Orientalism Summary & Study Guide Description

Orientalism 



This essay will discuss the concept of Orientalism as particularly elaborated by 
Edward W. Said (1935-2003), whose influence on 'subaltern' and 'postcolonial' 
studies has been remarkable. It is then important to see how Said's approach to 
Orientalism had created a wide range of contextualised discussions and criticisms. 
Finally, the essay will show whether the debate on Orientalism is useful to scholars 
and students of South Asian studies. 

In 1963, Anouar Abdel-Malek published 'Orientalism in Crisis' in which he 
criticises the Orientalist idea of 'the Orient and Orientals as an "object" of study, 
stamped with an otherness... of an essential character'. Orientalism creates an 
'essentialist conception of the countries, nations and peoples of the Orient'. It 
interprets the Orient in terms of 'metaphysical', 'a-historical' essentialism, 
experiencing it from texts and transforming it into an estranged object of knowledge 
and dominance. The 'hegemonism of possessing minorities' and 'anthropocentrism' 
are concomitant with 'europocentrism in the area of human and social sciences, and 
...in those in direct relationship with non-European peoples'. Thus, the Orient is 
'lagging behind' and 'bridging the gap'. In other words, Orientalism represents 'the 
organic interrelation between power and culture'. 

The 'organic' relationship between power and culture inspires Edward W. 
Said in Orientalism (1978). Said describes 'a long tradition... of coming to terms with 
the Orient that is based on the Orient's special place in European Western 
experience'. This tradition is 'Orientalism'. The Orient is significant to Europe 
because it is 'the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source 
of its civilizations and languages'. It is Europe's 'cultural contestant, and one of its 
deepest and most recurring images of the Other'. It 'helped to define Europe (or the 
West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience'. 

To Said, 'Orientalism expresses and represents' the Orient, 'a mode of 
discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, 
even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles.' It is 'the discipline by which the 
Orient was (and is) approached systematically, as a topic of learning, discovery, and 
practice'. It designates 'that collection of dreams, images, and vocabularies available 
to anyone who has tried to talk about what lies east of the dividing line'. It is 'a kind 
of Western projection onto and will to govern over the Orient'. 

Echoing Said's criticism, Aziz Al-Azmeh says Orientalism is 'the deliberate 
apprehension and knowledge of the Orient', 'an ideological trope, an aesthetic, 
normative and ultimately political designation of things as Oriental', and 'a cultural 
mood'. Orientalism endows 'things with changeless, "oriental" properties... that go 
beyond history, that violate the changing nature of things, and that confirm them in a 
distant and irreducible specificity transcending the bounds of reason' . 

What these statements suggest is that European hegemony, elaboration and 
imagination of 'Orient' disseminate the essence of Orientalism. The ambivalence of 
the 'West' towards the 'Orient' is old. The Orient's 'rich cultures', 'superior 
civilisations' and 'ancient wisdom' have inspired many 'Westerners'. Yet, the 
Orient's 'monstrous mysteries' and 'absurd religions' have threatened the 'West'. 
Orientalism imagines the Orient as a dominion of hordes, despots, spiritual mystics 
and exotic sensuality. Exaggeration and imagination with a range of stereotypes 
connected to cultural prejudices and political hegemony have been essential to 



Orientalist views. Encountering the 'Orient' has been significant for the self-image of 
the 'West', producing identities ranging from European modernity to concepts of 
cultural, racial and moral superiority. 

Said's Orientalism provoked tremendous argumentations and criticisms for 
various reasons. Amal Rassam says Said 'is judging Europe not in terms of its own 
historical reality and intellectual development, but in terms of the claims it makes for 
itself. Rassam thinks Europe's 'history' or 'intellectual development' was an 
'internal affair'. In contrast. Said wants to say Europe's history or literature (on non- 
Europeans) was affected by Europe's relationship with and imagination of non- 
Europeans. 

