Orientalismo: O oriente como invenção do Ocidente

by Edward W. Said

An alternative cover can be found here.

Neste livro de 1978, Edward W. Said mostra que o 'Oriente' não é um nome geográfico entre outros, mas uma invenção cultural e política do 'Ocidente' que reúne as várias civilizações a leste da Europa sob o mesmo signo do exotismo e da inferioridade. Recorrendo a fontes e textos diversos - descrições de viagens, tratados filológicos, poemas e peças, teses e gramáticas -, Said mostra os vínculos estreitos que uniram a construção dos impérios e a acumulação de um fantástico e problemático acervo de saberes e certezas européias. A investigação da origem e dos caminhos do Orientalismo como disciplina acadêmica, gosto literário e mentalidade dominadora, vai e volta do século XVIII aos dias de hoje, das traduções das 'Mil e uma noites' à construção do canal de Suez, das viagens de Flaubert e 'Lawrence da Arábia' às aventuras guerreiras de Napoleão no Egito ou dos Estados Unidos no golfo Pérsico.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Philosophy, Politics, Theory, Sociology, Middle East

528 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

(Arabic Profile إدوارد سعيد)
Edward Wadie Said was a professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies. A Palestinian American born in Mandatory Palestine, he was a citizen of the United States by way of his father, a U.S. Army veteran.

Educated in the Western canon, at British and American schools, Said applied his education and bi-cultural perspective to illuminating the gaps of cultural and political understanding between the Western world and the Eastern world, especially about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East; his principal influences were Antonio Gramsci, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Michel Foucault, and Theodor Adorno.

As a cultural critic, Said is known for the book Orientalism (1978), a critique of the cultural representations that are the bases of Orientalism—how the Western world perceives the Orient. Said’s model of textual analysis transformed the academic discourse of researchers in literary theory, literary criticism, and Middle-Eastern studies—how academics examine, describe, and define the cultures being studied. As a foundational text, Orientalism was controversial among the scholars of Oriental Studies, philosophy, and literature.

As a public intellectual, Said was a controversial member of the Palestinian National Council, because he publicly criticized Israel and the Arab countries, especially the political and cultural policies of Muslim régimes who acted against the national interests of their peoples. Said advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state to ensure equal political and human rights for the Palestinians in Israel, including the right of return to the homeland. He defined his oppositional relation with the status quo as the remit of the public intellectual who has “to sift, to judge, to criticize, to choose, so that choice and agency return to the individual” man and woman.

In 1999, with his friend Daniel Barenboim, Said co-founded the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, based in Seville, which comprises young Israeli, Palestinian, and Arab musicians. Besides being an academic, Said also was an accomplished pianist, and, with Barenboim, co-authored the book Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society (2002), a compilation of their conversations about music. Edward Said died of leukemia on 25 September 2003.

Reviews

[Erica · Rating 4 out of 5]

The following is a true story:

Me, in a San Franscisco bar reading Orientalism.

The blonde girl next to me reading over my shoulder: "So what's Orientalism?"

I explain as best I can in a couple sentences.

Her: "There are so many isms in Asia - like Buddhism and Taoism. You know what book you should read? The Tao of Poo. It's sooo good. It's, like, the perfect way to teach Americans about Eastern Religion."

Horrified, I look back to my book and take a sip of beer.

[J.G. Keely · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a curious double-standard between what we expect from White guy authors compared to authors of any other background. When an author is a Native American, for example, we tend to expect their books to deliver to us the 'Native American experience'. If the author is a woman, we tend to expect that her book will show us the 'female perspective'--to the degree that female authors who write stories about men are forced to take on a masculine or nondescript name, like J.K. Rowling.

So we get Western-educated authors like Achebe, Hosseini, and Momaday who write thoroughly traditional novels in the Western style and then place a thin veneer of their own ethnic background onto those stories, and are praised for it in academia, because their work meets expectation: delivering to The West a simplified and 'pre-colonized' version of foreignness.

As a White male author, on the other hand, the expectation is that you won't stick to your own cultural identity, but will instead attempt to explore the breadth and depth of human experience through characters of many backgrounds--and why not? White guys have been doing it for centuries, and we love them for it.

In fact, the problem here is not that White guys are encouraged to take on other roles, its that non-White, non-male folks are discouraged from doing so. As Said points out: it is not only Black people who are capable of writing about Black people, or only Arabs about Arabs, or only Whites about Whites; we all need to explore similarities and differences in our fellow humans.

So here I am: White guy, trying to explore humanity, writing a bit of fiction about Colonialism, about the English rule in Egypt and India, featuring characters of different backgrounds--but it's daunting. I don't want to do it thoughtlessly, and though I take a great deal of inspiration from Haggard, Kipling, Conrad, and Burton, I don't want to incidentally adopt their shortcomings along with the interesting bits.

So I thought I might combat their prejudices by taking in the most notable and talked-about book on interactions and stereotypes between The West and The East. However, Orientalism was not what I expected; but then again, it wasn't what Said expected, either. He didn't intend to write 'The Book' on East/West interaction, his work is much narrower in scope.

The whole of the book is Said looking closely at a dozen authors, mostly French and English, some academics, some fiction writers, and giving examples of a number of quotes for each where they talk about 'The East' in ways that demonstrate a certain bias. That's pretty much it, all four-hundred pages. Why spend that long on such a specific topic? Because this book was meant for a small academic publication, and that's what specialized academics do.

Now, if you've read any of the other reviews of this book on GR, you'd get the impression that Said is an enraged polemicist who spends the whole book denigrating 'The West' and praising 'The East'. It’s inexplicable to me that any person with the most basic reading comprehension could come away from Said with this view. Indeed, once I realized the scope of this work (and that it wasn't likely to help with my specific writing concern), I almost abandoned it, but I wanted to get to the 'angry Said' part where he defames Western civilization, just to see how bad it got.

It never came. Said's tone throughout the book is exceedingly dry and cautious--too much so, for my taste, I've been known to enjoy a good diatribe--so any prejudicial anger a reader might find in this book is only what they brought in with them. The notion that Said is anti-Western or Pro-Islam is such a bizarrely inexplicable misreading that the only reason a reader could come away from the book with that belief is if they brought in a huge set of prejudices and then ignored everything Said actually wrote.

First, they must assume that ‘East’ and ‘West’ are terms that have well-defined geographical and social meanings, and then ignore the fact that Said repeatedly states that, to him, 'East' and 'West' are just convenient ideas, not real, solid entities--that it is ridiculous to talk about India, China, and the Middle East as if they were one culture, or even to lump in the various Arab states with one another, when they each have very different histories and values. There is no more unity between all Islamic nations than there is between all Christian nations.

