Page 232 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Literary Criticism and Theories

Notes 20.1 Orientalism

This work focuses on the binary: Orient vs. Occident or simply put East vs. West. Said concentrates
on the images and ideas of the Orient that are at the forefront of Western thought on the region.
Said believes that scholars and artists in the West failed to accurately describe the people,
environment, and the culture of the Orient. Rather than describe the Orient with fairness and
accuracy, these people, instead prescribed the qualities that the West would prefer to the Orient.
This would allow the people from the West viewing the Orient to define themselves by giving the
people in the Orient qualities which were considered inferior. Said Illustrates this in the following:
"The Orient was almost a place of European invention, and have been since antiquity a place of
romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences. […] 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 civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest
and most recurring images of the Other".
Another problem Said has with the way that the colonial relationship between the West and the
Orient is the view of the West as one homogenous entity. Just as there are many groups of people,
cultures, nations lumped together into the term 'East' or 'Orient', the West is also being viewed as
having one culture, perspective, viewpoint. In the following Said's opinion on this subject comes out:
"I have begun with the assumption that the Orient is not an inert fact of nature. It is not merely
there, just as the Occident itself is not just there either. We must take seriously Vico's great
observation that men make their own history, that what they can know is what they have made,
and extend it to geography: as both geographical and cultural identities-to say nothing of historical
identities-such as locales, regions, geographical sectors as 'Orient' and 'Occident' are man-made.
Therefore as much as the West itself, the Orient is an idea that has a history and tradition of
thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West".
The key to Said's Orientalism is the understanding that any ideas of the East, or West, are man
made. They are products of the imaginations of generations of people and are not necessarily
grounded in reality.
Heart of Darkness works well to explain Said's theories because we are only given the view of
Africa from the point of view of Marlow, a Westerner. In other words, we are relying on a person,
whose perspective cannot be relied on, to give the description of Africa as he travels down the
Congo River. From this point of view comes the justification for colonization: they are godless,
barbaric people and we will be doing them a great service by enlightening these people to our
better society. This is not explicitly stated in the novella; however, this point of view can be seen
behind most imperial justifications.
Said believes that Conrad presents the character Marlow as reinforcing the imperialist perspective
because, quite simply, there was not another option available to the author writing in the late
nineteenth century. Conrad was also limited in how he could present the novella to the audience
at the time. "Heart of Darkness cannot just be a straightforward recital of Marlow's adventures: it
is also a dramatization of Marlow himself, the former wanderer in colonial regions, telling his
story to a group of British listeners at a particular time and in a specific place". The key word in
that quote is "dramatization". This is what Said believes that all depictions of the Orient, as well as
the Occident, are simply embellished for dramatic effect or financial gain.
Said believes that two "visions" emerge from the book Heart of Darkness. The first view is that
colonialism is still occurring in the world today. The former colonial powers have retained authority
in region formerly known as colonies. As Said states, "Westerners may have physically led their
old colonies in Africa and Asia, but they retained them not only as markets but as locales on the
ideological map over which they continued to rule morally and intellectually. 'Show me the Zulu
Tolstoy', as one American intellectual has recently put it". The second "vision" that emerges from
Heart of Darkness is that of colonialism being of a specific time and place and like all other forms
of government or rule would eventually come to an end. Said describes this vision below:

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