Introduction to “Orientalism”

Siddharth G. Desai

Roll no. - 07

SEM - III

Paper no.E-E-305

Year – 2011

Topic: Introduction to “Orientalism”

Submitted to Dr. Dilip Barad

Department of English,

Bhavnagar University.

“Orientalism”, written by Edward Said in which he has depicted the European Imperialism power on the countries of the East, where as “Occident” means the countries of the West. Before discussing “Orientalism”, let’s see what are the Post-Colonial studies?

Post-Colonial studies:-

The critical analysis of the history, culture, literature, and modes of discourse that is specific to the former colonies of England, Spain, France and other European imperial powers. The studies have focused especially on the Third World countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean islands, and South America. Some scholars, however, extend the scope of such analyses also to the discourse and cultural productions of countries such a Australia, Canada, and New Zeeland, which achieved an independence much earlier than the Third World countries. Post-Colonial studies sometimes also encompass aspects of British literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, viewed through a perspective that reveals the ways in which the social and economic life represented in that literature was tacitly underwritten by colonial exploitation.

An important text in establishing the theory and practice in this field of study was “Orientalism (1978) by the Palestinian-American scholar from of Michel Foucault’s historicist critique of discourages to analyze what he called “cultural imperialism”. This mode of disseminating in subjugated colonies a Eurocentric discourage that assumed the normality and pre-eminence of every representations of the “Oriental” as an orientalist is now sometimes applied to cultural imperialism by means of the control of discourage, not only in the orient, but anywhere in the world.

                       

  [From M.H. Abrams- A Handbook of Literary Terms]

In the introduction of “Orientalism”, Edward Said writes that this concept of Orient was almost a European invention. The European Imperialism power has given the idea of the Oreent. They have seen the Oriental countries with completely different perspectives. Even today, they have the same perspectives that they had earlier. They, even today, see any Oriental country as a developing country. They believe that they are ahead in the world and we are underdeveloped people.

How do we look at East? How do we look at West? How do the European countries look at East? How do they look at West? All these four questions can be discussed in a broader sense. We always look at our country as we are lacking those powers and reputation that the Western countries have. We always crave for that and perhaps, it can be a possible reason for the thing that we are more and more impressed by the Western world and the impression is shrinking our perspective towards our country has started shrinking in our mind. But when we look at the Western countries, we are always surprised by their development and reputation in the world. We never get tired in praising them. This is where we have failed to understand them. Our mind has been molded in a way that we always think then the Western world as a developed country. If we talk about their perspective towards our country, they always consider the eastern part as a backward part of the world. They consider themselves superior in the world. They always think that we need their help for our development, so they feel proud in that thing. Here, we can find also that the Eastern part is in influence of the Western world. In a way, we are creating hollow personality of our Eastern world. By being impressed or mesmerized by the Western world, we are making our reputation or level lesser one in the world. The European Imperialism dominates behind all these things. They constructed our mind in a way that ewe cannot break that mentality to think beyond that structure, that mentality then even, we cannot do that.

Edward Said writes,

“…a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on

the Orient’s special place in European Western experience.

The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place

of Europe’s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source

of its civilization and language, its cultural contestant, and

one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other.”

Here, by writing “greatest, richest and oldest colonies,” Edward Said has made sarcastic remark on the Western-European Imperial power. By writing also “the Other” in a way that it presents that we are not one of them. We are different from them. The first questions that the readers feel, who are they that they are giving identity as “the Other” to us?  But here, the most important thing is the POWER, which is responsible for this. The European-Western world has the power through which they are ruling over the Eastern World, even today. We have started living like them and we are running to catch the identity that the European-Western world has.

Said further writes,

“The Orient is an integral part of European “Material civilization and

culture. Orientalism expresses and represents the part culturally and

even ideologically as a mode of discourse with supporting institution, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies

and colonial styles.”

Here, Said has made satire by writing the word, “Material”. By following the European World, we have created the habit of using this we are molded to follow them. And we are representing their culture by following them. The Western world sees the Eastern world as the uncivilized people. So they teach us civilization by telling their cultural ideas to us. Unconsciously, we accept their ideologies, even if we do not want to follow but the tag “civilized” makes us helpless, and we start following blindly. They can easily control our mind and we become slaves of their ideologies. By teaching civilization, they are dropping the seed of the slavery, so that we can never challenge their given ideologies.

The Western part wants to bring a cultural change in our won ideologies. You can not bring cultural change until you rule and the European did this thing. They ruled on us and tried to bring cultural change and then also tried to put their ideologies in our mind y calling us “uncivilized” and by forcing us to follow them.

In India, the Britishers were able to rule because people of India need to be like them. We, somewhere, show them that they can rule but this attitude changed our entire identity. And they succeeded in molding our identity the way they wanted. The Britisher shown what they wanted but we were spellbound by their identity and reputation that we could not recognize their hidden intentions. By establishing “The East-India Company”, they got the half victory and the remaining half was achieved by them by expanding their British business in India.

We have perspective like, the Western things are better than Indian things. This kind of belief has decreased our level. We are more fascinated by the Western world day by day. We never give priority to our own country. The constructed programmed, in the past are responsible for this as we saw earlier.

In these slavery kinds of thing, we can utter thus men make their own history. The colonizers had their history by ruling on us and we had made our history by suffering from slavery. This is how your deeps reflect your journey and they make your history not really a person.

“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. It can be possible to state about the Orient, by stating, we can give. The Orient is as the imaginative vision which means of description of a thing by a particular angle or perspective. The Orient is seen by the Western EYE with a particular perspective. As we earlier discussed, power is a ruler, not any country. The West has POWER so they see the east the way they want.

Somewhere, the Western Imperialism power made us helpless and we followed them blindly. Whatever they wanted, they did by colonizing us. They put shackles in our legs. They bounded our minds that boundaries. Said has discussed the “Orientalism” from the viewpoint of the European-Western Imperialism power.

Conclusion:-

To conclude my point, I would like say, “Orientalism was written to show European-American power to the Orient and the mystification of “the Orient” as we saw earlier, the Western’s view towards the East which is discussed by Said in this book. He shows the European-Western Imperial power along wit the confused feelings of the Oriental countries towards the Western power.