ORIENTALISM
Review and Critiques
Art Choi I38014
Theories of Area Studies
Prof. Lee, Kyu Young
2015.11.02
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Orientalism
Orientalism Critiques
Orientalism and Occidentalism
Relations Area Studies
Conclusion
References
ORIENTALISM
Western influences and Western ways of
thinking to the East. Western world dominated
East world for 2000 geographically,
economically,and politically. (ie Persians and
Greeks)
 Europe Hegemony and military domination.
 Said’s: Orientalism claims that


Strong West vs Weak East = stereotypes invented
with literary, cultural, and historical texts that are
fictitious than factual.
ORIENTALISM


Let’s think: Would this bias in these regions be
accepted by all? Just because the West says it is
so, does it really make it so?
Said: Europeans wrote the history on Asia and
invented the ‘exotic East’ and represented as
inferior to the people of the West…After physical
and political take over, intellectual conquest
started within the people. Western scholars
interpreted and translated ‘oriental’ languages
and critical study of cultures and history of
oriental world.
ORIENTALISM CRITIQUES


Orientalism is now a negative connotation
(Martin Kramer)
Said claims of orientalism has been criticized
saying that he claims all Europeans that study
the ‘orient’ is racist.
ORIENTALISM CRITIQUES
Bernard Lewis 99 yrs old!
 Lewis is the Cleveland E.
Dodge Professor Emeritus of
Near Eastern Studies at
Princeton University
 Main Rival of Said.

ORIENTALISM CRITIQUES
Said said Lewis’ work is prime example of
Orientalism and rather than objective study, it
was a tool for imperialistic domination and form
of racism.
 And that’s when the fight began.
 “Lewis responded that Orientalism developed as
a facet of European humanism, independently of
the past European imperial expansion” and
claimed Orientalism has nothing to do with
Imperialism.

ORIENTALISM CRITIQUES



But did Orientalism really entail racism and
imperialism thoughts?
Lewis claims European humanism, independent
of the past European imperial expansion…
Said for example said that Lewis doesn’t know
anything about the Middle East, but just
portrays what he observes….
ORIENTALISM CRITIQUES



But did Orientalism really entail racism and
imperialism thoughts?
Lewis claims European humanism, independent
of the past European imperial expansion…
Said for example said that Lewis doesn’t know
anything about the Middle East, but just
portrays what he observes….
ORIENTALISM CRITIQUES

James G. Carrier
Recent debate for Said Orientalism (1978) a critical
description of the discipline of oriental studies.
 2 images

1) stresses the orients radical separation from and
opposition to the West
 Politics and Economics are also very different from ‘us’ and
‘them’
 2) timeless essentialism
 Portrays unchanging Orient “a closed system in which
objects are what they are because they are that, for all
time, for ontological reasons that no empirical matter can
either dislodge or alter.

ORIENT AND OCCIDENT



Said argues we must examine poli econ relations between West
and East to understand how the Orient that concerns him was
generated in Western thought.
“Said sees orientalism as an instance of a fundamental process of
self-definition by opposition with the alien”
 (what does this mean?) – author argues and criticizes that
Said believes and self-defines orientalism as a racist view of the
alien.
Said is criticized by saying that Orientalism then
is ultimately a two way street, ‘they’ can view ‘us’
in their eyes as we view them in our eyes.

Although Carrier does agree that it does privilege the
West as the standard within its definition because of
historic power.
ORIENTALISM AND OCCIDENTALISM



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Occidentalism:
the characteristics and customs of people situated in
western regions, especially the Western Hemisphere,
as western European countries and the United States
Occidentalism is the essentialistic rendering of the
West by Westerner
Orientalism," which focuses on the deficiencies of the
West's representations of the Orient, to that of
"Occidentalism," which refers to the conceptions of
the West animating these representations.
“They are seen to mark the displacement of a heretofore alien, coherent,
and uniform sort of social life by an equally coherent and uniform sort of
social life, that of the West” (Carrier)
ORIENTALISM AND OCCIDENTALISM

Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit
Occidentalism “evil twin of Orientalism”
 Argues that that this reductive dehumanizing picture
of the West isnt a new idea but an idea with history.

