Edward Said - Lesson 2

Basics:

Orient: Traditionally, the term “Orient” refers to the East, specifically the regions east of the
Mediterranean Sea, including the Middle East, Asia, and the Far East. It is derived from the
Latin word “oriens,” meaning “east” or “rising,” in reference to the direction from which the sun
rises.

Oriental: As an adjective, “Oriental” describes anything related to the Orient, such as

landscapes, literature, or attitudes. As a noun, it can refer to a person from the Orient.

Orientalism: This term has two primary uses. In a general sense, it refers to the academic study
of the languages, cultures, and histories of the Eastern world. However, after the publication of
Edward Said’s seminal work “Orientalism” in 1978, the term took on a more critical meaning.
Said used “Orientalism” to describe a pervasive Western tradition of prejudiced outsider
interpretations of the East, which shaped Western attitudes and policy towards the Orient. This
form of Orientalism constructs stereotypes of Eastern societies as exotic, backward, uncivilized,
and at times dangerous, often serving as a justification for Western colonial and imperial
ambitions.

1. What is Orientalism?
Edward Said offers several overlapping answers to this basic question. It is, first of all, ‘a way of
coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient's special place in the European
Western experience’. But more formally,for Said, it encompasses three aspects or elements:

(A) it is an academic field. ‘Anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient – and
this applies whether the person is an anthropologist, sociologist, historian or philologist – either
in its specific or its general aspects, is an Orientalist, and what he or she does is Orientalism’;

(B) at a broader but also deeper level, ‘Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an
ontological and epistemological distinction made between the “Orient” and (most of the time) the
“Occident”’;

(C) in a manner that relates to the two definitions above, it is also an institution of domination:
‘Taking the late eighteenth century as a very roughly defined starting point Orientalism can be
discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient – dealing with it
by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it,
ruling over it; in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring and having
authority over the Orient’.

2. What is E. Said doing in his book Orientalism and how ?

A. He is making an intervention into, and a critique of, an academic field and tradition: that of the
study of the Orient.

B. When E. Said invokes Orientalism as a ‘style of thought’, he is suggesting that this

‘ontological and epistemological distinction’ between Orient and Occident, between East and
West, can be traced far more widely than just in an academic speciality.

C. Thirdly, implicitly, Said is linking the production of academic knowledge about the Orient, and
that much wider trope of the dividing line between East and West, to ‘the corporate institution
for…having authority over the Orient’. That is, we will find him suggesting that academic writing,
and all sorts of other writing about the Orient also – that of travellers, colonial administrators and
soldiers, missionaries, poets, philosophers, economists – has been related to the exercise of
power and authority in the Orient.

3. Which countries and time period is specifically mentioned by E. Said?

A. Said deals principally with British and French, and latterly American, Orientalism. That he
does not deal with the large mass of writing produced about the Orient by other European
intellectual traditions has been a matter of criticism.

B. Said argues that the British and French experience of the Orient is particular: ‘Orientalism
derives from a particular closeness experienced between Britain and France and the Orient.’

C. Accordingly, Orientalism is a ‘cultural enterprise’ which encompasses areas and matters as

diverse as the spice trade, the Biblical texts and the Biblical lands, Oriental ‘experts’ and ‘old
hands’, and imaginative tropes such as Oriental sensuality, irrationality, violence, spirituality.
Furthermore, this enterprise is one that, since 1945, has been inherited by the United States in
its relations with the Orient.

4. Is 'Orient' a physical space only ?

A. Orient is not merely a physical region; rather the very concept of that region is, for Said, a
cultural construction.

B. The Orient's status as a region does not originate in specific geophysical characteristics, or
homogeneities of culture or society or history.

C. Rather, ‘the Orient’ is a concept that has acquired a history and tradition of ideas, metaphors,
terminology, which have been the means by which the Orient has been represented, made real,
to the West.
5. Edward Said's Orientalism is an empirical study of the Orient, neither the defence of East but
rather the internal logic of Orientalism. How ?

Edward Said’s seminal work “Orientalism” is not an empirical study of the East, nor is it a
defense of the East against Western misrepresentation. Instead, Said is deeply interested in the
concept of Orientalism itself—the Western construction and representation of the Orient. His
focus is on the frameworks and discourses that have created and sustained the concept of the
Orient as the ‘Other’ within Western thought.

Said’s analysis is concerned with the internal workings of Orientalism: how it functions as a
coherent system of thought and representation, irrespective of its accuracy in depicting the real
countries and peoples of the East. He argues that Orientalism has its own internal logic and
consistency, which is maintained even when it does not correspond to the actual reality of the
Orient. This means that Orientalism is less about the Orient itself and more about the West’s
projection and perception of the Orient.

In essence, Said’s critique is that Orientalism is a constructed reality, shaped by political,

cultural, and ideological forces, and it has been used to justify Western dominance over Eastern
societies. It is a systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manage—and
even produce—the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and
imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment period. This constructed reality has little to do with
the actual Orient but has everything to do with the West’s exercise of power and control over it.

