Page 218 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Literary Criticism and Theories

Notes ornaments. Small pagodas appeared on chimneypieces and full-sized ones in gardens. Kew has a
magnificent garden pagoda designed by Sir William Chambers.
After 1860, Japonaiserie, sparked by the arrival of Japanese woodblock prints, became an important
influence in the western arts in particular on many modern French artists such as Monet. The
paintings of James McNeill Whistler and his "Peacock Room" are some of the finest works of the
genre; other examples include the Gamble House and other buildings by California architects
Greene and Greene.
Depictions of the Orient in Art and Literature
"Le Bain turc," (Turkish Bath) by J.A.D. Ingres, 1862 Depictions of Islamic "Moors" and "Turks"
(imprecisely named Muslim groups of North Africa and West Asia) can be found in Medieval,
Renaissance, and Baroque art. But it was not until the 19th century that "Orientalism" in the arts
became an established theme. In these works the myth of the Orient as exotic and corrupt is most
fully articulated. Such works typically concentrated on Near-Eastern Islamic cultures. Artists such
as Eugène Delacroix and Jean-Léon Gérôme painted many depictions of Islamic culture, often
including lounging odalisques, and stressing lassitude and visual spectacle. When Jean Auguste
Dominique Ingres, director of the French Académie de peinture painted a highly-colored vision of
a turkish bath (illustration, right), he made his eroticized Orient publicly acceptable by his diffuse
generalizing of the female forms, who might all have been of the same model. If his painting had
simply been retitled "In a Paris Brothel," it would have been far less acceptable. Sensuality was
seen as acceptable in the exotic Orient. This orientalizing imagery persisted in art into the early
20th century, as evidenced in Matisse's orientalist nudes. In these works the "Orient" often functions
as a mirror to Western culture itself, or as a way of expressing its hidden or illicit aspects. In
Gustave Flaubert's novel Salammbô ancient Carthage in North Africa is used as a foil to ancient
Rome. Its culture is portrayed as morally corrupting and suffused with dangerously alluring
eroticism. This novel proved hugely influential on later portrayals of ancient Semitic cultures.
Orientalism refers to a particular academic tradition in the West, preoccupied with conceptualising
and representing the Oriental, albeit non-Western societies/cultures as the opposite - or the 'other'
of the Occident (Said 1979]). The emergence of orientalism has a particular historical context, that
is, the global ascendancy of the West, with the development of capitalism.
What is wrong with Orientalism? First, it misrepresents the social-cultural reality of both the East
and the West in an attempt to present the latter as rational, forward looking, humane, and civilised,
the characteristics typically absent in the latter, resulting in two types of society: one, with history
and the other, without history. It tends to turn history into a "moral" project (Wolf 1982), with the
good side emerging victorious in humanity's quest of progress. By presenting the progress of the
West as a natural consequence of the intrinsic virtues of Western culture, it distorts the historical
reality of Western modernity that is far from idyllic. It ignores the real history of the progress of
the West in which the histories of the East and the West are intricately intertwined.
Historically, the development of capitalism was premised on colonialism. Colonialism was a coercive
process. In the realisation of this project of Western domination, Orientalism serves an important
ideological function. It not only justifies West's exploitation of the rest, rather, it turns it into a
historic mission of West's noble attempt to help the 'other', the backward, the uncivilised, savage
Orient to "assimilate" with the West. In other words, Orientalism turns the history of modernity
upside down.
19.4 Latent and Manifest Orientalism

In this Unit, Said shows how latent and manifest Orientalism worked in conjunction with the
West's academic, scientific and economic strength to reproduce a cycle of the Orient's
marginalization and the West's domination. Latent Orientalism refers to the philosophical and
subconscious applications of superiority, and I interpreted manifest Orientalism as the application
of latent in order to secure and justify Eurocentric perceptions through socially revered institutions,
such as science, government, economy, etc.

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