Page 247 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Unit 21: Edward Said’s Crisis [In Orientalism]: Detailed Study

21.1 The Scope of Orientalism Notes

In this section, Edward Said explains how the science of orientalism developed and how the
orientals started considering the orientals as non-human beings. The orientals divided the world
in to two parts by using the concept of ours and theirs. An imaginary geographical line was drawn
between what was ours and what was theirs. The orients were regarded as uncivilized people;
and the westerns said that since they were the refined race it was their duty to civilize these people
and in order to achieve their goal, they had to colonize and rule the orients. They said that the
orients themselves were incapable of running their own government. The Europeans also thought
that they had the right to represent the orientals in the west all by themselves. In doing so, they
shaped the orientals the way they perceived them or in other words they were orientalizing the
orients. Various teams have been sent to the east where the orientalits silently observed the orientals
by living with them; and every thing the orientals said and did was recorded irrespective of its
context, and projected to the civilized world of the west. This resulted in the generalization.
Whatever was seen by the orientals was associated with the oriental culture, no matter if it is the
irrational action of an individual.
The most important use of orientalism to the Europeans was that they defined themselves by
defining the orientals. For example, qualities such as lazy, irrational, uncivilized, crudeness were
related to the orientals, and automatically the Europeans became active, rational, civilized,
sophisticated. Thus, in order to achieve this goal, it was very necessary for the orientalists to
generalize the culture of the orients.
Another feature of orientalism was that the culture of the orientals was explained to the European
audience by linking them to the western culture, for example, Islam was made into Mohammadism
because Mohammad was the founder of this religion and since religion of Christ was called
Christianity; thus Islam should be called Mohammadism. The point to be noted here is that no
Muslim was aware of this terminology and this was a completely western created term, and to
which the Muslims had no say at all.
21.2 Orientalist Structures and Restructures

In this section, Edward Said points the slight change in the attitude of the Europeans towards the
orientals. The orientals were really publicized in the European world especially through their
literary work. Oriental land and behaviour was highly romanticized by the European poets and
writers and then presented to the western world. The orientalists had made a stage strictly for the
European viewers, and the orients were presented to them with the colour of the orientalist or
other writers perception. In fact, the orient lands were so highly romanticized that western literary
writers found it necessary to offer pilgrimage to these exotic lands of pure sun light and clean
oceans in order to experience peace of mind, and inspiration for their writing. The east was now
perceived by the orientalist as a place of pure human culture with no necessary evil in the society.
Actually it was this purity of the orientals that made them inferior to the clever, witty, diplomatic,
far-sighted European; thus it was their right to rule and study such an innocent race. The Europeans
said that these people were too naive to deal with the cruel world, and that they needed the
European fatherly role to assist them.
Another justification the Europeans gave to their colonization was that they were meant to rule
the orientals since they have developed sooner than the orientals as a nation, which shows that
they were biologically superior, and secondly it were the Europeans who discovered the orients
not the orients who discovered the Europeans. Darwin's theories were put forward to justify their
superiority, biologically by the Europeans.
In this chapter, Edward Said also explains how the two most renowned orientalists of the 19th
century, namely Silvestre de Sacy and Ernest Renan worked and gave orienatlism a new dimension.
In fact, Edward Said compliments the contribution made by Sacy in the field. He says that Sacy
organized the whole thing by arranging the information in such a way that it was also useful for
the future orientalist. And secondly, the prejudice that was inherited by every orientalist was

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 241