The point, rather, is that he is less interested in any relationship between Orientalism and its
object than in ‘the internal consistency of Orientalism and its ideas about the Orient…despite or
beyond any correspondence, or lack thereof, with a “real” Orient’.

6. Orientalism is not a book about Islam or Arabs?

A. Edward Said's "Orientalism" is not a factual recount of the East but a critique of Western
literature on the Orient, emphasizing its textual fabric and ideological underpinnings.

B. Said underscores the power dynamics in this discourse, where the Orient is depicted as
'other' not because it embodies the West's definition of 'Oriental' but because it can be portrayed
as such. This power imbalance is evident in the writings, which are not just incorrect narratives
but a robust discourse intertwined with Western socio-economic and political structures,
possessing a formidable longevity.

C. Said, drawing from Foucault, views Orientalism as a discourse—a collection of statements

that gain authority and 'truth' through institutional support. This discourse, as Foucault's
power/knowledge concept suggests, is not only a means of asserting control but also shapes
'regimes of truth,' influencing societal perceptions and treatment of subjects like the insane, the
sick, and the criminal.

D. Orientalism, accordingly, is not a book about Islam, or Arab history or culture, or the peoples,
societies, economies, or political systems of the Orient. It is about the body of writing about or
concerning the Orient, by Westerners, and the density, texture, structures, patterns, and
variations of that writing. Said stresses that the relationship between the West and the Orient
has been one of power. The Orient has been ‘Orientalised’ or described as ‘Oriental’ not merely
because it has displayed the characteristics Westerners associate with ‘the Oriental’, but
because it could be.

E. For Foucault, a discourse is a body of statements – spoken and written in language, though
discourse can also encompass other forms of representation – that can be, and are, made
about a specific matter. Authoritative discourses acquire, by means of their links to institutions
such as the legal system, the state, the academy, and the sciences, the status of ‘truth’.

F. Foucault called this nexus power/knowledge – in this formulation, knowledge, or

truth-statement, is a form of power, and, equally, power can be understood in its capacity to
produce effects or ‘regimes’ of truth.

G. Famously, in books such as History of Madness, The Birth of the Clinic, and Discipline and
Punish, Foucault looked at how, in European societies, modes of knowledge-production such as
the asylum and psychiatry, medicine and the hospital, and penology and the prison, create
bodies of information and codes of practice that purport to offer ‘truthful’ statements about their
objects – the insane, the sick, and the criminal – but which are also modes of linguistic
construction and determination of those objects.

7. The text begins with Civil war of 1975-1976, Chateaubriand and Nerval. Explain.

Part I: François-René de Chateaubriand

A. François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) was born in Saint-Malo, on the northern coast

of Brittany, the youngest son of an aristocratic family. After an isolated adolescence, spent
largely in his father’s castle, he moved to Paris not long before the Revolution began. In 1791,
he sailed for America but quickly returned to Europe, where he enrolled in the
counterrevolutionary army, was wounded, and emigrated to England. The novellas Atala and
Ren., published shortly after his return to France in 1800, made him a literary celebrity. Long
recognized as one of the first French Romantics, Chateaubriand was also a historian, a
diplomat, and a staunch defender of the freedom of the press. Today, he is best remembered for
his posthumously published Memoirs from Beyond the Grave.

Works:
A. Les Martyrs (1809), a prose epic about early Christian martyrs in Rome.
B. Essai sur les révolutions (1797; “Essay on Revolutions)
C. Atala - (A fragment of an unfinished epic appeared as (1801))
D. René is a short novella by François-René de Chateaubriand, which first appeared in 1802.
The work had an immense impact on early Romanticism, comparable to that of Goethe's The
Sorrows of Young Werther. Like the German novel, it deals with a sensitive and passionate
young man who finds himself at odds with contemporary society.
E. Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem (1811), an account of his recent travels throughout the
Mediterranean.

B. One of the writers that Said criticizes in his book is François-René de Chateaubriand, a
French Romantic author who traveled to the Middle East in the early 19th century.
Chateaubriand wrote several works based on his observations and experiences in the region,
such as Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem (Journey from Paris to Jerusalem) and Les Martyrs (The
Martyrs). Said accuses Chateaubriand of being an Orientalist who portrays the Orient as a static
and timeless place, full of violence, sensuality, and superstition. Chateaubriand also uses the
Orient as a backdrop for his own personal and religious quest, ignoring the historical and
cultural realities of the people he encounters. Said claims that Chateaubriand’s works are
examples of how Orientalism creates a false and distorted knowledge of the East that serves to
justify Western domination and intervention.

C. The European sense of cultural and intellectual superiority granted to Westerners the
authority of spectator to be the judge and jury of Oriental behavior. As early as 1810, the French
author Chateaubriand called upon Europe to take on the responsibility of teaching the Orient
about the meaning of liberty: "Of liberty, they know nothing; of propriety, they have none: force is
their god [as quoted in Said, Orientalism, p. 172]."