Some critique of Said's Orientalism is rather curious. Steve Bruce thinks the 
term 'Orientalism' is useless and 'too reminiscent of the 1970s habit of Marxists to 
dismiss everyone with whom they disagreed as "bourgeois sociologists'". This 
suggests that Said 'dismissed' people simply because he disagreed with them. Stephen 
Slemon says Said 'ends up referring the whole structure of colonialist discourse back 
to a single and monolithic originating intention'. In fact. Said never intended to 
discuss the 'whole structure of colonialist discourse'. Rather, he wanted to affirm that 
'Orientalism' was not possible without the 'will to dominate'. The relationship 
between knowledge and power is inevitable. 

However, it is ironic that many writers accused Said of silencing the voices 
and self-representations of the colonised people. Megan Vaughan thinks Said denies 
'the possibility of any alternative description of 'the Orient', any alternative forms of 
knowledge and... any agency on the part of the colonised'. Expressing a similar view, 
Robert Young says Said 'does not offer a method that enabled a counter- 
representation that allowed the subaltern to speak'. In a more ideological and 
dogmatic way, Aijaz Ahmad argues that Orientalism is 'ambivalent', 'ahistorical', 
essentialises 'the West' and ignores the intelligentsia's response in the colonised 
countries. 

The above discussion is necessary to see how some of Said's proponents and 
critics applied their arguments about Orientalism in their works on South Asia or 
India. Said's criticism's of 'Orientalism', to begin with, helps us understand the 
relationship between power and the affirmative authority of scholarship on South 
Asia. It shows how 'Western' works are produced within a dichotomous relation with 
the 'Orient'. Mary Douglas says India is 'a mirror image' of Europe, implying that 
India opposes 'Europe' and that the 'Western' imagery of India makes an image of 
the 'West' possible. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) claims liberty and representative 
government are unworkable in India because the Indians are inferior to Europeans. 

'Romanticising the Orient' explains why Orientalists sought to revitalise 
Europe by 'Indian' culture, religion and spirituality. Orientalists perceived India as the 
domain of spirit, used Biblical themes to describe religious and social situations and 
imagined Europe's spiritual rebirth and redemption. Orientalists mastering 'Indian' 
languages were seen as heroes and knights. European institutions and works 
persuaded Europeans to seek a vanished spirit in the promised land of India, guileless 
innocence, a vision of wholeness, a yearning for the recovery of what poets and 
philosophers felt the age had lost, and for a unification of religion, philosophy and art. 

It is interesting to examine Said's assertion that Orientalism had the 
'eminence', 'power' and 'authority over the Orient that it had'. David Kopf says 
British Orientalists impressed Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) who used Orientalist 
knowledge to build up a new India. Kopf s statement alludes to the question of 
indigenous Orientalism, which claims to recycle the 'Orient' to its source. The idea of 



'Indianness' has been adapted as a self-identity. Orientalist ideas were prestigious 
among Indian aristocracy and academic elites. Ideas like the golden age of the Vedic 
period, spiritual India, the centrality of caste and 'Hinduism' as a single religion were 
Orientalist inventions. 

Indian thinkers, such as Vivekananda (1863-1902) and Gandhi (1869-1949), 
used Orientalist literature to form 'modern Hinduism' and serve Indian nationalism. 
They invented a 'pristine genesis' of 'Hinduism' and considered the Bhagavad Gita 
the uniting sacred text of India. This implies India's identities have to succumb to a 
'Hindu identity'. Thus, 'Internal Orientalism' makes it difficult 'to think about India 
outside of orientalist habits and categories'. 

Rajnarayan Chandavarkar says Orientalism 'encouraged historians to deem 
Indian society as exception to every rule of social (and historical) explanation'. 
Writers perceive unique 'Indian culture' and timeless 'essence', which became part of 
'a political discourse' that views 'all group differences' as 'dangerous separatisms'. 
'This essentialization and romaticization of group differences', Breckenridge and 
Veer say, 'is probably the most damaging part of the Orientalist bequest to 
postcolonial politics. Moreover, it was in the interest of Orientalism to reinforce and 
essentialise Hindu-Muslim communalism. 