Trying to place a line between Greece and Turkey and claiming these are separate cultures is artificial. Lest we forget: Troy was in Turkey, when the Roman Empire died in Italy it continued in Istanbul (as Edith Hamilton points out: Roman rule was always more Persian than Greek), Southern Europe was long ruled by Moors, and as Ockley’s 1798 History of the Saracens contentiously point out, nearly everything Europe knows of Greek philosophy and mathematics came from Islam.

Then, the ignorant reader would have to assume that when Said points out a specific trend in some authors of the ‘West’, that this constitutes an attack on ‘The West’ as an entity (which Said denies exists). This despite the fact that Said explicitly holds many of these Western authors in high regard and specifically states that there’s nothing wrong with cultures having interdependent relationships:

“The Arab world today is an intellectual, political, and cultural satellite of the United States. This is not in and of itself something to be lamented; the specific form of the satellite relationship, however, is.”

The reader would then have to assume that this perceived attack on a fictional ‘Western Culture’ was the same thing as an uplifting of ‘the East’, even though Said often speaks about how many Eastern states are damaged and without a modern intellectual tradition to train its members to do the work of improving them, and that all the great centers of study and economic control for Islam are located in England or America.

But then, the fact that there are prejudiced readers is hardly surprising: the world is full of people trying to divide everything up between 'us' and 'them'. I get comments from people who don't realize that Islam is an Abrahamic religion--sharing the same holy books, prophets, and god as Christianity and Judaism--people who aren't aware that a 'fatwa' just means any public statement by a scholar. You read about American military consultants in the Middle East who don't know the difference between Shia and Sunni. Very few these days would connect this quote:

"The ink of the scholar is more precious than the blood of the martyr"

with Mohammed.

How easily we forget that Athens is closer to Marrakesh, Tunis, Cairo, and Baghdad than it is to Paris, Berlin, or London.

I remember seeing a supposedly humorous map where the Middle East was replaced by an impact crater, with the words 'Problem Solved' beneath it, completely ignoring the fact that the reason there is constant conflict there is because powerful First World countries have gone in, supplied both sides with cheap guns, made Opium the only profitable crop for farmers to grow, and set up regimes whose sole purpose is to funnel money and natural resources out of those countries and into multinational banks--any region is going to be politically unstable under those conditions.

Indeed, Said openly admits that there is much wrong in the Arab world, that it is full of turmoil and violence and lack of education, and that it is all too easy to paint it as a ‘fallen culture’ when compared to the heights of sophistication and science it once enjoyed, which sparked off the Renaissance in Europe. Of course, the way Arabs are commonly typified as backward is the same way people typify ant outgroup: the cliches of American rednecks and hippy-dippy liberals are the same as the cliche Arab: ignorant, sectarian, ever-feuding, following charismatic leaders into reactionary movements. We can point to Religious Fundamentalists, Tea Party Yokels, Ron Paul Libertarians, Militant Feminists, and Black Muslim Brotherhood members and find the same clannish human system at play.

I was constantly struck by the fact that the separation Said depicts between the ideas of East and West were not specific to that cultural conflict, but were the same generic type of power separation laid out by Marx: a dominating power structure versus the population whom they control and profit from. They operate off of the same self-serving justifications for their rule: that the population is childlike and irrational, easily manipulated, and in need of governance. Very little of Said’s analysis was specific to the conflict between the East and West--which may have been deliberate on his part--but I think it would have made his neutral stance clearer if he had expressed outright that he was making a generalized argument about all power dynamics. Extending the narrow focus of his argument and showing that this is how power works everywhere, at all times, would have made his work stronger, overall.

As I read, it seemed that what Said was saying was clearly true, but not in a revelatory way. I found myself comparing it to Angela Carter’s The Sadeian Woman , my high-water mark for social criticism, where her statements are inescapably true, but in a way you never realized until you saw it written out. I kept waiting for Said to take it to the next level, to elevate these basic, naked observations to some profound and insightful conclusion.

Of course European, Christian powers would mythologize and simplify Islam, of course they would make a phantom enemy of it, while at the same time trading, allying, and sharing sources of inspiration with it--that is no more than differing cultures have always done, as Said points out. What great insight into this system is meant to shock me? Am I simply too much the postmodern, atheistic American to see what he says as anything but basic and inescapable?

I came to this book looking to find something insidious, some system by which these cultures interact uniquely, but what I got was ‘most people are ignorant, dominating forces produce propaganda, Europe vs. Islam edition’. Of course we are all Quixote and Pangloss: making ourselves heroes of a fantastical narrative and creating enemies to blame because we are too weak to do anything other than maintain that flattering fiction. But, even if we are all human, and all power structures operate in the same ways, there should still be some specifics which set this incidence apart.

I was waiting for Said to do some serious unpacking. It’s not enough to show a passage of Renan’s and demonstrate that his Semites are ‘sterile’--I want to know how that construction is achieved, why it is important, how it operates culturally and psychologically, how it offers an important and vital insight into the grander cultural interaction. And yet, just as he seems to be reaching a kind of specificity, he breaks off:

“Why the Orient seems still to suggest not only fecundity but sexual promise (and threat) . . . is something on which one could speculate: it is not the province of my analysis here, alas, despite its frequently noted appearance.”

So then, if not that, what is the province of his analysis? It isn’t until his conclusion that he lays out his purpose and helps us to understand why he never extends to these sorts of specific conclusions, which made me wish that he had made his conclusion his introduction, so I wouldn’t have spent four-hundred pages wondering why he keeps stopping just when it was starting to get interesting.

This is an academic work with a very narrow scope. It is meant to give a view of a very specific trend in Orientalist criticism amongst a group of authors, and not to force on the reader any specific conclusion about what this trend means, or how it operates on a minute level, except to point out that it does in fact exist, and that it represents familiar power dynamics. That is the purpose and the effect of this book, and it invites the reader to use it to extend these examples into specific arguments and observations of their own, to use the general roadmap provided as a guide for their own work. The fact that it has become the central text on the subject is an accident of time and place, for that was not the author’s purpose, nor is this a transformative, revelatory work that sets out a specific theory of analysis for looking at Orientalist works--as I wish it had been.

In the end, Said’s Orientalism is not a primer, but an experiment which is incomplete without further scholarship on the part of the reader. Since Said is not specific, we cannot know just how accurate his analysis is unless we can compare it to our own readings of the same works, so it can only be a companion to our studies and not a work which, on its own, develops a unique view which we can use, as scholars, going forward.