D. For Chateaubriand the Orientals require conquest not for Western material profit but as
instruction in liberty. Conquest was understood as a redemptive act to liberate a degenerate
world. The characteristics of the Oriental mind articulated in Orientalist discourse can be seen in
oppositional terms to the Western mind: Oriental Mind= sensuality, tendency towards despotism,
aberrant mentality, habit of inaccuracy, and backwardness; Occidental Mind= rationality, pursuit
of liberty, objectivity, and emphasis on "progress."

E. Gerard de Nerval / Gérard Labrunie

1. French Romantic poet whose themes and preoccupations were to greatly influence the
Symbolists and Surrealists. In 1828 Nerval produced a notable French translation of Goethe’s
Faust that Goethe himself praised. In 1836 Nerval met Jenny Colon, an actress with whom he
fell passionately in love; two years later, however, she married another man, and in 1842 she
died. This shattering experience changed his life. After her death Nerval traveled to the Levant,
the result being some of his best work in Voyage en Orient (1843–51; “Voyage to the East”), a
travelogue that also examines ancient and folk mythology, symbols, and religion.
2. Works:

A. Voyage to the Orient (French: Voyage en Orient) is one of the works of French writer and
poet Gérard de Nerval, published during 1851, resulting from his voyage of 1842 to Cairo and
Beirut.
B. Les Faux Saulniers (The Salt Smugglers, 1850
C. Sylvie (1853) – described by Nerval as "un petit roman" ("a small novel"), it is the most
celebrated of his works.

Explanation:

Edward Said's seminal work, "Orientalism," begins by setting the stage with the Lebanese Civil
War of 1975-1976, which serves as a contemporary backdrop to his critique of Western
perceptions of the East. The civil war, a multifaceted conflict that lasted until 1990, resulted in
significant loss of life and displacement, and it highlighted the complexities and turmoil of the
Middle East.

Said then alludes to the works of French writers François-René de Chateaubriand and Gérard
de Nerval, who were part of the 19th-century Romantic literary movement. These writers,
through their travel writings and depictions of the East, contributed to the construction of the
"Orient" as an exotic and backward place in the Western imagination. Their works are
examples of how European literature has often portrayed the East as a place of romance, exotic
beings, and remarkable experiences, which is at odds with the lived realities of the people there.

The connection between the civil war, Chateaubriand, and Nerval in Said's text lies in the way
the West has historically engaged with the East. Said argues that the West has created an
image of the East, or the "Orient," through a lens of power and domination, which he terms
"Orientalism." This perspective has justified colonial and imperial ambitions by presenting
Eastern societies as fundamentally different and inferior to the West. The civil war is a modern
manifestation of the turmoil in the East, while Chateaubriand and Nerval's writings reflect the
longstanding tradition of Orientalism that Said critiques.

Said's "Orientalism" is a critical examination of the West's patronizing representations and

attitudes towards the East, which have been shaped by a complex history of cultural, political,
and intellectual encounters, as exemplified by the Lebanese Civil War and the literary works of
Chateaubriand and Nerval.

8. What does the reference to Civil war of Lebanon do ? Is it a deliberate attempt made by
Edward Said?
Edward Said's "Orientalism" refers to the Lebanese Civil War that began in 1975 and continued
beyond 1976, eventually lasting until 1990. This conflict is significant in the context of Said's
work because it exemplifies the real-life consequences of the Western perspective on the East,
which he critically examines throughout his book.

The Lebanese Civil War is mentioned at the very beginning of "Orientalism" to illustrate the
ongoing violence and turmoil in the Middle East, a region often subjected to simplified and
stereotyped representations by the West. Said uses the war as a contemporary example of how
the historical and cultural complexities of Eastern societies are often overlooked or
misunderstood due to entrenched Orientalist attitudes.

Said discusses the Lebanese Civil War to highlight the disconnect between the romanticized
and exoticized views of the Orient, perpetuated by Western literature and scholarship, and the
harsh realities faced by the people living in those regions. The war serves as a stark reminder of
the impact that distorted representations can have on the lives of real people and the
importance of challenging such narratives.

By referencing the Lebanese Civil War, Said emphasizes the need for a more nuanced and
empathetic understanding of the East, free from the biases and prejudices of Orientalism. His
work aims to dismantle the framework of Orientalism by exposing its foundations and
advocating for a more equitable and truthful engagement with the cultures and peoples of the
East. This approach is crucial for fostering better cross-cultural understanding and respect.

Notes

1. Ontological / Epistemological difference?

Ontology refers to the nature of being, existence, or reality. In the context of Orientalism, Said
suggests that there is an inherent belief in the West that the Orient and Occident (the West) are
fundamentally different in their very essence. This ontological distinction implies that the Orient
is seen as inherently ‘other,’ exotic, and essentially opposite to the West.

Epistemology, on the other hand, deals with the nature of knowledge, understanding, and the
grounds of information. Said argues that the West has created a body of knowledge about the
Orient that is based on assumptions of superiority and a patronizing attitude. This
epistemological difference means that the knowledge produced about the Orient is not neutral or
objective; it is constructed through a lens of power and domination, often justifying colonial and
imperial ambitions.

Said’s critique in “Orientalism” is that the West has historically made a clear distinction between
itself and the Orient in terms of their being (ontological) and in the way they are understood or
known (epistemological).