Colonial Discourse
Loomba – p. 43-57
With help from John McLeod’s Beginning
Postcolonialism and
Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin’s Key Concepts
Edward Said/Orientalism
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Representations of the Orient in European
Literary texts created a dichotomy between the
West and the Rest.
It is built on a whole system of knowledge based
on studies in history, anthropology, literary
criticism, art and art history, economic and
cultural studies which colluded to produce a
unified “impression” of the Orient.
This dichotomy did as much to create the West
as it did to create the Orient. (p. 47)
Orientalism
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The significance of Orientalism is that as a
mode of knowing the other it was a
supreme example of construction of the
other, a form of authority.
The relationship between the Orient and
the Occident is one of power, domination,
and of varying degrees of a complex
hegemony.
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Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin. (168)
Orientalism
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Under the general heading of knowledge of the
Orient, and within the umbrella of Western
hegemony over the Orient from the 18th century
onwards, there emerged “a complex Orient
suitable for study in the academy, for display in
museums, for reconstruction in the colonial
office, for theoretical illustration in
anthropological, biological, linguistic, racial and
historical theses about mankind and the
universe.”
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Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin. (168)
Orientalism
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1. Orientalism constructs binaries – but not
equal ones. Negative terms are used to
describe the Orient and Orientals and the
positive terms are reserved for the West. The
West comes to know itself by proclaiming via
Orientalism everything it believes it is not. Said
says that “European culture gained in strength
and identity by setting itself off against the
Orient as a sort of surrogate and even
underground self.”
Orientalism
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2. Orientalism is a Western Fantasy – It is
a fabricated construct, a series of images
that come to stand as the Orient’s “reality”
for those in the West. This contrived
reality in no way represents what may or
may not actually be in the Orient itself.
However, though it is an imaginary
concept, it has real material effects.
Orientalism
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Orientalism is an Institution – The
imaginative assumptions are taken as hard
facts.
Orientalism
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Orientalism is literary – Philology (the
study of the history of languages),
lexicography (dictionary making), history,
biology, political and economic theory,
novel writing and lyric poetry come to the
service of Orientalism. It also make
possible new forms of writing that
enshrined and celebrated Western
Experience abroad.
Orientalism
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Orientalism is legitimating – Orientalist
representations function to justify the
propriety of Western colonial rule of Easter
Lands. They are an important part of
Empire. They legitimate the domination of
other peoples.
Orientalism
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There is ‘latent’ and ‘manifiest’ Orientalism.
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Latent Orientalism describes the dreams and fantasies
that have remained constant over time.
Manifest Orientalism refers to the myriad examples of
Orientalist knowledge produced at different historical
junctures.
So, while the manifestations of Orientalism will be
different due to reasons of historical specifics and
individual style or perspective, their underlying or
latent premises will be the same.
Latent Orientalism is a blue-print, Manifest
Orientalism is the many different versions that can be
build from that same design.
Stereotypes of Orientalism
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1. The Orient is timeless – unchanging. The
West travels back in time to the Orient.
2. The Orient is Strange – unusual, fantastic,
bizarre. The Orient is irrational, extraordinary,
abnormal.
3. Orientalism makes assumptions about ‘race’:
the murderous Arab, the lazy Indian, the
inscrutable Chinaman. Created generalized
types. The Orient is the place where Westerners
encounter races considered inferior to them,
which helps to buttress its view of itself as
inherently superior and civil
Stereotypes of Orientalism
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4. Orientalism makes assumptions about
Gender:
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Men are feminine
Women are exotic, immodest, creatures
seeking sexual pleasure
Orientalism creates gender types that fail to
live up to “Western Standards” – strong,
active, courageous men and chaste, moral,
passive women.
Stereotypes of Orientalism
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5. The Orient is feminine – The whole East is feminized,
deemed passive, submissive, exotic, luxurious, sexually
mysterious and tempting, while the West becomes
masculine, active, dominant, heroic, rational, selfcontrolled and ascetic.
The Orient is penetrated by the traveller whose passions
it rouses, it is possessed, ravished, embraced, and
domesticated.
The fantasy of the Orient as the desirable repository of
all that is constrained by Western civilization acted as a
continual stimulus for those who studied it. In writing
about the Orient, they were actually writing about their
own desires, fantasies and fears.
Stereotypes of Orientalism
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6. The Orient is degenerate – Oriental
stereotypes fixed weaknesses as
cowardliness, laziness, untrustworthiness,
fickleness, laxity, violence, and lust.
Orientalism posited the notion that
Oriental people needed to be civilized and
made to conform to the perceived higher
moral standards upheld in the West.
Problems with Orientalism
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It flattens historical nuances into East vs.
West, when really attitudes of the West
toward the East have shifted through time
and according to context.
Homogenizes the West.
Said concentrates on Western texts,
discussing the oppressor’s view, ignoring
the views and the resistances of the East.
Connection to Foucault
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If power is pervasive, then how do we explain
resistance? If power works rhizomically or
through a kind of capillary system, how do we
locate and defeat oppression?
Said doesn’t address this, but that doesn’t mean
that it’s impossible. Said’s text was a first step
in the direction of colonial discourse, the
beginning. Those who follow have addressed
these questions of resistance more fully.
Other developments in
Colonialist Discourse
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Gayatri Spivak – searching for the recovery of
the subaltern voice, the stories which Said
ignored.
Megan Vaughan – discusses the differences
between oppression by hegemonic powers in
Europe and those in Africa. In particular, she
notes the differences in the individuation of the
subjects. (p.53)
Jenny Sharpe and the critique of Foucault’s
notion that repression is insidious, subtle,
whereas, in the colonies it was violent and open.
Colonial Discourse
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Definition: a way of thinking in which cultural,
intellectual, economic or political processes are
seen to work together in the formation,
perpetuation and dismantling of colonialism.
Colonial discourse studies are interested in how
stereotypes, images and “knowledge” of colonial
subjects and cultures tie in with institutions of
economic, administrative, judicial and biomedical control.