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinatingly interesting book. It is also a book that is virtually required reading if you are going to say anything at all about post-colonialism. Whether you agree or disagree with the central theme of the book is almost beside the point. This work is seminal and landmark – so it can be avoided only at your own cost.

I’ll get to the central idea of the book in a second, but first some advice for people thinking of reading it. I think, if I only wanted to get an idea of what the book was about, but didn’t have time to read 305 pages or so, that I would read the preface to the 2003 edition and then read the afterword (actually, you could probably read those the other way around if you wanted, that would probably make even more sense). The point being that he is so clear and so ‘summary’ in these two parts of the book that as an overview and a way to get at the meat of his argument you would struggle to get a better grounding than those parts of his book. The rest of the book is a bit more for the kind of person who likes ‘completeness’. Look, it is all beautifully written and utterly fascinating too – but like I said, life is short and this is the sort of book that covers more ground that you might feel you really need covered.

So, what’s it all about? Well, Orientalism probably doesn’t mean what you might first think. You might assume that it has something to do with China – which isn’t quite where he is coming from. Said is tracing the history of an idea and in that idea the exotic East was the Middle East long before it was the Far East. That is what makes this book essential reading. If there is one thing that is increasingly being used to define our understanding of the world today – in the way that the Cold War defined our world for large parts of the 20th Century – it is the relationship between the West and Islam. We are constantly told that Islam is monolithic, that Islamofascists are wanting to impose Sharia Law on a hapless and ‘too democratic for our own good’ West. That we are pluralistic, they are clones. The main lesson of this book is to beware as soon as anyone starts using the word WE. It can be the most dangerous word in the language. But the similarities between the pluralist US and the monolithic THEM so reminded me of the East / West cold war that it was terrifying.

The Orient has long been a place where Westerners have projected their lusts, their dreams and their nightmares. Much of what is said about the East in this book by ‘Orientalists’ confirms masturbatory desires on behalf of the Orientalists themselves more than it says about life in the Middle East.

In fact, Orientalism says infinitely more about the West than it does about whatever we choose define as the Orient. The problem is one of essentialism. East is East and West is West and neither the twain shall meet – but not only is this geographically stupid, for it to be true in any sense it relies on a definition of the two ‘diametrically opposed’ opposites that must be taken as being real and total explanations before you start.

It requires us to have a single notion of what a Muslim is – as if this religion covering so many millions of people and having lasted for centuries and centuries could really, somehow remain self-identical across all of that time and all of that space. Such an idea ought to be utterly ludicrous after a moment’s reflection (not that such ideas ever really get even a moment’s reflection) – but our desire for a simple and clear and easily defined enemy is such that we lump together Seventh Century Arabs with Twenty-First Century Indonesians as if they were all identical.

And it gets worse. Not only are they all the same, but they are also too stupid to even understand the first thing about themselves. It is only because of we remarkably generous Westerners being able to explain their history to them, their language, society and character, that they have any ideas about themselves at all. This is the role of the Orientalist, a role he (and from what I can gather from this book it does seem to virtually always be a he) has played rather consistently over the centuries.

What is particularly interesting here is that Said says Orientalists don’t really treat the Orient as if it was a place, in space or time, but rather as a text – written once and then indelible. The Orient really reached its glory days a long time ago – you have to remember that much of our mathematics and virtually all of our Classical Philosophy came from Islamic scholars. So, to explain this we need to see Islam and the Orient as a culture in decay, a culture that is degenerating. But still a text nonetheless. And a text that can only be read by a properly schooled Western scholar. And what is the appropriate schooling for such a scholar? Well, not necessarily Oriental texts, as you might think – but rather texts about the Orient by previous Oriental scholars. This is like an entire school of Shakespeare scholarship that never actually refers to any of the poems or plays, but rather discusses previous works of scholarship on Shakespeare. And like such scholarship the assumption is that the plays never change – just as it is assumed the Orient and those who live there never changes either. You can understand the Muslim mind by reading the Koran – in a way that you can’t understand the Western mind by reading the Bible.

Of course, our television makes this unity of the Orient something that is self-evident. Other than Israel, the rest of the region is self-identical. This was made particularly clear during the so called Arab Spring when an image of an Arab in headgear shaking his fist could have been someone revolting in Libya, or Tunisia, or Egypt, or Syria – and fortunately from our perspective in the West all of these countries were identical and had identical problems and were resolving those identical problems in exactly the same way. Through unreason and violence – that is, a particularly Oriental and non-Western way.

If this book is anything, it is a plea for us to recognise the humanity of the other – of the Arab other in this case. One of the things I’ve become increasingly concerned about is what I call aggregated facts. For example, when I hear that the USA spends more on healthcare than any other nation or how much an average Australian spends on education, I become worried. People who talk in averages are not to be trusted – there, a generalisation you can rely on in a review telling you not to rely on generalisations. What people who talk in averages are about to say next is generally a lie. ‘How can there be a problem when America already spends more on healthcare than any other nation on earth?’ ‘How can Australia need the Gonski Report, we already spend a fortune on education?’ But averages mask how much is going to some people and how little is going to others. Averages are lies told in numbers. Aggregating humans as if all you need to say about them is that they are Arabs or Americans or Australians and then thinking that is somehow all you needed to say, that a single label can explain entire human cultures, is the stuff of racist fantasy. That so many otherwise rational and intelligent people have fallen into this trap (yes, I’m looking at you Hitchens – but not only you) and have done so repeatedly is to all of our shame.

Unfortunately, the work of learning about other cultures cannot be done by pouring them into a single bucket and giving them a single name. People are insanely complex and the societies they make are even more so. To imagine for a second that by calling a society Arabic or Islamic suddenly makes it any easier to understand says far more about the person pointing their finger and calling names than it does about those on the receiving end.

Of course this doesn’t only go for Arabs – or even just those living in Asia – but this is a common theme for all people who we think of as being different from ourselves and so group into a single mass. This book is a mirror held up before us (whoever that US is) – we should have the courage to look squarely into that mirror and learn the lesson it is trying to teach us.

Highly recommended, essential reading.

[BookHunter M ُH َM َD · Rating 3 out of 5]

هو تطوير تفصيلي ليس فقط للتمييز الجغرافي الأساسي الذي يقسم العالم لقسمين غير متكافئين شرق و غرب بل أيضا لسلسلة من المصالح التي يستعين في تحقيقها و الحفاظ عليها بشتى الوسائل مثل نتائج البحوث العلمية و إعادة البناء اللغوي القديم و التحليل النفسي و وصف الظواهر الطبيعية و المجتمعات و هو في حد ذاته إرادة معينة أو نية معينة أي إنه ليس مجرد تعبير عن الإرادة و النية لتفهم ما يبدو بوضوح أنه عالما مختلفا أو عالما بديلا و جديدا و للسيطرة عليه و التلاعب به في بعض الأحيان و ضمه إليه.

