I was inspired by the
documentary we watched in class to check out Said's Orientalism from the
library. So far, I have only read the introduction and a few pages of the
first chapter titled The Scope of Orientalism in which Said illuminates just how pervasive our
incorrect perceptions about the Middle East are. He argues this phenomenon is a
direct result of the dominance of Orientalism as a
legitimate world view for centuries. While I agree with almost all of Said’s
claims (particularly his argument of a direct relationship between power and
knowledge within the context of European perceptions of the Middle East), I
could not help but think he was overlooking some key factors.
First and foremost, I am not quite sure why
Said titled his book Orientalism when he practically ignored what we
have come to know as the “Orient” and instead focused on that which is familiar
to him – the Arab world. Second, though obviously
well-researched and well-argued, Said’s arguments appear to be vastly oversimplified
and reductive in nature. I am not sure if he will get to this (again, I am only
about halfway through the first chapter), but it seems as though Said fails to
account for European fascination with – and inclination towards – Islam during
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Enlightenment thinkers adapted many
Islamic beliefs into their writings and some even converted to Islam. Is Edward
Said aware of all this? Of course he is; he just left it out of his book to
create a stronger argument. What do you
think about Orientalism and its merits?
Jacob - your points are valid from a positivist perspective, but remember that discourse analysis (which is what Said is doing in Orientalism) is not a positivist exercise in 'unearthing objective facts' and presenting them as empirical 'evidence' in support of an argument. Rather, it is about identifying broad tropes of a particular discourse and by necessity that means being selective in what you highlight. The 'validity' (to use the language of positivist research traditions) comes from whether we can identify this discourse across different forms of knowledge production (i.e. popular media, scholarly literature, 'common sense' cognitive frames), which I would argue we can in the case of Orientalism.
ReplyDeleteFor instance, this past spring, when a school teacher suggested that kids wear "African American attire," by which he or she meant zebra/leopard print or other 'exotic' clothing, to celebrate Black History Month, that's an expression of this essentialist discourse. Or when, as I mentioned in class, a comic book conflates features from the African continent with the jungles of Bangladesh, that's an expression of the discourse. Every day you see examples of this (and other essentialist discourses) in the news media and the great contribution, to my mind, of Orientalism is that once you fully grasp his argument, you start seeing evidence of it everywhere.
And as for the title, he calls the discourse 'Orientalism' precisely because the Middle East was conflated with other colonized areas as the 'Orient.' You may think of the 'Orient' as India, Bangladesh, China, or what have you, but Orientalist studies at universities were, in fact, including the Middle East as part of the vast and heterogenous area called the 'Orient.' After all, the Orient Express only went so far as Istanbul...