The problem of humanism Said’s book raises a series of difficult questions about how we can speak about and know about other cultures. His general claim is that we should expose the consequences of discourses like Orientalism in the name of a liberal humanism that seeks less oppressive visions of others. However, he does this by undermining the key iberal humanist idea: our power to know the truth, His critics have said that he cannot have it both ways and have criticised the humanism that underlies what he does (Clifford, 1988) The problem of gender Gender is largely ignored by Said, Although we have considered it above, he does not pay attention to how the relationship between power (p. 94), identity (p. 224) and174 Introducing Cultural Studies geographical representation within Orientalism operated through gendered cat egories which defined the West's relationships to the East in terms of a power-laden dichotomy between male and female. He also pays no attention to whether there are gendered differences between the sorts of knowledges and representations of the East produced by male and female Orientalists (for example, Lewis, 1996, and Gregory, 1995). These criticisms do not necessarily imply that Said’s general framework, or his use of discourse, are to be abandoned (Said, 1993). They do, however, call for a much more nuanced account of how different forms of power and different forms of knowledge work within the varied and changing discourses of ‘Orientalism’ (Driver, 1992). This more varied perspective will enable us to better understand the variety of connections that there are between space, power and knowledge. 4.5.4 | Conclusions This section has wied to show how theories of discourse (p. 30) might be useful in connecting ideas of power and identity to geographical representation. Said shows us that the making of ‘imaginary geographies’ is part of a powerladen process of defining ‘us’ and ‘them’ which has very real consequences. Overall, Said’s work, coupled with that of his critics, allows us to begin to see the ever-changing complexities of these relationships between language, power, identity and geography. Indeed, we need to be aware of how the languages and practices of Orientalism are still very much a part of the discourses of politics and economics in the contemporary world. This becomes apparent if you think about hostile American responses to Japanese economic power (which might be read through films like Black Rain or Rising Sun) or the discussions of politics in the Middle East which are conducted through notions of terrorism, despotism and fundamentalism (for example, in the TV coverage of the Gulf War and in a film like Jewel of the Nile) which replay older notions of the Orient (Said, 1981). However, the situation is not simply the same now as the one that Said described for the nineteenth century. In some ways the tables are turned, particularly in relation to ihe increased power of Japanese corporations (Morley and Robins, 1992). In addition, we may also be witne: ing less dichotomised cultural tansactions between ‘East’ and ‘West’ as Japanese video games or Indian foods, fashions and musics are globalised and incorporated into ‘Western’ cultural practices (Turner, 1994; Shurmer-Smith and Hannam, 1994). This realisation, however, should not be confined to the present. Thinking about the ways in which there have always been exchanges and transactions between ‘East’ and ‘West’ = in the past as well as the present ~ means thinking critically about the borders and boundaries that are set up between these entities (see Sidaway, 1997). Once we start to do this, new versions of the relationship bets deeply held 3 n culture and geography come into view which challenge many sumptions.