Hello, students! I hope your break went well, and now you are focused enough for the lecture on Orientalism. Can anyone tell me in brief what is Orientalism? In the past years, Orientalism was predominantly used for referring to two different nations. First, Orientalism referred to the school of painting, a group of Western-European artists that went to the Middle East and painted what they saw there. The second meaning of Orientalism referred to an abstracted statement that characterizes the non-Western civilizations (Lewis 3). In Latin, orient means ‘east’ or ‘rising sun’ and opposite to the word occident that refers to ‘west’ (New World Encyclopedia 2) Not so long ago, Orientalism was a badge of honour. It was considered a knowledge mode that got its roots in the Middle Ages in Europe when the intellectual monks wanted to get a better understanding of non-Christian religions and cultures and studied the religious texts and learn foreign languages.
In the nineteenth century, Orientalism was secularized, the way monks studied other cultures was not very different to the previous studies. In the process of learning, Orientalists continued to follow the binary view of the world. To place a distinction between Christianity and other religions, they used the words Western/Oriental or modern/non-modern terms. Orientalists viewed themselves as people that were sympathetic to the non-Western countries by studying the texts for a better understanding. However, the attacks targeted at Orientalism were much more than attacks at bad scholarship techniques. Also, it was critiqued because of the political consequences that can be caused by such a science concept. It was said that Orientalism makes the dominant position of Europe legitimate (Wallerstein 99).
On the bright side, the debates about Orientalism gave a push to the new approach to the process of decolonization both at the levels of culture and politics. Together with the colonial discourse, Orientalism was concerned with exploring the subjectivity and authenticity problems among the groups and culture that had no connection to power. Over the years of its development, the classical approaches toward Orientalism encouraged the people understanding the term as ‘Otherness’ (Turner 4).
Edward Said stated “If somebody, let’s say in the 1850’s or 1860’s in Paris or London, wished to talk about or read about India or Egypt or Syria, there would be very little chance for that person to simply address the subject, as we like to think in a kind of free and creative way” (Media Education Foundation Transcript. Edward Said: on ‘Orientalism’ 4). According to him, a great deal of learning on Orientalism was done in the previous ears and has taken a form of an organized science. Thus, nowadays there is very little of new information scientists can say about the non-Western cultures. East is called a mysterious place full of secrets; however, the secrets are not the secrets anymore.
Lastly, despite of the lack of current studies on Orientalism, the topic remains relevant to this day. The conflicts of the Middle East and the negative effects they have on the culture and society can be resolved with a better understanding of the Oriental culture and religion its acceptance can become the first steps towards the peaceful interaction. The mainstream understanding of the Arabs as ‘other people’ that have extremely strange beliefs should be diminished in order for some positive changes to occur (Orientalism 28). Thank you for your attention!
Works Cited
Lewis, Bernard. The Question of Orientalism. 1982. Web.
Media Education Foundation Transcript. Edward Said: on ‘Orientalism’. 2005. Web.
New World Encyclopedia. Orientalism. n.d. Web.
Orientalism. n.d. Web.
Turner, Bryan. Orientalism, Postmodernism and Globalism. London, UK: Routeledge, 2003. Print.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. Eurocentrism and Its Avatars: the Dilemmas of Social Science. n.d. Web.