Stemming from Russian Soviet Union Right winged
Marxists, Nazis, Japanese nationalists
 Ideas that West are Barbarians and Idolators bent on
capitlization.


These are some of the criticisms of Occidentalism
that this creates worldly disorder.
AREA STUDIES

B IRAY K OLLUOGLU - K IRLI Bogazici
University
Bush Doctrine and how Civilized West needs to
indoctrinate ‘others’ with West supremacy. And this
perpetuates a discussion how Orientalism is
transcending into a better version = Area studies.
 1) area studies needs to be understood in its relation
to Orientalism
 2) Consideration is that takes under geopolitics Post
WWII era
 3) distinctive and disruptive places that Orientalism
and Area studies hold within social sciences

AREA STUDIES

No other Social Science discipline sets out to
identify its content or draws boundaries via
geography or by exclusion
19th century- 2nd half was dominated by politics,
economics, and sociology. Liberal Dominant thought
 Social sciences could make universal claims valid
over time and space, but non-West was excluded.
This means the focus was Western societies.
 Orientalist is the political scientist, sociologist, and
economist of “Oriental Societes” or he is none.

AREA STUDIES
Area studies:
 “Historians, sociologists, economists, political
scientists, geographers, and anthropologists unite
their efforts to further the knowledge about all parts
of the non-Western world toward the maintenance of
the American hegemony in the new world arena
marked by “decolonization”, post WWII, and the Cold
War.
 How does this relate to Area studies vs Orientalism?

AREA STUDIES
Post WWII area studies developed
 Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as a
discourse “as the corp institution dealing with the
Orient…Orientalism as a Western style for
dominating, restructuring, and having authority over
the Orient”

So we can claim that organically it is linked to Eurocentric
capitalistic expansion and colonization and ideas.
 But what we didn’t know was that initally it was a religious
ambition more than a political and economical one.
 Christian Missionaries, Christianity in general, played a
big role. So we can see a dissemination of christianity in the
new territories of European influence within Area Studies.
 But what’s impt is Orientalism came into formal
existance – Church Council of Vienna in 1312…

AREA STUDIES


“Orientalism is one of the happiest and most
durable marriages of power and knowledge
housed under the unequal relationship between
the West and the East”
WWII was the main reason to turn into Area
Studies that took place in the US.
The world could no longer be satisfied with what was
offered by Orientalist studies.
 Regional knowledge was required
 Govt’ support and foundation support for area studies

AREA STUDIES


Orientalism was a European enterprise until
their hegemony declined and US started Area
Studies as their enterprise from their rise to
Unipolar hegemonic status.
So what is the difference?
Orientalism – Frozen past
 Area studies – approach to contemporary non
western world

CONCLUSION AND UNDERLYING
QUESTIONS

Orientalism and Area studies are interrelated
studies that are products of unequal power
relations between the West and the ‘others’
Are there other corresponding ways of studying
‘the other’ developed in the non-West?
 Was there ever Occidentalism in the first place?

REFERENCES
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Occidentalism: The World Turned Upside-down James G.
Carrier American Ethnologist, Vol. 19, No. 2. (May, 1992), pp.
195-212.
From Orientalism to Area Studies
Biray Kolluoglu-Kirli
CR: The New Centennial Review, Volume 3, Fall2003, PP93111 (article)
Beyond Occidentalism: Toward Nonimperial Geohistorical
Categories Fernando Coronil Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 11,
No. 1. (Feb., 1996), pp. 51-87
http://www.chron.com/life/article/Occidentalism-by-IanBuruma-and-Avishai-Margalit-1642289.php
http://www.outlookindia.com/article/the-origins-ofoccidentalism/222848
http://science.jrank.org/pages/10519/Occidentalism-East-WestDialogue-Other.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Lewis#cite_note-60
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_(book)