Brahmanic authority and Orientalism supported each other. Brahmanic 
hegemony de-Orientalised Brahmins and Orientalised India's non-Brahmanic 
communities. Brahmanism informed Orientalism that created a written canon to 
substitute diverse oral traditions in 'Hinduism'. The Bhagavad Gita became 
canonical. An Aryan and Vedic past was manufactured to underline the idea of 
declining Hindu society and to blame Muslims for invading India and destroying 
'Indian civilisation'. This view led Hindu nationalists to construct a fabulous past and 
the 'foreignness' of Muslims and Christians. Thus, Orientalist discourse helped to 
essentialise 'Hindu ideology' as the foundation of India. 

Many Orientalists ignored folk Indian traditions. They thought Brahmanism 
reflected the ancient Vedic Weltanschauung. Sheldon Pollock says British colonialism 
and Orientalism had created Indian history and society that was traditionalised and 
Sanskriticised. Elitist Brahmanism proclaimed itself as the true representation of 
'Indianness' and 'Hinduism'. The fact, however, is that the Vedic literature and other 
sanctioned texts of 'Hinduism' are unfamiliar to many 'Hindus'. Many 'Hindu' 
groups ignore or interpret concepts such as karma and dharma differently. 

It is, however, relevant to question what Said's critics had to say in the context 
of India. Wendy Doniger, who 'retranslated' the Rig Veda, says the anti-Orientalist 
critique taught 'Indologists' to think Orientalists committed a terrible sin. She 
suggests the idea that Orientalists created or imagined India is itself a myth. She hints 
at 'a black hole' before British colonialists and Orientalists arrived in India. She then 
argues that India was capable of inventing itself for centuries before, during, and after 
British presence. This means Indians conceived themselves as people in a place that 
was different from others. Although British colonialism distorted the self- 
representations of Indians, the power of Orientalism could not totally supersede the 
Indians' ways of representing themselves, nor did it eradicate their knowledge of their 
history. Thus, Orientalism and anti-Orientalism inform us about the power of 
language and imagination because both of them have denied the agency of Indian 
imagination. 

Peter Heehs says Said's and Inden's interpretation of Orientalism is part of the 
Orientalist discourse inside the history of Orientalism. He argues that claiming that 
European Orientalists constructed Hinduism, the caste system and so forth, takes 



away the 'Indian agency', and gives a new life to Eurocentrism. In other words, to 
blame Orientalism for 'imagining India' means to grant excessive power to 
Orientalism and to ignore the significance of Indian self-representations. What 
Doniger and Heehs say should persuade concerned students to see how and in what 
ways Indians represented and imagined themselves before the European colonisation 
of India. 

Nonetheless, it is important to see the influence of the 'imaginative 
geography' of Orientalism on the mythologisation of 'Indian self-representations'. 
Some Indians use the Orientalist imagination of India as the spiritual, coUectivistic, 
holistic locus to construct an ideological discourse that depicts the 'West' as an 
immoral, individualistic, hedonistic, spiritless, materialistic essentialism. They think 
'the wisdom of India' and 'Hindu Brahmanism' are the true treasures of the Indian 
nation. The 'West' should imitate 'India' to rise up from its depravity. Thus, political 
power is complicated with nationalistic representations of India. Moreover, the anti- 
Orientalist propaganda, though this was not Said's intention, has patronised the 
political ideology of nationalism and fundamentalism. In some cases, the struggle for 
the 'agency of Indian self- representations' on behalf of the Indians is guileful and 
mendacious. What has been the norm in 'South Asian' or 'Indian' studies is the 
phobia of otherness, an irreconcilable dichotomy between generalised myths such as 
the 'West' and 'India'. 