و هو و قبل كل شيء خطاب لا يرتبط مطلقا بعلاقة مباشرة بالسلطة السياسية السافرة و موازية لها

من الأخر و بدون فلسفات و تنظير طويل تمتليء به صفحات هذا الكتاب القيم فإن الاستشراق هو دراسة الشرق دراسة منحازة بوجهات نظر مسبقة و مدفوعة بأغراض استعمارية و نظرة فوقية لشعوب الشرق مهما تبين لنا غير ذلك و يدلل هنا إدوارد سعيد بوعيه كمثقف شرقغربي إن جاز التعبير على ذلك بدلالات عديدة يخلص منها بنتيجة أن على الشرق تمثيل نفسه بنفسه بدلا من ترك الساحة للمستشرقين للتأثير في الشعوب و صناع القرار.

من أصعب الكتب التي قرأتها أيضا كان هذا الكتاب

[Sean Barrs · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice.”

The truly terrifying thing about such Empires is how much they genuinely believe their own discourses in this regard; yes, they also profit from the subjugated people; yes, they do exploit them for their own ends, but they do actually believe they are doing some good in the process. They think that superimposing their ways, their systems of politics and culture, is actually going to benefit others. So they force it on people; they make them adapt to their ways and engage in a mode of totalitarian control that does nothing but destroy individualistic culture and history; thus, unfolds the history of mankind.

Edward Said keeps his arguments relatively in the present, at least, from the perspective of the way the current eyes of the Occidental view the Oriental. He mainly discusses how the legacies of fairly recent Empires, namely the British powers, have contributed to this lasting effect. Though I’d argue this is nothing relatively new. Man has been doing this sort of thing for the last 2-3 thousand years; it just means now he has the media and literary power to make such racial stereotypes and prejudices widely known, however accidental or purposeful. Orientalism can be recorded more effectively. When reading books such as this I find it hard not to fall into misanthropy, as I look at the current political climate the world faces; ultimately, asking myself the question: will man ever learn?

I digress here; the point is Said captures an argument vital to comprehending the way the world, unfortunately, works. It saddens me deeply that such things aren’t taught in schools. How many people will actually read this in their lifetime? How many people have even heard of it? The truth of the matter is this is a deeply important book; it demonstrates how the West has created this fog like gaze when it looks at the East. Whilst trying not to sound too general here, what it sees is an image of falsehood. It doesn’t see the East as it is, but instead sees a version of it that has been embedded into its subconscious by countless generations of inaccurate representation followed by further inaccurate re-representations.

To demonstrate here, I’ve included this image from a cover poster of a funfair James Joyce’s short story Araby is based upon. Please note, Joyce is but one example of countless. Don’t let this put you off him. (I offer no excuses for the representation, but know that many authors in the cannon did things very similar)



And here is a direct quote from Said; it literally sums up this picture:

“Arabs, for example, are thought of as camel-riding, terroristic, hook-nosed, venal lechers whose undeserved wealth is an affront to real civilization. Always there lurks the assumption that although the Western consumer belongs to a numerical minority, he is entitled either to own or to expend (or both) the majority of the world resources. Why? Because he, unlike the Oriental, is a true human being.”

It’s almost laughable how ridiculous such a thing is. Here we have an Arab riding a camel waving a rifle in the air like a lunatic. The problem is it that many people didn’t have access to knowledge bases. We live in an internet age where we can find anything out if we really want to. But go back a hundred years and the general person reading this story and seeing this poster would have taken it for fact. Granted, the educated and perhaps even pseudo-educated may have had qualms with it, but the average reader would have seen it and believed it. Again, this is but one example. Imagine it duplicated ten-fold, seen in every Western representation of the East and you have cultural conditioning that leaves the populace with this false notion of the Oriental world. And then it is passed on through the years leaving the lasting impression of racist stereotypes.

The sad thing is, as I write this, this sense of Orientalism is still in the world today. I’ve seen it. It’s still out there amongst the Western populace. Sure, it may not be as bad, but it is bad enough. Said wasn’t the first to suggest these ideas, they are not just his arguments, but he was the first to write an entire book describing Western to Eastern perceptions. And he really did need to write it, to help educate people on their own folly. But, again, not many outside the realms of scholarship, arguably the ones most likely to manifest these false perceptions, will actually read it. Simply put, this is a complex book. My review scarcely scratches the surface in regards to the depth of some of these arguments.

This is a book for the relatively well-read. I tried it a few years ago during the first year of my undergraduate degree and was overwhelmed by some of the prose. Even now as I read it I find the arguments complex and warranting a second read. The point is, this book portrays an erudite scholarly voice. Although these arguments are vital, the book can be daunting at times for those new to literary criticism and cultural analysis. For me, this a book to work up to rather than dive into, and for students of postcolonial theory it is a book that simply must be finished- even if it takes you a year as it has in my case!

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intelligent and insightful book about how the West has stereotyped and dehumanized the East through racist and oppressive representations of the East as backwards, uncivilized and in need of Western revitalization or aid. Edward Said writes at length about the origins and development of Orientalism throughout history and how it has culminated in and contributed to anti-Arab sentiments. He raises important and thought-provoking questions about interrogating how places are represented, who has the power to create representations, and what are the consequences of those representations. His point about how universities in the United States wield so much power in their construction of knowledge about the East struck me – just as much of this book did – as unfortunately relevant to today still even though this book was published in the 1970’s. Here’s one quote in particular that I liked:

“In a sense the limitations of Orientalism are… the limitations that follow upon disregarding, essentializing, denuding the humanity of another culture, people, or geographical region. But Orientalism has taken a further step than that: it views the Orient as something whose existence is not only displayed but has remained fixed in time and place for the West. So impressive have the descriptive and textual successes of Orientalism been that entire periods of the Orient’s cultural, political, and social history are considered mere responses to the West. The West is the actor, the Orient a passive reactor. The West is the spectator, the judge and jury, of every facet of Oriental behavior. Yet if history during the twentieth century has provoked intrinsic change in and for the Orient, the Orientalist is stunned.”

