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Seminar Presentation on Orientalism by Edward Said
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1979.
(see excerpt, pp. 132-49 in Colonial Discourse and Post Colonial Theory ed. Laura Chrisman
and Patrick Williams)
Compiled by: Richard Lynch, Marko Scantlebury, and Ordette Wade
Firstly, it is important to note that in his postulations on Orientalism Said did not set about to prove that
Orientalism was some misrepresentation of an Oriental essence instead he shows that it operates with purpose, as
all representations do. This purpose is according to some tendency within a historical, economical and intellectual
setting. i
The introduction of the book Orientalism begins with Edward Said defining key terms and the necessity of critically
evaluating the definition of these terms and their interdependence. He speaks of the Orient in three lights saying it
is “almost a European invention,... a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes,
remarkable experiences” ( 1). He says that “in addition the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as it’s
contrasting, image, idea, personality, experience.” Said further clarifies that it is the place of “Europe’s greatest
and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilisations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its
deepest and most recurring images of the Other” (1).
Said also sheds light on the term Orientalism. It is hugely important to bear in mind that here, by Orientalism, Said
means “several things” all of which are “interdependent” (2). Providing for this interdependence are the fact that
Orientalism “expresses and represents that part culturally and even ideologically as a mode of discourse with
supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies and colonial
styles,” while also being “A way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orients special place in
European Western experience” (2).
Said, a Palestinian American, begins by asserting that the Orient is not simply a fact of nature which just exists in
the same way as the Occident is not really there. Said then alludes to Vico’s theory of the role of man in the
creation of their histories. ii He continues to reinforce, whilst looking at the terms defined above and maintaining
their interdependence; the various notions of, stating that the Orient “is not just there,” (4) though “it would be
wrong to conclude that the Orient was essentially an idea” and such locales “ “Orient” and “Occident” are manmade.” In short, “Orientalism therefore is not an airy European fantasy about the Orient but a created body of
theory and practice in which for many generations there has been a considerable material investment” (6).
Having seen Orientalism as the study of all that is Orient and also the method of the origination of Orient via
Orientalism then, “The relationship between occident and orient,” is posited by Said as “the relationship of power,
of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemonyiii”(5).
Said further qualifies that the structure of Orientalism should never be assumed to be “nothing more than a
structure of lies or myths which, were the truth about them to be told, would simply blow away”(6). He writes,
“After all, any system of ideas that can remain unchanged as teachable wisdom (in academics, books, congresses,
universities, and foreign-service institutes) from the period of Ernest Renan iv in the late 1840s until the present in
the United States must be something more formidable than a mere collection of lies” (6).
Also, Said borrows from Gramsci’s theory of the distinctions which exist between the civil and political society (the
former being constituted of voluntary affiliations such as schools and the latter with dominating state institutions
such as the army).
Culture, of course, is to be found operating within civil society, where the influence of ideas,
institutions, and of other persons works not through domination but by what Gramsci calls
consent in any society not totalitarian, then, certain cultural forms predominated over others,
just as certain ideas are more influential than others; the form of this cultural leadership is what
Gramsci has identified as hegemony. (7)
Said posits that Europe constantly identifies itself as “against all those non-Europeans,” and argues that “the idea
of European identity as superior to one in comparison...” (7) to any Others is precisely what makes European
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culture hegemonic in and outside of Europe. Said contends that the “flexible positional superiority” allows the
Westerner never to lose the “relative upper hand” during all possible relationships. Within the Western hegemony
there emerged a complex orient suitable in nearly all disciplines as well as social and political display. Throughout
the second section of his introduction his fears of distortion and inaccuracy are highlighted and how they can be
reproduced “by too dogmatic a generality and too positivistic a localised focus” (8). Said then tries to deal with
three aspects of his contemporary reality that according to him point out of the “methodological or perspective
difficulties” mentioned above.
The Distinction Between Pure and Political Knowledge
It is in the third section of the introduction that Said clarifies and discusses the “three aspects of [his]
contemporary reality,” (9) which have influenced the direction of his research and writing. One of which shall be
discussed below.
Within the aspect of “the distinction between pure and political knowledge” (9); Said depicts that although
knowledge may appear to be non-political in nature it is problematic to make a clear separation between the two
different spectrums of knowledge .i.e. (pure and political knowledge)
No one has ever devised a method for detaching the scholar from the circumstances of life, from
the fact of his involvement (conscious or unconscious) with a class, a set of beliefs, a social
position, or from the mere activity of being a member of a society. These continue to bear on
what he does professionally, even though naturally enough his research and its fruits do attempt
to reach a level of relative freedom from the inhibitions and the restrictions of brute, everyday
reality. (10)
One can quite readily recognise that writers such as Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Keats and Mills produce works that
consist of political implication. According to Said, Orientalism is an amalgamation of various fields of knowledge,
whether intentionally or unintentionally, or whether it is overtly deemed political or non-political. Said states that
Orientalism raises various political questions:
What other sorts of intellectual, aesthetic, scholarly, and cultural energies went into the making
of an imperialist tradition like the Orientalist one? How did philology, lexicography, […], novelwriting, and lyric poetry come to the service of Orientalism’s broadly imperialist view of the
world? What changes, modulations, refinements, even revolutions take place within
Orientalism? What is the meaning of originality, of continuity, of individuality, in this context?
How does Orientalism transmit or reproduce itself from one epoch to another? “ (15)
Said contends “Orientalism as a kind of human work” (15) and we should examine the relationship between
knowledge and politics by implementing a study that addresses politics and culture .i.e. (humanistic study). He
then further argues that each humanistic analysis must formulae that said connection in the specific context of the
study, the subject matter, and its historical circumstances.
