OLEO2122-OLET2123: Understanding the Arab World
Edward Said describes Orientalism as a concept that “can be considered and explored as the corporate institution of contending with the Orient – contending with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, outlining it, by teaching it, resolving it, regulating it: briefly, Orientalism as a Western-style for influencing, reconstructing it, and having authority over the Orient.”[1]
Said’s critique of Orientalism, as depicted by the West, Europe, and the United States, is essential in understanding the Arab World, Islam, and the Middle East. It distorts their actual reality. Said takes note of “the repertory of orientalism.” He read a book by the French poet Gerard de Nerval about his travels in Syria, and Said noticed something about it. It was like he was unconsciously quoting Lane on the Egyptians, “on the assumption that Orientals are one and the same regardless of where you encounter them, whether in Egypt, India or Syria, they are the same. A certain portrayal of the timeless Orient arises, just as though, unlike the West, he does not evolve”.[2] Failing to do investigative research on the Middle East people and only quoting other people’s work gives a biased interpretation of the people concerned.
In the history of the Islamic and the Middle East empirical conquests, by the colonial nations, the “practice of using large theoretical classifications to describe people who appear different, whose complexion is different,”[3] was used for a long time by different ethnicities and peoples. Orientalism formalizes this practice by presenting itself as objective knowledge. It clearly outlines the differences in Orientalism as it is highly dependent on actual experiences. The American Orientalism is highly criticized reason being America has never occupied the Near East and had any of their countries as one of its colonies. Thus, it is safe to mention that most of their Orientalism is based on theories unlike France and Britain, who had colonies in the Orient.
Said further criticizes Orientalism today since journalists and Hollywood have pictured the Islam world as “a threatening and demonized figure. He argues that a lot more is going on in the Arab World that is misconstrued or not appreciated by the Western people. People from the Islamic World are viewed in a cynical and paranoid way as a result of the media’s focus on only the negative aspect, that is, as a threat. When we take time to reflect upon people who look like that, and are from that part of the World, we believe extreme, fanatic, violent. Said insists that understanding a vast and complex region like the Middle East in this narrow way takes away from the humanity and diversity of millions of ordinary people living decent and humane lives”[4].
Bibliography
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Random House, 1978.
Jhally, Sut. Edward Said on Orientalism: The Orient Represented in Mass Media. Northampton: Media Education Foundation, 1998. 41 min.
[1] Edward W. Said, Orientalism. New York: Random House, 1978.
[2] Sut Jhally, Edward Said on Orientalism: The Orient Represented in Mass Media. Northampton: Media Education Foundation, 1998. 41 min.
[3] Sut Jhally. 10:47 min.
[4] Sut Jhally. 14:57 min.