Presented by:

 Nabila Bakheit Elbashir

 Lana Bakheit Elbashir
 Nahid Elfadil Almahdi
 Shahida Alazhari
 Um salma Abas Mustafa
 Orientalism
INTROUDUCTION:
Orient:
Is a term for the East, traditionally comprising anything that belongs to the Eastern world, in relation to Europe
Oriental:
used to describe the Middle East and Near East and Far East.
Orientalism:
by Edward Said is a cultural study in which he has challenged the concept of Orientalism. In other words, he
redefined the term of Orientalism to mean simply the difference between East and West. According to Said,
“Orientalism” is “a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between
the orient and the occident”.
◦ Edward Said surveys the history and nature of Western attitudes towards the East,
considering Orientalism as a powerful European ideological creation – a way for
writers, philosophers and colonial administrators to deal with the ‘otherness’ of
Eastern culture, customs and beliefs.

◦ Said directly challenged what Euro-American scholars traditionally referred to as

"Orientalism."

◦ Orientalism is an entrenched structure of thought, a pattern of making certain

generalizations about the part of the world known as the 'East'. As Said puts it:
◦ “Orientalism was ultimately a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the
difference between the familiar (Europe, West, us") and the strange (the Orient, the
East, "them").”
◦ Said examines the historical, cultural, and political views of the East that are held by the
West, and examines how they developed and where they came from.
◦ He basically traces the various views and perceptions back to the colonial period of
British and European domination in the Middle East.
◦ During this period, the United States was not yet a world power and didn't enter into
anything in the East yet. The views and perceptions that came into being were basically
the result of the British and French.
◦ The British had colonies in the East at this time; the French did not but were trying to
acquire some.
This occurred after World War I when the study of the Orient shifted from Europe to the
United States and became part of the area studies of various social science
departments at universities.
The Orient should be viewed for itself and its own cultures and societies and not viewed
in the concept of Western perspective.
Said's perspective basically led to a difference in the way the Orient was approached in
studies, which led the field into a more modern approach.
 Edward Said initially defined Orientalism at
three levels:
As an academic discipline, including anyone who writes and teaches about the orient:
1. As a set of thoughts, concepts, and ideas
2. As a practical action done over the orient politically
ideologically, militarily and scientifically:Said regarded this kind of Orientalism as “a Western style for
dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient”.
 Edward begun with the assumption that the Orient is not an inert fact of nature.

He took Vico’s great observation:

"men make their own history, that what they can know is what they have made, and extend it to
geography“
“Orient” and “Occident” are man-made.
The Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, and vocabulary that have
given it reality and presence in and for the West.
He state a number of reasonable qualifications:
Reasonable qualifications:
 First qualification, it would be wrong to conclude that the Orient was essentially an idea, or a creation
with no corresponding reality.

There were-and are- cultures and nations whose location is in the East, and their lives, histories, and
customs.

Disraeli said that” East was a career” but it should not be interpreted as saying as” East was only a
career for Westerners”
Second qualification, is that ideas, cultures, and histories cannot seriously be understood or
studied without their force. The relationship between Occident and Orient :
is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony.

Third qualification. One should never to assume that the structure of Orientalism is nothing
more than a structure of lies or of myths.
Orientalism, therefore, is not an airy European fantasy about the Orient but:
a created body of theory, practice and considerable material investment.
Edward believes that Orientalism is more particularly valuable as a sign of European-Atlantic
power over the Orient.

European identity as a superior one in comparison with all the non-European peoples and
cultures.

European ideas about the Orient, themselves reiterating European superiority over Oriental.
Orientalism strategy:
Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible positional Superiority.
why should it have been otherwise? during the period of extraordinary European ascendancy
from the late Renaissance to the present? The scientist, the scholar, the trader, or the soldier
was in, or thought about, the Orient because he could be there, or could think about it, with
very little resistance on the Orient’s part.
Emerged a complex Orient suitable for study in the academy, for display in the museum, for
theoretical illustration in anthropological, biological,
linguistic, racial, and historical.
What are two main arguments Edward Said makes in his
book Orientalism?
The two main arguments Said makes in Orientalism are :
The first argument that the "Orient" is nothing but a Western European construct.
The second argument Said makes is that the Western Europe nations constructed the
idea of the "Orient" to serve their imperialist agenda.
Scope of orientalism
‘The Scope of Orientalism’ covers all the dimensions of the subject, both in terms of historical
experiences and time period. Moreover, it also covers the subject in terms of political as well as
philosophical themes. Said provides a review of pre-18th century writing on the Muslim near
East, and socio-political impact of Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798. According to him, the
East was viewed as a textual universe for the West. The European Orientalists had keen interest
in classical rather than contemporary periods of the Eastern culture.  
Development and Characteristics of Orientalism