Latent and Manifest Orientalism
According to Said there was a “Fairly constant sense of confrontation felt by Westerners dealing with the
East”(201). This confrontational resonance leads him to contend that a ““Science” like Orientalism in its academic
form are less objectively true than we often like to think” (202).
Everything mentioned prior to this segment of Orientalism was an attempt “ to describe the economy that makes
Orientalism a coherent subject matter, even while allowing that as an idea, concept, or image the word Orient has
a considerable and interesting cultural resonance in the West .
In explicating this cultural resonance, Said maintains that we tend to believe in scholarly progression in that
“scholarship move[s] forward” and “as time passes and as more information is accumulated, methods are refined,
and later generations of scholars improve upon early ones” (202). He posits that “a great talent has a very healthy
respect for what others have done before it and for what the field already contains” (202) suggesting that
Orientalism is such a field where similar respect is paid to its established traditions calling them a “cumulative and
corporate identity,” which is “strong given its associations with traditional learning” (202). The results he holds
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with as much contempt as he holds the very hegemonic idea of Orientalism; since the Orientalists have granted for
a consensus that certain representations are indeed correct. He then describes Orientalism as a type of
“regularized (or Orientalized) writing, vision and study, dominated by imperatives, perspectives and ideological
biases ostensibly suited to the Orient.” Said posits that there is a distinct way in which the Orient is taught,
researched, administered and pronounced.
Said draws our attention of Nietzsche who posits that the truth of language is combination of metaphor,
metonyms and anthropomorphisms which after extensive use and reinforcement in a community, “become
canonical and obligatory to a people.” (203) Said cites Nietzsche in his pursuit to inform of the truth of the ideology
of Orientalism which goes beyond error and points towards political motivation with considerations of aspects of
human nature arising from the study of the very ideology, positing that
The orient was a word which later accrued to it a wide field of meanings, associations, and
connotations, and that these did not necessarily refer to the real Orient but to the field
surrounding the word.
Thus Orientalism is not only a positive doctrine about the Orient that exists at any one time; in
the West it is also an influential academic tradition (when one refers to an academic specialist
who is called an Orientalist). (203)
Additionally, he says of the term that it is to be viewed as an “area of concern defined” by a big enough range of
people, “to whom the Orient is a specific kind of knowledge about specific places, peoples and civilizations.” (203)
Within his critique Said suggests that idioms became frequent with the Orient as a trail of thought concerning the
area whether it be the physical area or what one would believe the field of study to be (though these thoughts
seldom corresponded with what the physical area was like) developed. He posits that beneath these idioms, “was
a layer of doctrine about the Orient” which was fashioned by Europeans such that Orientalism became “a system
of truths, truths in Nietzsche’s sense of the word v” (203). Said posits that human societies more often than not
offer “imperialism, racism and ethnocentrism for dealing with “other cultures”, (204) giving rise to a contention
that, “Orientalism is fundamentally a political doctrine willed over the Orient because the Orient was weaker than
the West, which elided the Orient’s difference with its weakness” (204).
Said progresses in his work to show that with the establishment of scholarship behind Orientalism coupled with
the notion that such studies seemed indeed, “morally neutral and objectively valid,” Orientalism could in no way
be challenged or revaluated. He postulates that “instead the work of various nineteenth-century scholars and of
imaginative writers made this essential body of knowledge more clear, more detailed, more substantial- and more
distinct from “Occidentalism”” (205).
Quite grippingly he shows the irony of how the West, through its hegemonic nature, has sought to define the
“other”; separate itself from the “other” though having enormous interest in a synergy of thought with the “other”
which it is so determined to diminish in the face of perhaps underlying or innate political agenda.
The distinctions between latent Orientalism and Manifest Orientalism become clear where the “almost
unconscious (and certainly untouchable) positivity,” is latent while “the various stated views about Oriental
society, languages, literatures, history, sociology, and so forth,” (206) is manifest Orientalism. For Said the former
is stable, durable and is a constant, while the other derives from that constant and is consistently influenced by its
very own ideology.
He says of the writers he analyzed in chapter two:
the differences in their ideas about the Orient can be characterized as exclusively manifest
differences, differences in form and personal style, rarely in basic content. Every one of them
kept intact the separateness of the Orient, its eccentricity, its backwardness, its silent
indifference, its feminine penetrability, its supine malleability (206)
He posits that Latent Orientalism is responsible for why these writers potentially “saw the Orient as a locale
requiring Western attention, reconstruction, even redemption” (206). Following examples of the continuous
representations of things Orient as requiring leadership and the inferiority of the people supported by the very
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ideas of Binary oppositions Said contends that the Orient became subject to a “biological determinism and moral
political admonishment” (207) leading to his point that “the very designation of something as Oriental involved an
already pronounced and evaluative judgement” (207).
Said then goes on to show how the latent Orientalism led to the perception and representation of the Orient men
as inferior and uninterested in development and how this representation led to a viewing of the Orient with “Sexist
blinders” (207) which made women, “usually the creatures of a male power fantasy.”
i
Said 273
The Edward Said Reader. ed. Moustafa Bayoumi and Andrew Rubin. New York: Vintage Books, 2000
iii
The domination or predominant influence exercised by one nation (or state, region etc.) over others.
iv
French philosopher and writer known for his work on early Christianity and his political theories.
v
Nietzsche is quoted as saying: “What is the truth of language but a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and
anthropomorphisms- in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished
poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are
illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are.
ii