I give this book four stars instead of five because I found the language super dry and hard to get through at times, despite the quality content. It took me over a year to get through this book because I would read it for a little and find myself dissuaded by the writing, like, am I just not “smart” enough to get this book or enjoy this dense writing? Maybe I’m not and that’s fine with me. But, if not for a burst of motivation over the past couple of days I’m not sure when I would’ve finished Orientalism. Even though I found the language somewhat tedious I’d still recommend this book given the pervasiveness of imperialist and racist notions of the Middle East that exist today.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing classic book from the late Edward Saïd about the origins of the Western view of the Orient that shaped literature and music in the 17th-20th century. It is a penetrating view of various racial stereotypes of Arab peoples (dressed in sheets smoking hookahs and generally under-educated and prone to laziness and violence) that pervades all levels of society and served the interests of colonialism to appease consciences of all the violence and subjugation that occurred in China, India the Middle East and Northern Africa. Particularly in these troubled times with racial slurs against Muslims becoming common currency (amd electoral policy), it remains relevant and eye-opening. Highly recommended along with its sequel, Culture and Imperialism.

[عبدالرحمن أبوذكري · Rating 5 out of 5]

شتان بين الطلسمات التي ابتلينا بها على يد كمال ابوديب في الترجمة الأولى التي صدرت قبل أكثر من عقدين، وبين هذه الترجمة السلسة الرائقة البعيدة عن التقعُّر، والإغراب، وصك المصطلحات الشاذة. إذا أردت أن تقرأ كتاب إدوارد سعيد، وتفهمه فهماً حسناً، وتفيد منه، فعليك بقراءة ترجمة أستاذنا محمد عناني، واهرب من ترجمة كمال ابوديب هروبك من المجذوم!!!!!!!!!!!!

[DoctorM · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yes--- in many ways, Said's "Orientalism" is a classic. And he's right about some things: Western art and literature created a whole fantasy world about "the Orient" (which included the Balkans and Russia) over the last few centuries; Western scholarship about North Africa or the Middle East or India could be (and was) used by colonial powers. But as critics (especially Bernard Lewis and Robert Irwin)have pointed out, Said took a handful of serious ideas and created his own fantasy world of "Orientalism" (destroying, as Lewis lamented, a perfectly honorable scholarly term). Said and his followers very nearly argue that any Western study of "the Orient" is invalid and nefarious from the start, and that any scholarship by Westerners is a tool of oppression and political domination. Said notoriously got the careers and beliefs of the great Orientalists of the 18th and 19th centuries wrong, and, despite some fine writing, produced in the end a book that conflated artistic and literary visions with intelligence gathered for conquest or rule and which came close to saying that only scholarship with a "correct" political message about the Middle East could ever be acceptable. A necessary read, but one that has to be complemented with a reading of Lewis' critiques and the debates between the two, and perhaps---- since the critique is from the Left ---even more so by reading Robert Irwin's "Dangerous Knowledge".

[Zanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Obviously this is a must read, which has been much drawn on and critiqued by later post/anti-colonial writers. I have just read the copious notes I made when I read it in 2007 (sort of ironic that I read a westerner's gloss rather than re-reading the original!?) and noted some points of particular interest...

John of Segovia proposed a conference with Islam designed to produce mass conversion 'even if it were to last ten years it would be less expensive and damaging than war'

To me this is a perfect example of the assumption that in an 'objective' 'rational' comparison Islam/the Orient will be found inferior to Christianity/the West. It sounds absurd, yet the same attitude is reproduced constantly, including by mainstream feminists. I think non-Muslim/Arab/'Oriental' folk should put the question to ourselves whenever considering or discussing Islam or the Middle East: 'am I being John of Segovia?'

European Orientalism produced a very rich sophisticated body of knowledge (Said stresses at the outset that his text is not about comparing this construct to reality) that produced ideas - it is the corporate institution for dealing with the Middle East/Arab/Muslim world (henceforth, problematically, 'the Orient') - politically useful to European imperialist powers (henceforth, problematically, and including the USA, 'the West'). Insofar as it studied Oriental texts, it interpreted them according to sweeping generalisations, never the human particular. The words of an ancient poet would be used as the foundation for foreign policy.

Visitors to the actual geographical Middle East were disappointed not to find the world described in classic orientalist texts, and interpreted this as the (further, because orientalist dogma starts from an assumption of faded glory) degeneration of the Orient! Confrontation with reality has not disrupted the othering construction of orientalism; everything is digested and processed by it.

For example, by 1955 the Orient described by 17th 18th century texts could not be recognised anywhere. Yet since one of the dogmas of orientalism is that the Orient cannot change, this new and strange place is out of order, full of pathological 'dis-orientals' and, I might cheekily offer, 'rogue states' which 'we have lost'. National liberation movements shattered the image of passive, fatalistic subject populations, but they were replaced with the image of 'extremists' who were not true to their real passive fatalistic natures. Anticolonial movements are interpreted as insults to Western democracy.

H.A.R Gibb argued that Islam is fundamentally flawed, yet cannot change. Any attempt to change it is a betrayal.

Orientalism ignores class interests, political circumstances and economic factors. There is only the unchanging oriental character to consider.

To conquer the Orient is to liberate it, because 'Arabs, especially Muslims know nothing about liberty & Islam is structurally favourable to fundamentalism' (this is the argument made by new-atheist critics like Dawkins and Grayling)

Latent orientalism: the distillation of ideas about the Orient & orientals eg sensuality, femininity (Said points out that orientalism is a masculinist perspective), despotism, passivity, indifference, inaccuracy, backwardness, is distinguished from manifest orientalism: stated views about oriental history, society, literature, land and identifications with other philosophies. Any change in knowledge of orientalism takes place in the latter category, never deconstructing the former.

American orientalism is even more reductive, with none of the imaginative investment of European orientalism, but with the same cultural hostility and imperial projects. Arabic is studied for policy objectives.

The liberal veneer: 'we' study 'others' to get to know them, understand their cultures, so we allow them to represent themselves (within the confining space of orientalism)

Principle dogmas of orientalism:
1. The West is rational, developed, humane, superior while the Orient is underdeveloped, aberrant, inferior
2. Abstracts are always preferable to direct evidence since Orientals cannot be trusted
3. The Orient is uniform and unchanging, incapable of self definition, and the generalised and systematic vocabulary of orientalism used to describe it is entirely objective.
4. The Orient is to be feared, pacified by research and development, preferably occupied.

The central myth is the 'arrested development of the semites'; Western power enables the reproduction of this myth.

Methodological failures of orientalism cannot be accounted for by saying the real Orient is different from orientalist portrayals or that orientalists, being Westerners, can have no inner sense of what the Orient is all about: Orientals are now educated in native lands in colonial founded underfunded universities with no good libraries and too many students. The USA is seen as the source of all learning, so students go there & learn orientalist dogma.

