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

an epistemological as military conquest." Even in recent times (1963, 1969 & 1987) the writings and Notes
research of V. G. Kiernan, Bernard S. Cohn and Anwar Abdel Malek traced the relations between
European rule and representations.
Nevertheless, Orientalism is cited as a detailed and influential work within the study of Orientalism.
Anthropologist Talal Asad argued that Orientalism is "not only a catalogue of Western prejudices
about and misrepresentations of Arabs and Muslims", but more so an investigation and analysis
of the "authoritative structure of Orientalist discourse - the closed, self-evident, self-confirming
character of that distinctive discourse which is reproduced again and again through scholarly
texts, travelogues, literary works of imagination, and the obiter dicta of public men [and women]
of affairs." Indeed, the book describes how "the hallowed image of the Orientalist as an austere
figure unconcerned with the world and immersed in the mystery of foreign scripts and languages
has acquired a dark hue as the murky business of ruling other peoples now forms the essential
and enabling background of his or her scholarship."
Said does not include Orientalist painting or other visual art in his survey, despite the example on
the book's cover, but other writers, notably Linda Nochlin, have extended his analysis to cover it,
"with uneven results".
Evaluation
Edward Said's evaluation and critique of the set of beliefs known as Orientalism forms an important
background for postcolonial studies. His work highlights the inaccuracies of a wide variety of
assumptions as it questions various paradigms of thought which are accepted on individual,
academic, and political levels.
The Orient signifies a system of representations framed by political forces that brought the Orient
into Western learning, Western consciousness, and Western empire. The Orient exists for the
West, and is constructed by and in relation to the West. It is a mirror image of what is inferior and
alien ("Other") to the West.
Orientalism is "a manner of regularized (or Orientalized) writing, vision, and study, dominated
by imperatives, perspectives, and ideological biases ostensibly suited to the Orient." It is the image
of the 'Orient' expressed as an entire system of thought and scholarship.
The Oriental is the person represented by such thinking. The man is depicted as feminine, weak,
yet strangely dangerous because poses a threat to white, Western women. The woman is both
eager to be dominated and strikingly exotic. The Oriental is a single image, a sweeping
generalization, a stereotype that crosses countless cultural and national boundaries.
Latent Orientalism is the unconscious, untouchable certainty about what the Orient is. Its basic
content is static and unanimous. The Orient is seen as separate, eccentric, backward, silently
different, sensual, and passive. It has a tendency towards despotism and away from progress. It
displays feminine penetrability and supine malleability. Its progress and value are judged in
terms of, and in comparison to, the West, so it is always the Other, the conquerable, and the
inferior.
Manifest Orientalism is what is spoken and acted upon. It includes information and changes in
knowledge about the Orient as well as policy decisions founded in Orientalist thinking. It is the
expression in words and actions of Latent Orientalism.

Earlier Orientalism
The first 'Orientalists' were 19th century scholars who translated the writings of 'the Orient' into
English, based on the assumption that a truly effective colonial conquest required knowledge of
the conquered peoples. This idea of knowledge as power is present throughout Said's critique. By
knowing the Orient, the West came to own it. The Orient became the studied, the seen, the
observed, the object; Orientalist scholars were the students, the seers, the observers, the subject.
The Orient was passive; the West was active.
One of the most significant constructions of Orientalist scholars is that of the Orient itself. What is
considered the Orient is a vast region, one that spreads across a myriad of cultures and countries.

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