Understanding Orientalism is useful in the context of South Asia, for it enables 
us to understand the relationship between political hegemony and knowledge. Said 
says Orientalism exposes 'the European will to domination... to create an orderly 
discipline of study... a set of institutions, a latent vocabulary... a subject matter, 
and... subject races'. It represents 'the power to make philological distinctions... and 
the institutional force to make statements about Oriental mentality, the inscrutable 
Oriental, the unreliable and degenerate Oriental'. It is, then, the responsibility of 
concerned people to expose the 'will to domination', the 'orderly discipline of study' 
and the generalisation and essentialisation of mentalities. 

Said's criticism of Orientalism persuades us to go beyond the monotonous 
periodisation of Indian traditions. It lets us question the abstract typologies of 
mentalities and affirm the dynamism of cultural and political agency. It is thus 
important to rethink the hegemonic 'Western' discourse about India. This includes the 
concept of time that divides 'Indian history' into a primordial Vedic period as the 
golden age of India and a time of degeneration of contemporary Indian society. This 
division is noticeable in the discursive formations about 'Hinduism'. Many Indians 
adopted Orientalist ideas and used them in a nationalistic discourse. 

The concept of Orientalism is useful in analysing prevailing literature, 
generalised and essentialised ideas such as 'Hinduism' and 'Islam'. It is also 
important in understanding women's movements and feminist discourses in South 
Asia. Many South Asian women used the criticism of Orientalism to criticise 
literature, imaginations and situations affecting women. Yet, the idea of Orientalism 
and the 'Western imagery of the Orient' can be used ideologically by extremist 
nationalists and fundamentalists who suppress the freedom of thought under the 
pretence of defending the 'Orient' and resisting the 'West'. Misunderstanding the 
project of Orientalism may increase hostility between people and glorify myths such 
as 'West' and 'Orient'. It is no longer desirable, in our globalised world, to say that 
only South Asians can talk about South Asia, or only 'Hindus' can explain Indian 
religious traditions. 



Nevertheless, the concept of Orientalism makes us understand the relationship 
between 'Asian studies' and the European colonialism of India which began when the 
Portuguese built a fort at Cochin in 1503. It encourages us, for instance, to enquire 
into the relationship between European companies, such as the East India Company of 
London, the Dutch Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie and the French Campanie 
des Indes, and the production of literature about South Asia. Perhaps such an inquiry 
would elucidate how European colonialism persuaded European travelers, 
missionaries and scholars to explore India and to make it a part of what Rudyard 
Kipling (1865-1836) called 'East is East, and West is West.' 

William Al-Sharif 

- Published in 2006 

Orientalism Summary & Study Guide Description
This detailed literature summary also contains Topics for Discussion on
Orientalism by Edward Said.





Orientalism by Edward W. Said 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 
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.


The beginning of the study of Orientalism is traced to the early 
eighteenth century and focused on language. This early study consisted 
of translating works from the Oriental languages into European 
languages. The colonial rulers could not rule properly, it was believed,
 without some knowledge of the people they ruled. They thought they 
could acquire this knowledge from translating various works from the 
native language into their own. The Orient existed to be studied and 
that studying was done by Westerners who believed themselves to be 
superior to the "others", which is how they described the East. They 
were basically the opposite of the East and considered to the active 
while the Orient was considered to be passive. The Orient existed to be 
ruled and dominated.


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.


Said points out the errors in the ways of these early Orientalists. 
He questions the claim that the Orient was biologically inferior to the 
European and thus required domination. Said wants the study to focus on 
the human experience of the cultures and societies. He points out the 
errors in many of the earlier studies. The Orientalists, and therefore 
the Europeans, did not understand the Muslim or Oriental and were 
afraid, based on their fears. Their studies propagated these fears and 
persisted until a certain level of understanding was reached. 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.








Part 1, The Scope of Orientalism: Knowing the Oriental Summary and Analysis
The
 book opens with a comment by Arthur James Balfour from June 13, 1910 on
 dealing with the problems in Egypt. Questioning the British role in 
Egypt, he discusses before the House of Commons how the problems are 
different than dealing with problems closer to home. There is apparently
 some dissension in the House of Commons as to what exactly the British 
role is. Was it necessary for the British to be in Egypt? Balfour uses 
the terms Oriental in describing the people of Egypt as he tries to 
justify the British occupation of Egypt and comments that none of the 
Oriental peoples have ever had their own government - they have always 
been dominated by despots. He doesn't consider letting the Egyptian 
speak for himself.