The concept of ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’ divided the world into two parts. Then, an imaginary
geographical line was drawn to describe what was ours and what was theirs. The people of the
East were considered uncivilized and uncultured. The westerners called themselves the refined
race and suggested that it was their duty to civilize and polish these people. Moreover, in order
to achieve their goal, they had to colonize and rule the orients. They further claimed that since
the orients themselves were incapable of running their own government, they had to do so.
 Orientalism and Domination

The theme that Said spent the most time developing and producing examples in Orientalism was the idea
that Orientalism was not the objective field of study it claimed to be. Rather, it created a space in which
justifications of the Occidental’s political and cultural domination could be imposed on the Orient. He
attempted to ‘show how Orientalism came into being as the doctrine and corporate institution for
exercising Western domination of the Orient.” The way in which the Orientalists accomplished this was to
brand what they termed as Orientals as essentially inferior in culture and personhood to their European
counterparts. The political powers picked up this thread and used it to justify their colonial expansion.
Edward Said’s Major Claims In Orientalism

First, while Orientalism presents itself as an objective field of study, it was used to justify the
political domination of the East by the West.
Secondly, Orientalism was actually more about defining itself through the mirror of the East
rather than it was about objectively studying it.
Third, points one and two are produced and reinforced by viewing the Orient as a homogenous
group. This essentialist thinking was a false way of viewing people groups and their culture.
Edward Said also rejects the validity of the terms Orient and Occident. Still, he employs them
because this is how the argument has been framed by the Orientalists.
Lastly, the Orientalist scholars are the product of the system they come from. Due to this, they
can’t help but to misrepresent the ‘Other’. Therefore, what we need is for the subaltern to
speak for itself.
Edward Said’s Project in Orientalism

In his book, Said questions the underlying assumptions that are the basis of the foundation of
Orientalist thinking. Said suggests the use of ‘narrative’ instead of ‘vision’ in interpreting the
geographical landscape, the Orient. It means that a historian and a scholar should not turn to a
panoramic view of half of the globe. Rather, they should turn to a focused and complex type of
history that allows space for the dynamic variety of human experience. He further clears that
the rejection of Orientalist thinking does not necessitate a denial of the differences between
‘the Orient’ and ‘the West’. However, it entails an evolution of such differences in a more critical
and objective manner.
In Said’s view, the ‘Orient’ can’t be studied in a non-Orientalist manner. Rather, it is necessary for
the scholar to study more focused and smaller culturally consistent regions. The Oriental must
have a voice, it must speak for itself. The second-hand representation of the Orient, in Said’s
view, must take a back seat. Besides, it must give way to the narrative and self-representation on
the part of the ‘Oriental.’
Character list

T.E. Lawrence:
Since the “Orient” as Said is defining it encompasses the Middle East and even to North Africa
and is not limited to the perspective of Asia with which it was once used synonymous, it should
come as no surprise to find that “Lawrence of Arabia” is a major figure in the book. Although
conventional view is that Lawrence came to view himself as more Arab than English, the author
counters this conviction by suggesting that, to the contrary, Lawrence writes of the Arabs from
the perspective of an external observer: the White Man.
Richard Burton

Not the famous British actor who married Elizabeth Taylor twice, of course, but one of those few
individuals who “career” is often categorized with the word “adventurer.” Perhaps if Richard
Burton had played Lawrence of Arabia and Peter O’Toole had played Richard Burton, Burton
would be more famous today than Lawrence. Certainly, he accomplished: translating a version
of The Arabian Nights, becoming the first white man to ever set sight on Lake Tanganyika,
undertaking a search for the source of the Nile, and, according to Said, creating a literary body
of work on the subject of the Orient mostly notable for conveying the sense of his own
magnificent domination.
Gustave Flaubert
Flaubert is the French novelist most famous for writing Madame Bovary, but the author here
dwells upon the lesser known (at least by today’s standards) works literature which Said
identifies as being instrumental in developing the French attitude during their long-term colonial
occupation of much of North Africa.
A Complex Relation Between Power and Knowledge

