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Orientalism is the investigation and representation of a chapter of intellectual history that starts
from the eighteenth century, but with roots far more distant in time, and which goes up to the
present day; the aim of this investigation is to identify the ideological and cultural motivations that
gave rise to a real style of thought. By orientalism is meant the way in which European culture and
conscience tried to know and appropriate the East (Orient): the way in which they tried to dominate
it, misrepresenting it, voluntarily, and transforming it as the place, par excellence, in which it
resided the Other. The book analyzes the mechanisms and ways in which this intellectual
colonization has been handed down from the nineteenth-century stereotypes until today.
Orientalism was published in 1978, it is the result of an uninterrupted process started in the
previous two years. In 1994 it came out in a new edition in which Said, in the afterword, proposed
to clarify some aspects of the reception of the work that had been subject of distorted
interpretations. The book is divided into three chapters in which the topic, subject of investigation,
is exposed according to a chronological and geographical criterion: the boundaries of the topic are
traced in terms of duration, historical and political implications, it then proceeds, to reconstruct the
development of modern Orientalism, through the analysis of the common features present in
scholars, writers and poets, trying to outline the characteristics of this phenomenon from the
Second World War onwards. The enormous amount of texts, studies and theories, produced by
the Orientalist tradition has been delimited by the English, French and American experience in the
East (Orient) , as examples of an attitude that has found expression throughout the West, including
the geographical area and the Eastern culture have been limited, in fact (indeed) Said considered
the Arab and Islamic world as a paradigm for the whole of the East (Orient). What is meant by the
term orientalism? . First of all, the term refers to the way in which the West has represented and
studied the East (Orient), making it an integral part of European civilization and culture, not only in
a physical sense, and a means through which, by contrast, Europe was better able to define itself,
its image, its territorial and political interests. The theoretical assumption on which this current of
thought was based was the ontological distinction between East and West, two distinct and
opposing entities but linked, exclusively by the interests that Westerners had in that part of the
world; these were not equal relationships, were based on inequality and discrimination. Giving a
complete idea of what Orientalism really was involves making reference and multiple elements,
closely related to each other, which find common ground in a component that has strongly
characterized this field of knowledge, especially from the eighteenth century onwards, the
academic. Orientalism is made up of all those disciplines that study the customs, traditions, history
and literature of the Eastern peoples and involves areas such as philology, anthropology and
biology. From the academic to the extra-academic environment the transition was short and
between the two fields there was never a lack of interaction, which at the end of the eighteenth
century, led to consider Orientalism a term comprising all the western institutions created to
manage relations with the East at a political, economic and cultural level.
In the first chapter Said deals with the beginnings of Orientalism and its development closely
related to the period of maximum expansion of imperialism; the separation between East and
West was the result of centuries of travel and exploration to which the development of trade and, to
a greater extent, military enterprises contributed. In the mid-eighteenth century the relations
between the two geographical entities were influenced, in particular, by colonial politics, which
allowed a greater knowledge of the East in Europe, and by a particular eighteenth-century interest
in the exotic and the unusual, interest sustained by the recent birth of some sciences, such as
ethnology and anatomy, and by the works of some novelists and travelers. During the 19th century
until the early 20th century, hand in hand (at the same time) with colonial enterprise, Orientalism
was strengthened, becoming the other face of European dominance, the intellectual one.
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Orientalist practice had already acquired, in the previous century, images, rhetorical figures and
words of sure effect; was already well established the idea that the East, although having its own
internal coherence, and defined geographical and cultural boundaries, existed thanks to the
complex series of interventions carried out by the West: the fundamental assumption, which never
failed, was that European knowledge of the East had created the East, the Orientals and their
world. At the basis of this attitude was a "family of ideas", as Said defined it, and of beliefs which,
previously, had shown themselves to be effective means of representation of Orientals behaviour,
mentality and habits.These ideas allowed Europeans to considered the Orientals as a
phenomenon with specific characteristics, analyzable and predictable; the Orientals themselves
were influenced. The orientalism from the start was characterized as a series of limits imposed by
thought, at the root there was the unvoidable distinction between western superiority and the
eastern inferiority. As far as birth, development and its creation as a discipline are concerned,
Orientalism has been a cultural enterprise supported by a project of enormous dimensions that has
invested a huge amount of fields: trade, the military sphere, a long tradition of colonial
administration, and also an abnormal number of data and writings of various kinds, universities and
institutions. Among the assumptions that allowed the birth of this particular discipline we can
include the proximity that Britain and France felt towards the East, which, until the mid-nineteenth
century, essentially coincided with India and the regions present in the Bible . From the nineteenth
century these two nations predominated in the East and in Orientalism, both in an influential and
lasting way, but with some peculiar characteristics. English Orientalism always had a more
practical approach than French, meaning by what a perfect coincidence between geography,
knowledge and power; Oriental studies were considered "indispensable equipment" for the
government of the empire, not an intellectual luxury, but an obligation: the East was the territory
governed by Great Britain and what it knew of that territory: Even English writers had greater
awareness of the political implications of their works and clear opinions on how to conduct East-
West relations. As for France, its orientalism had nothing to envy to the English one, the difference
lies above all in the perception that writers and travelers had of it; on this different approach, surely
influences the fact that, during the nineteenth century, the French power was relegated to the role
of second in office, because in the East it could not boast any sovereign presence, it was,
therefore, an East made of memories and suggestions, made of hidden copresences, an East all
located in an imaginative and unattainable dimension. The differences between Great Britain and
France consistently reflected the historical events of each of the two powers. Said was particularly
interested in the Islamic East, both for biographical events, but also for the complex and important
role that the Islamic world plays in the contemporary world. The contrast between East and West
has distant roots, already traceable in classical Greece and ancient Rome, both, in a way that was
anything but unselfish, had carried out a work of classification of the nearby regions explored, and
showed a taxonomic passion for distinctions of races, regions and mentalities. Christianity
completed the definition of the oriental spheres: there was a near East, a remote one and a
fabulous one. The East represented in the mental geography of the Christian the lost paradise to
which to return, or a land to discover and to found something new. The Near East was considered,
therefore, the complementary opposite of the West: in the East there was the Bible and the origins
of Christianity, there developed political-religious movements considered dangerous as Islam, and
in the East the crusaders were sent . From these encounters a varied literature was born, in the
forms and contents, through which the East was perceived and defined, and, with it, consequently,
also the West. Islam was in a convenient proximity to the Christian world, geographically and
culturally, had drawn on the Judeo-Hellenic tradition, had achieved very important military
successes, moreover, the Islamic territories included the biblical regions and the Semitic
languages depositing fundamental information for Christian civilization.