Course: M.A. English
Sem: 3
Batch: 2017-2019
Roll No: 32
Enrollment No: 2069108420180015
Enrollment No: 2069108420180015
Submitted to: Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English MKBU
Email Id: rudrikagohel97@gmail.com
Paper No: 11
Topic: Orientalism
➧Introduction:-
Orientalism' book written by Edward Said, Professor at Columbia University. He studied the visuals of Arabic world which is related to Orientalism. It is a critique of the study of the Orient and its ideology. 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 given the meaning of Orient, that means middle East. Said was promoted to full professor in 1969, received his first of several endowed chairs in 1977, and in 1978 published Orientalism, his best-known work and one of the most influential scholarly books of the 20th century. He wrote numerous books and articles in his support of Arab causes and Palestinian rights. Said call the orientalism, exotic, which is came from different countries, unfamiliar place. Let's see the Orientalism in a detailed way.
Orientalism' book written by Edward Said, Professor at Columbia University. He studied the visuals of Arabic world which is related to Orientalism. It is a critique of the study of the Orient and its ideology. 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 given the meaning of Orient, that means middle East. Said was promoted to full professor in 1969, received his first of several endowed chairs in 1977, and in 1978 published Orientalism, his best-known work and one of the most influential scholarly books of the 20th century. He wrote numerous books and articles in his support of Arab causes and Palestinian rights. Said call the orientalism, exotic, which is came from different countries, unfamiliar place. Let's see the Orientalism in a detailed way.
➧Orientalism..
Edward Said given the example that, his book was read by French poet, who actually went to East means to Orient. So, according to that poet, he find similar things in Syria which was mentioned by Said in his book. Said includes that Orients are all the same wherever we find them, whether it's in India, or in Egypt, or in Syria there are same resource.
The Orientalist scholars did not distinguish among the countries of the region. The term "Oriental" was used to describe the Middle East and Near East and Far East. All of these different cultures were basically lumped into one for the purposes of study. The reason for the study was political also. The focus is on language and literature and the study in the area of philology where the already written texts and other works were translated as a means of studying the culture. The misrepresentations of the Orient and the various aspects of the Orient led to confusion and misinterpretation by the scholars and politicians.
Edward Said challenges the orientalism, or we can say the difference of East and West. Said make a claim that Europeans came in contact with the lesser developed countries of the east. Edward Said argues that the Europeans divided the world into two parts; the east and the west or the occident and the orient or the civilized and the uncivilized, according to him it is a artificial boundaries. Said shaws the problem, that, associated with orientals in their western world through their scientific reports, literary work, and other media sources, and thay portrays in their own way. For the Europeans, there are some kind of attributes associated with orientals, which we can see today, like, the Arabs are defined as uncivilized people; and Islam is seen as religion of the terrorist. In the book of Said he makes his point about orientals, he argues that how orientals are considered as non-human beings. The orientals divided
the world in to two parts by using the concept of ours and theirs. An imaginary
geographical line was drawn between what was ours and what was theirs. The orients were regarded as uncivilized people. Edward Said's book Orientalism is a controversial but interesting book and written about Orientalism from a post colonial perspective. Here is a quote form the book:
"A central idea of Orientalism is that Western knowledge about the East is not generated from facts or reality, but from preconceived archetypes that envision all "Eastern" societies as fundamentally similar to one another, and fundamentally dissimilar to "Western" societies. This discourse establishes "the East" as antithetical to "the West". Such Eastern knowledge is constructed with literary texts and historical records that often are of limited understanding of the facts of life in the Middle East."
In a way, according to European, the orientals are not the civilized. They said that the orients themselves were incapable of running their own government. very necessary for the orientalists to generalize the culture of the orients. Another feature of orientalism was that the culture of the orientals was explained to the European audience by linking them to the western culture, for example, Islam was made into Mohammadism because Mohammad was the founder of this religion and since
religion of Christ was called Christianity; thus Islam should be called Mohammadism. The orientals were really publicized in the European world, and through this Said tries to present the attitude of Europeans towards the orientals. They found that Orient lands are so 'romanticized', which exotic lands are full of pure sun light and clean oceans in order to experience peace of mind, and
inspiration for their writing. The Europeans believes that orientals needed the European
fatherly role to assist them.
But, in the 20th century, there was changing circumstances of the world politics and
changing approach to orientalism. After World War I the centre of orientalism moved from Europe to USA. Western has very explicit prejudice towards them, Arabs were often represented as cruel and
violent people. Japanese were always associated with karate where as the
Muslims were always considered to be terrorists. Edward Said, a leading scholar on orientalism.
The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe, it is a place of Europe's greatest, richest and oldest colonies. The trade and technology transfer in history was from east to west. We can say it is a western study of Islamic civilization. In western countries there is a demonstration of Islam, that we can find in very popular cinemas and literature also. After attack of 9/11 Muslims got stereotype Persian long tradition in Europe. Ferdinand de Saussure was also Orientalist who has studied in it. Orientalists’ were 19th century scholars who translated the writings of ‘the Orient’ into English, based on the assumption that a truly effective colonial conquest required knowledge of the conquered peoples. Orientalists’ were 19th century scholars who translated the writings of ‘the Orient’ into English, based on the assumption that a truly effective colonial conquest required knowledge of the conquered peoples. In this aspect of his thought he was strongly influenced by the French philosopher Michel Foucault. He says that orientalism is not a simple idea, it has wide significance. And stereotypical failing defined as Orientalism emerged in western thinking, and not somewhere else.
Said argues that Orientalism can be found in current Western depictions of ‘Arab’ cultures. We can find that the depiction of Arab culture as irrational, anti-western, untrustworthy. Different kinds of Orientalisms, it is an effect of difference between different experiences about orient. Britain and France both had colonies in the eastern countries.
Now, orientalism is an academic one we can say Oriental studies or area studies. On today it is a academic, and in eighteenth century, orientalism started corporate institution. The representation of Orientalism are included in movie also,
Orientalism in films..
- Road to Morocco (1942)
Imagination
Exotic things
- Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
In which, black man who leads the war
Other films
- The Sheikh (1921)
- Khartoum (1966)
- Three Kings
- Aladdin
- Black Sunday
➧Conclusion:-
Edward Said deeply studied about the Orientalism, and he is interested also in analysing about their culture and history. Said point about the stereotypical viewpoint of Americans through the Orients. Orients means middle East which has Muslim countries.
Work cited:-
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism
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