Said asks: How does one represent another culture? What is another culture? Is the notion of a distinct culture race/religion/civilization useful or does it always get involved in self-congratulation or hostility & aggression? Construction of identity (never natural & stable) is bound up with power and powerlessness in each society. For example, in Shalimar the Clown Rushdie presents a complex and shifting picture of religious identity in Kashmir; Islam is complicated by context and is not at all the same everywhere. Cultures are so inter-related and interdependent that unitary/simply delineated descriptions of their individuality are junk.

Scholars deny, suppress or distort the context of power that produces their systems of thought to maintain the fiction of scholarly disinterest (now we acknowledge and apologise for them, but proceed with our imperialism)

Western civilization is an ideological fiction, implying detached superiority of a handful of values & ideas meaningless outside the history of conquest immigration travel & mingling of peoples that gave western nations their present mixed identities. The USA for example is a palimpsest of different races & cultures sharing problematic histories of conquest, exterminations and major cultural & political achievements.

Said's aim is not to (paraphrased:) dissipate difference – the constitutive role of national & cultural differences in relations between people can't be denied - but to challenge the notion that difference implies hostility and the frozen, reified set of opposed essences & adversarial knowledge built out of these things. We need new way of conceiving the separations & conflicts that stimulated generations of hostility war & imperial control.

'Animosities & inequalities represent not an eternal order, but a historical experience whose end may be at hand.'

[حسين العُمري · Rating 5 out of 5]

يناقش أدوارد سعيد في هذا الكتاب " الاستشراق " كظاهرة ثقافية يشوبها الكثير من التحامل الغربي على الشرق ،، يظهر ذلك في سطحية النظرة الغربية للثقافة العربية و الاسلامية بل و الشرقية بصفة عامة فيلعب المستشرق دور الراصد لما يعتقد أنه همجية في مقابل الحضارة و التقدم الغربي فينجرف وراء " نحن " مقابل " هم " أو المسيحية و الحضارة مقابل البدائية و هنا تظهر كثير من الدراسات الاستشراقية كدعامة للعنصرية و التعالي الأوربي على الشعوب الأخرى الأقل درجة في رأيهم ،، ناقش إدوارد سعيد بشكل كبير الاستشراق من عدة جوانب مستشهداً بالعديد من الكتابات الاستشراقية على مدى فترات طويلة ،، كذلك ناقش دورها في التنظير للاستعمار و بناء صورة مشوهة عن الشعوب التي تقع في جنوب و شرق أوربا و الصورة النمطية التي رسمها هؤلاء المستشرقون وأصبحت كحقيقة لا يمكن مناقشتها بل و تم البناء عليها بشكل مستمر من الأجيال الأوربية التالية ،، في نهاية هذه الطبعة - التي ترجمها الدكتور محمد عناني بشكل متميز - سجل المؤلف ردود الفعل المعادية لكتابه و آرائه من بعض المهتمين بالشأن الاستشراقي و ناقش حججهم و انتقاداتهم بشكل جميل ،، الكتاب متميز و غني بالمعلومات و الحقائق و الأفكار المتميزة للمؤلف

[Zach Carter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rereading Orientalism in 2025, you can't help but feel despondent. The same imperial script is still being performed, the faces are new, but the lies and the bloodshed are the same.

What strikes me most on this second reading is not just the brilliance of Said’s textual analysis, but the ferocity of its relevance. When Said analyzes Ernest Renan or Silvestre de Sacy, he shows how philology is shaped by the needs of imperial rule. This is where materialism begins to press through the fabric of Said’s argument, even if he does not name it directly. Orientalism was never about “understanding” the Orient. It was about producing a form of knowledge that made conquest seem inevitable, and resistance biological/pathological. What emerges is not a set of misunderstandings, but a system of domination that operates through scholarship, literature, anthropology, diplomacy, media, and war.

Said’s most incisive insight for me is that Orientalism is not just a discourse about the East—it is a structure that stabilizes the West. “The Orient was almost a European invention,” he writes, “and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences.” This fantasy was never innocent. It functioned to construct the Orient as backward, irrational, and passive, so that Europe could see itself as modern, rational, and active. The image of the Other was a mirror that flattered empire.

None of this is abstract. Said names the countries—Egypt, Palestine, Syria, India—and names the wars. He is writing with the full weight of empire, the trauma of 1948, the violence of the British Mandate, and the U.S.-backed dismemberment of the Arab world. Said’s own position as a Palestinian scholar living in exile is part of the text’s charge and gives the critique its moral clarity.

And it is what makes this reread in 2025 feel so brutal. As I write this, Gaza is being turned into ash. Entire neighborhoods have been leveled, hundreds of thousands displaced, hundreds of thousands murdered with U.S.-supplied weapons under the pretense of “self-defense” and “counterterrorism.” It's a brutal yet urgent reminder that the Nakba never ended. Every lie Said documents is still in use: the construction of Palestinians as irrational and hyper-violent, the portrayal of Arab societies as tribal and stagnant, the framing of every political demand as existential threat. The violence is real, but the narrative is manufactured. Said saw it clearly: “Every empire… tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate.” That line could have been written yesterday. It is how the United States explained Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and every other theater of bloodshed dressed up as stability. And it is how Israel explains Gaza. It's imperial logic rooted in Said's analysis.

One of the most chilling insights in the book comes when Said describes how imperialism survives its own failures. “The legacy of Orientalism lives on,” he writes, “through the institutions and minds of those who think about the Orient in ways that validate their own superiority.” What we are left with, then, is not just an archive of racist literature, but an entire structure of perception. Orientalism is reproduced every time the Middle East is treated as a zone of crisis but not of history, agency, or revolution.

In the years since Orientalism was published, the mechanisms have changed form but not function. The Orientalist apparatus now comes wrapped in think tank jargon and liberal multiculturalism. The same condescension now wears the language of humanitarianism. “The modern Orientalist,” Said writes, “rarely writes about a whole culture or society. Instead, he writes about urgent issues, crises, or politics. The result is to elide the people entirely, rendering them objects to be managed rather than subjects of their own history.” Gaza is the most recent site of that erasure.

There are places where I wish Said had leaned harder into the material. His work on culture, literature, and psychology is invaluable, but the structural relationship between Orientalism and imperial capitalism often hovers just beneath the surface. Still, that tension makes the book sharper on reread. You can see the contradiction cracking open: the need to frame the Orient as both inferior and threatening, the use of knowledge production to stabilize economic and military control, the way Europe’s civilizational identity required a permanent racialized Other. Said doesn’t need to name dialectics for us to recognize them. He makes this clear: “Knowledge of the Orient creates the Orient, and in a sense obliterates it.”

