This document discusses Edward Said's concept of Orientalism and its influence. It summarizes that Orientalism referred to the way Western thinkers depicted Eastern cultures as inherently different and lesser. This view supported Western domination. It also discusses how Michel Foucault and theories of discourse and power relations influenced Said. Representing other cultures accurately is problematic, as all perspectives involve misrepresentation to some degree.

1. Ch 6
CONTENDING VISIONS OF THE MIDDLE
EAST

2. ORIENTALISM
 Defined by Said as "a style of thought based on an ontological and
epistemological distinction between `the Orient' and (most of the time)
`the Occident‟” – that is, a way of thinking about the world that imagined
an opposition between western and eastern (mainly Islamic) civilizations
 Focused on and critiqued the ways that popular media, as well as
scholars in western academies, depicted and dealt with the „orient‟; and
how such ideas and images circulated generally throughout western
cultures
 Also examined the ways in which Orientalism (particular views of the
Orient) supported a Western justification for “dominating, restructuring,
and having authority over the Orient“
 Such views of the east have little resemblance to what these regions
actually are like
 Said‟s Orientalism stimulated scholars across a range of fields and
disciplines to rethink what they were doing and grapple with new
intellectual problems in innovative ways
 The book was so popular and made such an impact, it eclipsed other
work on east/west relations, especially work on the political economy of
those relationships (monetary, fiscal, trade, intervention policies)

3. INFLUENCE OF FOUCAULT
 Michel Foucault argued that we take to be truth is in fact always
really the product of a certain way of depicting or representing
reality, of a certain "discourse" - a structured system of meaning
which shapes what we perceive, think and do (as we discussed
about historians earlier)
 There is no way to get at „pure unadulterated truth‟ there are only
alternative representations, different discourses, each of which had
its own (usually implicit, unacknowledged and unexamined)
premises
 Rather, who and what we are is not only shaped or influenced, but
produced, constituted, by socially prevalent systems of meaning
(that is, by discourse)
 Foucault also saw „power‟ as something produced through social
relationships, not as something „held‟ by individuals
 BUT we can look at how different views favor different groups or
justify fairer or less fair practices, or look at who benefits from
certain views and their associated values and actions – this is what
Said did with Orientalism

4. SAID’S VIEWS ON ORIENTALISM
 Said saw „orientalism‟ as a specific form of knowledge, with its own
object of study ("the Orient"), premises, rules, conventions and claims to
truth
 Orientalism simultaneously was produced by, and perpetuated, certain
power dynamics
 Orientalism served as a "collective notion identifying `us' Europeans as
against all `those' non-Europeans
 A fundamental aspect of orientalism was the idea that this „eastern‟
culture was inherently and essentially different from western culture, and
that this difference justified interventions and controls and forced
transformations
 Orientalism is, Said writes, “the whole network of interests inevitably
brought to bear on (and therefore always involved in) any occasion when
that peculiar entity `the Orient' is in question“ (3; Lockman 187)
 a system of Western knowledge about the Orient that was pervasive,
powerful and durable, despite having little to do with what actually went
on in the part of the world designated by Westerners as the Orient
 Said insisted, the contours of Orientalist discourse were profoundly
shaped by a Western will to dominate the Orient, because of inherent
superiority of the west (as they imagined)

5. THE PROBLEM OF REPRESENTATION
 How does one represent other cultures? What is another culture?
 How can one learn and know aspects that accurately represent real lived
conditions and political and social realities?
 Is one‟s own culture any more understandable than another culture?
 The „scholarly‟ conflict between Said and Lewis leaves these sorts of
questions aside in order to pound on each other as overly motivated by
politics
 If both sides are, in fact, overly motivated by politics, how do you decide
which one is more honest, more worthwhile, more valuable in teaching us
what we need to know about understanding cultures?
 The dynamic that Said proposes is that we can understand a culture by how
it configures its sense of oppositional others – those supposedly most unlike
us reveal our values and preconceptions, our sense of what is positive and
laudable
 One important step is to consider the sources and the connections of ideas,
to resist seeing one‟s outcomes or conclusions as a natural, unprejudiced
explanations of the facts, which had been studied without any presumptions
 Another is to remember that all representations are „misrepresentations‟ –
we never really get at the lived conditions and experiences – we can
engage, and we can try to be open learners, but we cannot ever really
represent an „other‟ accurately. Nor in fact can we accurately represent our
„selves‟

6. SIGNIFYING SYSTEMS
 The „linguistic turn‟ refers to a recognition that language is a
contained and coherent system of signs whose meanings are
determined in relation to each other rather than through some
intrinsic relationship to outside objects and concepts
 In other words, the word „tree‟ does not have any inherent
relationship to those leafy tall bark-covered life-forms in the part –
it is a socially agreed-upon designator for a concept with a loose
relationship to actual physical objects
 The related fundamental idea is that language constitutes or
creates the realities we function within
 We order, define, and make sense of „reality‟ through language
and other signifying systems (clothing, gesture, etc) – a way to
think about this is to understand the universe as utterly chaotic
until we impose order on it through the categories and
organizational structures of language and other signifying systems
 So, attending to these systems of meaning and the perspectives
they embody is more important than trying to find universal truths,
and more honest and revealing than simply taking one‟s own
system as a form of transparent truth

7. RECIPROCITY AND MUTUAL EFFECT
 One important outcome of Said‟s work was a rise in
work on „colonial discourse‟ – especially focusing on
how representations perceptions of colonized „others‟
were shaped by preconceptions and accepted
practices of domination and oppression
 Recognition that those functioning under oppression
also have voices and views and values was gradually
emerging – and those voices were being included
 Recognition that abusive practices like colonization
shape the colonized culture, but also shape the
colonizers – one is not isolated from the other
 Thus, “the relations between colonized and colonizers
had to be seen as always complex, contradictory and
reciprocal” – they constitute each other in a dynamic
relationship of exchange and interaction