Evaluating whether Orientalist analysis is right is, therefore, more important than for the
average academic pursuit because of the way in which its conclusions carry over into the world
outside. It is important to ask whether power, colonialism in its extreme form, has been
exercised over a certain area of the world because of suspect theory.
A Complex Relation Between Power and Knowledge

Following Michel Foucault, Said writes about a complex relation between knowledge and power.
Knowledge of the Orient compels ‘Orientalists’ (those whose profession is to study the ‘Orient’)
to seek power and domination over the Orient, especially through colonial rule. For example,
the British justified colonial rule in Egypt by saying that they ‘knew’ Egypt, they knew about its
history, its society, and therefore what it needed at that point in its development.
A Complex Relation Between Power and Knowledge

For Said, as it was for Foucault, knowledge is power. The knowledge of the Orient, though
flawed, provided the power base from which the colonizers set about their mission. Here Said
made a distinction between pure knowledge and political knowledge.  An example of ‘pure
knowledge’ is basic math. It was and is hardly possible for 2+2=4 to enable the domination of
another group. Political knowledge, on the other hand, lent itself handily from specialist to
policy. Said demonstrated how policy makers seek out the specialist, in this case the Orientalists,
to shape their policies. These policies often involved the domination of those that the specialist
studies and thus demonstrated Said and Foucault’s conception of knowledge as power.
A Complex Relation Between Power and Knowledge

Said’s answer to the question is that it has. Orientalism is a fallacy that is created and sustained
by unquestioning repetition over a long period of time. It divides and categorizes the world and
parts of it into neat compartments for systematic analysis. But Said worries that this is not a
genuine quest for understanding. Europeans had always feared the Orient. So, the
systematization of knowledge of the Orient is an intellectual means by which people transform it
from something unknown and, therefore, threatening into something known and therefore tame.
The Orient of the Orientalists is a romanticized figment of their imaginations, squeezed into
easily-understandable frameworks.
The Impact of Orientalist Study on Orientalism

Over time, Orientalist study came to have great authority. Partly this was because it seemed to
work. People went to the Orient armed with the latest studies, and their findings appeared
corroborated by experience. But it was also because, in the face of Western power, Oriental
people were silent and could not counter it. Instead the work of the Orientalist was repeated
over and over establishing a unified narrative. It was a definitive account of the truth, which
went unchallenged. Orientalists did not challenge it because they had no interest in challenging
it. Moreover, it was also not challenged by Orientals, because they were powerless to do so. So,
instead of Western knowledge becoming more and more refined, only Western ignorance and
prejudice became so. 
Edward said in orientalism point if view
Edward Said in Orientalism further says that he is not against the study of one culture by
another, but worries instead about the power relationship between the student and the studied.
Moreover, he also worries about the method of reduction used by the student. With regard to
the power relationship, Said makes a good point, though perhaps takes it too far, and lays the
blame too quickly at the feet of the Orientalist. Certainly we should make strenuous efforts to
listen to quieter voices, but the lack of genuine voices from the Orient may have more to do
with unwillingness of those in the Orient to speak to or write for the West, rather than an
unwillingness of the West to listen. 
cont
As for Said’s critique of Orientalist methodology, it leaves us wondering whether one can pursue
the academic inquiry without falling foul of Said’s watchful eyes. All academic study is in some
senses reductive. But this systematic method of study has led to extraordinary advances in
human knowledge and understanding. 
cont
Edward Said further says that in the West, not all academic and theoretical discourse has to be
Orientalist in its intent, yet much of it is. He argues that all cultures have a distinct view of other
cultures that may be harmless and exotic to some extent. But it is not of this view that he argues
against. When a militarily and economically dominant culture, he says, takes this view against
another one, then it can lead to disastrous results. 
Conclusion:
Finally, we can conclude that Orientalism was that tool which paved
the road for the Europeans to expand their empires in the orient and
exploit the oriental pure cultural resources to construct their
civilization, language, and culture. In addition, Edward Said’s book
‘Orientalism’ could be regarded as a groundbreaking book and
important source for all those who are interested in cultural and
postcolonial studies.
References:
The Edward Said Reader
page 64-113
Thank You!