This text is evergreen. Read it. Look at Gaza. Then read it again.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Arabs, for example, are thought of as camel-riding, terroristic, hook-nosed, venal lechers whose undeserved wealth is an affront to real civilization. Always there lurks the assumption that although the Western consumer belongs to a numerical minority, he is entitled either to own or to expend (or both) the majority of the world resources. Why? Because he, unlike the Oriental, is a true human being.”

This book has been on my to be read list pretty much since it was published (yes I am that old!). It has been much criticized, argued over and dissected since then; and much misunderstood. Said wrote an afterword almost twenty years later for s subsequent edition and my copy has the afterword, which is helpful as Said is able to address some of the criticism. Some of the criticism of Said is directly related to the Isreal/Palestinian conflict which still continues. Bernard Lewis argues Said was part of a Nazi-linked antisemitic conspiracy who depicted Western scholars as evil (Said was Palestinian and had firm views about the conflict). I am going to resist diving into all the debates, as whole books have been written about that.
It is useful to note that Said’s main focus in on the Middle East rather than the Indian subcontinent and on Islam rather than Hinduism or Buddhism. He examines the approaches of French and British (and some German) scholars from the late eighteenth century onwards. Pretty much from the time Napoleon invaded Egypt, looking at their interpretations and arguments. Said’s own approach owes a good deal to Foucault and Gramsci. He firmly ties western approaches to the East to Imperialism and the arguments made by the British and French that they were a civilising and positive influence:

“Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice.”
My understanding of the origins of modern Orientalism, its nineteenth century roots, is limited, particularly in relation to French scholarship. Consequently I did find this work illuminating. I know scholarship has moved on, as has the interface with Islam, but Said does cover a great deal of ground. There is plenty to dispute and disagree with, but the primary argument about how Western Europe has approached the Middle East still holds and is especially pertinent with the recent escalation in the conflict in Palestine.
In an odd sort of way it feels like I have absorbed some of the arguments in this book over the years. Some of this feels a little dated but, for me Said was on the right side of history, whatever the flaws in Orientalism.

“I have spent a great deal of my life during the past thirty-five years advocating the rights of the Palestinian people to national self-determination, but I have always tried to do that with full attention paid to the reality of the Jewish people and what they suffered by the way of persecution and genocide. The paramount thing is that the struggle for equality in Palestine/Israel should be directed toward a humane goal, that is, coexistence, and not further suppression and denial. Not accidentally, I indicate that Orientalism and modern anti-Semitism have common roots. Therefore, it would seem to be a vital necessity for independent intellectuals always to provide alternative models to the reductively simplifying and confining ones, based on mutual hostility, that have prevailed in the Middle East and elsewhere for so long.”

[Rob Salkowitz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Intellectual porn for self-hating westerners, shockingly became one of the most influential texts of the last 25 years. Said's pompous, self-important writing style papers over yawning gaps in scholarship and breathtaking dishonesty. Finally, some academics appear to be getting over their institutional infatuation with Said and the critical tide is starting to turn. None too soon.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Orientalism is a masterpiece of comparative literature studies and deconstruction, published in 1978 it is arguably Said's most rigorous piece but undoubtedly his most influential. This is a examination of the academic discipline of Oriental Studies, which has a long history most of the European universities. Oriental Studies is a pastiche areas of study which include philology, linguistics, ethnography, and the interpretation of culture through the discovery, recovery, compilation, and translation of Oriental texts. Said makes it clear that he is not breaking new ground. Said limits Orientalism on how English, French, and American scholars have approached the Arab societies of North Africa and the Middle East. Although at times he refers to other periods - ranging as far back as the Greeks, the time period he covers is more limited than the scholarly field really extend. Said stays within the confines of the late eighteenth century to the present, whereas European scholarship on the Orient dates back to the High Middle Ages. Within his time frame, however, Said extends his examination beyond the works of recognized Orientalist academics to take in literature, journalism, travel books, and religious and philosophical studies to produce a broadly historical and anthropological perspective incorporating Foucaultian notions of "Discourse" and Gramscian notions of "Inventories".

His book makes three major claims. Firstly, that Orientalism, although purporting to be an objective, disinterested, and rather esoteric field, in fact functioned to serve political ends. Next, his second claim is that Orientalism helped define a European (mainly English and French) self-image. Lastly, Said argues that Orientalism has produced a false description of Arabs and Islamic culture.

[Aurelia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Orientalism is a study in the history of ideas, by Palestinian-American comparative literature professor Edward Said. The work traces the development of the perception of westerners of easterners from antiquity to the early XX century. It is mainly focused on the Levant and the Muslim East. East Asia is mentioned only as a destination for which the Muslim East was an important gateway. Said builds his theses on two major concepts of XX century philosophy: Michel Foucault’s ideas about knowledge and how it is related to power, and Antonio Gramsci’s cultural hegemony. Although the disciplines of philology and linguistics were very important in the field of Orientalism, Said gives much more importance to the literature written about the East in the XIX century, literature being his field of study, but for a reader who is not familiar with these authors it might be difficult to criticize his interpretations of these works.

 

From Antiquity to the middle ages, the East is represented as the essential Other. It is everything the West is not. Ancient authors enjoyed characterizing it with vague epithets, as long as they are not usually used to describe the West. The East is thus exotic, sensual, slavish, despotic…This will only be amplified by the coming of Islam as a political power, and the huge threat it represented on the door steps of Europe. It is an era of fear for westerners, combined with complete ignorance and misunderstanding. With the rise of the West in the beginning of the modern era, westerners started to develop a much wider interest in the region, with all the economic and military advantages a much more precise knowledge could give them. Travelers were the first to open what will become an odyssey of one civilization to describe and characterize another, a very unique venture in human History. Then the conquerors showed up, with England in India and Napoleon in Egypt. The marching troops were not only infantrymen, but also sophisticated scholars who went to explore what time had swallowed from these ancient civilizations, to expose what the indigenous population lost or forgot, and save it from oblivion. It was time for major linguistic and archeological discoveries, the birth of Egyptology, Assyriology, biblical criticism and the indo-European hypotheses. Then the romantic dreamers followed along to get their share in this great conquest, some of these authors did visit the East, and some of them only heard of it, but all were very enthusiastic about exploiting its inherent difference and exotic appeal in their literary projects.

