Page 221 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Unit 19: Two Types of Orientalism—Orientalism as a Literary Theory

We gaze at them and talk about how charming they are in their passive willingness to be gazed Notes
at, how cute they are in their endearing efforts to put on a good show for those who observe
them. We describe them as intuitive rather than rational, creative rather than practical. And
meanwhile, we woo them to our values. We tell them that their true happiness consists in
pleasing us, bending to our will, doing what we want. We plant the seeds of our wisdom in
them. And we get very angry indeed when they dare to gaze back.
3. Inherent Distortion
Obviously, the representation of childhood as perceived by this sort of gaze is a distorted one.
Said says, the real issue is whether indeed there can be a true representation of anything, or
whether any and all representations, because they are representations, are embedded first in
the language and then in the culture, institutions, and political ambience of the representer. If
the latter alternative is the correct one (as I believe it is), then we must be prepared to accept the
fact that a representation is eo ipso implicated, intertwined, embedded, interwoven with a
great many other things besides the 'truth,' of which it is itself a representation.
As I suggested earlier, then, no representation can be truly objective; the irony is that those
who most claim objectivity must be the least trustworthy. "As a judge of the Orient," Said
asserts, "the modern Orientalist does not, as he believes and even says, stand apart from it
objectively. His human detachment, whose sign is the absence of sympathy covered by
professional knowledge, is weighted heavily with all the orthodox attitudes, perspectives, and
moods of Orientalism that I have been describing" . No matter what claims we make to the
contrary, our supposedly objeaive descriptions of childhood are equally anything but objective,
and are similarly permeated with assumptions developed over a number of centuries by a
history of adult observation and discussion.
The paradox is that we can claim objectivity for our observations only by being other than what
we observe; but in being other, we have no choice but to tntevptet what we observe in terms of
ourselves and own previously established assumptions. Thus, adult interpretation of children's
behavior, whether in literature or in psychology, are always contaminated by previously
established adult assumptions about childhood. Those assumptions emerge from the discourse
about children developed over centuries in order to support the programs of various
philosophical and political systems; they are now simply taken for granted as the absolute
truth, even by those of us who no longer espouse those systems.
Piaget's notorious habit of always interpreting the results of his experiments in childhood
development in terms that underestimated the capabilities of his subjects is a perfect example.
He may or may not have shared the specific politic concerns or philosophical prejudices that
led Locke to assert that childhood thinking was different from and lesser than adult thought;
he simply assumed that it was, and then made his results accord with those already existing
assumptions of his culture. It has taken later experimenters with different cultural assumptions
to reveal how slightly different versions of the same experiments reveal vastly superior
capabilities in children.
4. Inherently Adult-Centered
Orientalism was and still mostly is a study pursued by Europeans; its representation of the
Orient is therefore for the benefit of European interests. As Orientalism is primarily for the
benefit of Europeans, child psychology and children's literature are primarily for the benefit of
adults. We may claim to study childhood in order to benefit children, but we actually do it so
that we will know how to deal with children; and as Rose suggests, we write books for children
to provide them with values and with images of themselves unapprove of or feel comfortable
with. By and large, we encourage in children those values and behaviors that make children
easier for us to handle: more passive, more docile, more obedient-and thus, more in need of our
guidance and more willing to accept the need for it. It's no accident that the vast majority of
stories for children share the message that, despite one's dislike of the constraints one feels
there, home is still the best, the safest place to be.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 215