Page 243 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Unit 20: Edward Said's Crisis [In Orientalism]: Textual Analysis

some easily delimited part of it such as an author or a collection of texts. However, along with Notes
such academic security-blankets as 'history,' 'literature,' or 'the humanities,' and despite its
overreaching aspirations, Orientalism is involved in worldly, historical circumstances which it
has tried to conceal behind an often pompous scientism and appeals to rationalism. The
contemporary intellectual can learn from Orientalism how, on the one hand, either to limit or to
enlarge realistically the scope of his discipline's claims, and on the other, to see the human ground
(the foul-rag-and-bone shop of the heart, Yeats called it) in which texts, visions, methods, and
disciplines begin, grow, thrive, and degenerate. To investigate Orientalism is also to propose
intellectual ways for handling the methodological problems that history has brought forward, so
to speak, in its subject matter, the Orient. But before that we must virtually see the humanistic
values that Orientalism, by its scope, experiences, and structures, has all but eliminated.
Self-Assessment

1. Choose the correct options:
(i) Edward said was born in ............... .
(a) 1935 (b) 1940
(c) 1945 (d) 1946
(ii) Orientalism was published in ............... .
(a) 1979 (b) 1980
(c) 1989 (d) 1995
(iii) Culture and Imperialism was published in ............... .
(a) 1990 (b) 1985
(c) 1991 (d) 1993
(iv) The socié asiatique was founded in ............... .

(a) 1850 (b) 1822
(c) 1825 (d) 1840.
20.4 Summary

• This book and Edward Said in general seem capable of generating such intense controversy.
Many reviewers of this book seem to forget actually to review the work and focus on attacking
Edward Said as a person, many others still forget to review the book and proceed to speak
for Palestinian rights and the negative western attitudes of Islam. I will attempt to present an
actual review of this book based on MY own reading of it.
• In Orientalism, Said sets about dismantling the study of the "orient" in general with primary
focus on the Islamic Near East. Said argues that concepts such as the Orient, Islam, the
Arabs, etc. are too vast to be grouped together and presented as one coherent whole,
encompassing all there is to know about the subject. Said bases his view on the shear width
and breadth of the subject, the inherent bias of conflicting cultures and more recently the role
of the Orientalism in colonialism. It is indeed difficult to attempt to represent a book that is
so focused on anti essentialism.
• Said's research of western / occidental discourse was very thorough indeed and he does
illustrate through repeated examples how misinformation sufficiently repeated can become
accepted academic work. Said also presents an analysis of the causes and motives and theorizes
about his findings. A lengthy and a times tedious discussion of the origins of Orientalism is
rather repetitive and hard to follow for a non specialist like me.

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