Part 1, The Scope of Orientalism: Imaginative Geography and Its Representations: Orientalizing the Oriental Summary and Analysis
Orientalism
 is viewed as a field of study almost like a university has departments 
that represent fields of study. This means that there are things within 
Orientalism that some people want to study and these things can be 
geography, culture, and language. These subjects made Orientalism 
popular as an academic discipline. This came about as a result of the 
Council of Vienne in 1312, which established a series of chairs in 
various subjects at numerous universities. This basically began the area
 of Orientalism as an area of intellectual and academic study. The 
Orient became an area that was acceptable to study.



Orientalism constituted a broad and encompassing area of study, much broader than most other areas.





Part 1, The Scope of Orientalism: Projects Summary and Analysis

This section examines the operational aspects of Orientalism and how wrong it can be. The line drawn between the East and the West had profound effects upon Europe even though it was the West that was encroaching on the East and not the opposite. The term Orientalism is the term used to designate the Western approach to the East as well as the collection of thoughts, dreams, and images the West has of the East. Both were forms of Western encroachment upon the East.

From the early days, Islam was close to Christianity both geographically and culturally. Islamic lands were close to Biblical lands, and even in the 1500's, Islam threatened European Christianity. The term Orient was taken to mean the Islamic world until about the eighteenth century.





Part 1, The Scope of Orientalism: Crisis Summary and Analysis

A textual attitude is what developed regarding Orientalism and there are two factors that contributed to it. First of all, people are confronting a subject that is unknown and threatening. People then fall back on what they have read about the subject. A second reason has to do with the fact that it appears to be successful. In this situation, reality is determined by what the reader has read. It is basically the books that made the Orient possible. The textual approach was put into practice with Orientalism.

The views of Orientalism, which had begun to change in the late1800s, continued to change during the1900s. Orientalism came to have two traits known: first, the linguistic importance of the Orient to Europe and the West led to a scientific self-consciousness.











Part 2, Orientalist Structures and Restructures: Redrawn Frontiers, Redefined Issues, Secularized Religion Summary and Analysis

Many Europeans looked to the East as a form of regeneration and rejuvenation of their own European society. Many viewed a study of India as a way to rid their own culture of its materialism. These views are presented in the works of Gustave Flaubert who explains the situation in terms of two clerks, both members of the bourgeoisie, one of which inherits money that allows them to retire their jobs. The clerks' names are Bouvard and Pecuchet. Flaubert has them moving through the different areas of learning, since they are just doing whatever they want and living on their inheritance. They have less than successful results in their endeavors. The satire is rather humorous as the two try different things







Part 2, Orientalist Structures and Restructures: Silvestre de Sacy and Ernest Renan: Rational Anthropology and Philogical Laboratory Summary and Analysis

The nineteenth century study of Orientalism is carried on by Silvestre de Sacy, who is considered to be the founder of modern Orientalism. Sacy was born in 1757 and schooled at a Benedictine abbey where he learned Arabic, Syriac, Chaldean, and Hebrew. He went on to teach languages and became a professor at the College de France and did a lot of translations for official purposes. His work is considered to be scholarly because it is the first that is based on a methodology that draws a link between scholarship and public policy. Sacy's work is a three volume compendium on Orientalism, and he also has other work on Arab grammar 





Part 2, Orientalist Structures and Restructures: Oriental Residence and Scholarship: the Requirements of Lexicography and Imagination Summary and Analysis

Renan is considered to have taken a rather scientific approach to Orientalism in that the cultural generalizations are now becoming scientific statements. Sacy and Renan made Orientalism a modern topic. "What we can say is that the two work together in support of each other. What Renan and Sacy tried to do was to reduce the Orient to a kind of human flatness, which exposed its characteristics easily to scrutiny and removed from it its complicating humanity. In Renan's case, the legitimacy of his efforts was provided by philology, whose ideological tenets encourage the reduction of a language to its roots; thereafter, the philologist finds it possible to connect those linguistics roots











Part 2, Orientalist Structures and Restructures: Pilgrims and Pilgrimages, British and French Summary and Analysis

Westerners reduce Oriental life into a series of detailed items when they write and study them and try to portray them in Western prose. They try to base their work on their actual experiences while they are in residence in the Orient. All of the work of the time takes its shape from the author traveling to the Orient. Many of the threats perceived have to do with sex and hygiene. All of these are perceived as threats by the West whether they were actual threats or not.

At this time in the nineteenth century, the Orient consisted of India for the British subject because Indian was a British possession. For the Frenchmen, there were no Oriental possessions, 









Part 3, Orientalism Now: Latent and Manifest Orientalism Summary and Analysis

Said restates his purpose in the book and in the previous chapter in the opening page to the third chapter. His purpose in the first chapter was to define the scope of thought and action meant by the word Orientalism. He used the British and French experiences to help define this term and to explain the confrontation of Westerners with the Orient. In the second chapter, Said was interested in defining modern Orientalism. Here he discussed various authors and their works. "My principal operating assumptions were - and continue to be - that fields of learning, as much as the works of even the most eccentric artist, are constrained and acted upon by society, by cultural traditions, by worldly circumstance, and by stabilizing influences like schools, libraries, and governments









Part 3, Orientalism Now: Style, Expertise, Vision: Orientalism's Worldliness Summary and Analysis

The British and other Europeans were set apart from the Orientals by skin color. The Egyptians and other Arabs, Africans, and Indians were darker in color than the Europeans. Being white in the colonies meant acting and speaking in a certain way, according to certain rules and customs. They got themselves into a "theirs" and "ours" kind of mentality, where "theirs" became a function of "ours". Everything that was done was done in a way that kept the Oriental subservient to the White and allowed the White man to study the Oriental.

The state of the Arab is primitive in definition and in reality. The Orientalists believe that the Orientals are biologically inferior to the Europeans. If their language is different, then so too are the biological









Part 3, Orientalism Now: Modern Anglo-French Orientalism in Fullest Flower Summary and Analysis

Until the World War II years, the Orientalist was considered a generalist who dealt in summational statements. By making a statement about one aspect of the Orient, the Orientalist was commenting on the Orient as a whole. The difference between the East and the West is confirmed by Islamic law. The Orient is entrusted to the Western keeper who dominates it. According to 1931 author Gibb, the Orient needs to be studied since it makes people more aware of the issues that are important in the study of culture. He views the Orient as more challenging in his time than in earlier times as the West is watching its influence over the colonies wane. Orientalists try to understand the Oriental culture as a whole



Part 3, Orientalism Now: The Latest Phase Summary and Analysis

The world has changed since the World War II years, and so has the power structure among nations. England and France are no longer as dominant as they were and the Arab world is more important in terms of politics and economics. There are a variety of representations that are used that are the subject of this part of the chapter. The first that can be defined are popular images and social science representations. These have to do with how the Arab is represented in terms of dress. This refers to the Arab robes, headgear, and sandals. Add a camel to this picture and this is the Arab caricature that is accepted in the West. After the 1973 war, the Arab was tied more to oil and gas.







Afterword Summary and Analysis

This section was written after the publication of the book. In it, Said explains how he wrote the book and how it was received, with separate editions in America and the United Kingdom. The reception was mostly positive and encouraging and the book has since been translated into more than a dozen different languages. The success of the book has exceeded the author's expectations, since when he wrote the book he didn't have much interference or interest from the outside world. The publication of the book generated a lot of interest from different countries as the author raised a lot of relevant questions about the flaws in the study of Orientalism.

Said says that one of the criticisms of the book is that it is anti-West and that the West is an enemy of Islam and that Orientalism and the West.