 

The conquerors, scholars and the writers were all expressing a sort of unchallenged Volonté de Puissance over the East. Ruling it and knowing it were two inseparable things. The indigenous population was not only under the shackles of the imperialists but also had the essence of its traditions, religion, way of life and whole world view described, linked to an essential character which is the Eastern character, once known it is enough to understand what makes an easterner one and what differentiates him from a westerner. All of this inside a now established institution called Orientalism, recruiting an army of scholars and backed by Empires and agents overseas. Nothing will represent this further than the merger of the scholar and the administrator to create the ultimate governor of easterners who govern efficiently because he knows what is most essential in his governed. This is personalized in the imperial agents of the beginning of the XX century such as Lord Cromer and T.E Lawrence.  

 

The fading of the two major European imperial powers will be a major shift in the discipline. France and Britain are no longer the centers of the study of the East, although their strong legacy remained pivotal in all that came after. American institutions of eastern studies produce much of the orientalist literature today. Even though it blended with other disciplines such as Sociology and History, it did not mean that some of its XIX century premises changed. Usually it is the same paradigm, dividing the world to two antagonistic entities, then searching for the essence of the Easterners and its consequences in the world they live in and on others around them.

 

Said argues that Orientalism is an essentialist reductionist and politically motivated discipline.  It institutionalized and perpetuated clichés about the East and gave them the prestige of a real social science. It served the agendas of the conquering empires. In the study of other human groups, the dangers of human fiction are numerous. Orientalists not only described the East but also gave it a voice. They spoke for the East, retrieved its treasures and saved its legacy. Real Easterners were never heard nor had the chance to fight back. Orientalists were thus free to perpetuate the same images over and over. The very notion of the East is in itself a gross approximation which allocates a certain character to the inhabitants of a vast geographical area, neglecting all the differences and the peculiarities of each of the sub groups. It also presents group identity as rigid, static and eternal. Which is far from reality. Civilization is a collective human construct which keeps evolving and changing. The identity of a certain group is not an unchanging fact, History shows us that it is rather a fiction created overtime under certain circumstances and responding to certain needs.   


Said also questions the possibility of the very existence of a disinterested scholarship. Any scholar is evolving and serving a structure which defines his methods and sets his goals, a system which he cannot escape. The quest can never exist outside of his author’s ideology, if we define ideology as a vision he holds of the world. Most of the time he is either defending it or refuting its adversaries.


For a lot of readers, Orientalism will sound like a long rant against western imperialism and also western scholarship. Most will agree about the imperialism part but for the scholarship it is a more complicated matter. The endeavor to know the East, no matter how flawed or politically motivated, is one unique venture in Human History. It is undeniable that the ancient languages deciphered, the archeological sites uncovered were a monumental human achievement, an unparalleled contribution to human knowledge. Said’s language seems to discount this to concentrate only on the fact that it was done by imperial means. Even if it all started by a desire to define, know and master the Other, westerners went further. They are not the only group who use the concept of Otherness either. It is enough to open a random page from the Coran to find a strong distinction between the believers and the non-believers, and perhaps in some Chinese chronicles, they are describing some uncivilized neighbors they fight or conquer. The systematic study of westerners is a step further than hatred and fear, although this does not justify its means yet it must be acknowledged that it was an enormous gain to humanity in general.

 

Said rarely mentionnes a defining parameter in the very existence of Orientalism.  The discipline wouldn’t have existed or had the power it had if Easterners did not leave the void it came to fill. The silence of the East is real and not a mere fiction of orientalists.  Scholarships in the East lagged behind and still lagging to this day. Eastern scholars use orientalist works as their starting points, if they had access to it or knew about its existence. Easterners failed to write about themselves let alone write about others. Despite the blame on westerners for this one sided narrative they create, it is difficult to say that the other side was not excluded intentionally, but it did not show up to the discussion. Said seems aware of this, in order to have a real cultural dialogue the two sides should at least contribute with an equal degree. Knowing how hard it is in the current circumstances, any reform in the discipline still has to come from inside, from the westerner side again.


This is particularly true in the case of the Muslim East. Which is where Said spends most of the last half of the book. Bringing China to his reasoning will complicate the equation. Sure in the late XX century so many circumstances changed its relationship to the west which challenged the way the west viewed it. In the meantime nothing really changed in the Muslim East since Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt, the animosity with the west has never reached a similar level since decolonization, this situation allow so much of the Orientalist tradition to be valid to this day. If orientalists spoke from inside an imperialist interventionist structure from which they cannot be isolated, then Said speaks from a structure which is marked by centuries of humiliation and frustration. A Palestinian displaced by overwhelming ideological, military and materially superior powers.


I apologize for such a long review! So many things to say. Edward Said’s Orientalism is a book to love and hate. That is why he sparked so much controversy. This is proof that after all those centuries of eastern studies were not a waste of time. Knowledge is a collective effort which is constantly questioned. It is only with contributions such as this book that advances are made.

[Mehrsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just cannot believe that this book existed out in the world and I did not read it until now. I've had it on my bookshelf for years, but I guess I figured I knew what it contained. I did not. This book was revelatory and also so familiar. It explained and contextualized all of my issues with the way the western cannon has talked and still talks about Islam and the east. It's been fetishized. I'd love an update now that the east is no longer "female" and sexual, but it's male and irrationally angry. Still, the text holds up because we are still orientalizing the Islamic world. The part that made me gasp out loud was when he talked about how Western scholars have claimed reason and rationality as the sphere of the west and unreason and softness as the sphere of the orient. You still see that so strongly in the anti-islamic rhetoric coming out of rationalist spheres of the new atheist movements. And I want to say, dude, we invented reason!

[E. G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Preface (2003)
Acknowledgments
Introduction

--Orientalism

Afterword (1995)
Notes
Index

[Inam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still the most influential book in Cultural, Near Eastern, Arab, Islamic, and Post-Colonialist Studies.

Interesting how everyone giving it a bad/ambivalent review is someone that simply can't acknowledge history - 200-300 years of colonialism which was then only replaced by neo-imperialism in the form of wars, economic exploitation, and political interference through force. Is the world any different even today? Obviously not. You're not hating the West by acknowledging this truth, Edward Said asserts this acknowledgment is the first step towards a fairer understanding of both sides. Knowledge and patriotism aren't mutually exclusive, contrary to what others might have you believe with their bigotry.

The "tide isn't changing" against this book in academia or outside, this book is as relevant today as it was 30 years ago. Nor is this book some vitriolic outcry against the West that some ignorant reviewers like to fallaciously classify it as.
Rather, it simply acknowledges a bias and uneven power dynamic in the shaping of East-West relations, conditions that are supported by historical and cultural facts, which ultimately resulted in how the West views the East today. A quite reasonable conclusion.

This is a book lauded by intellectuals and critics alike, the few "responses" to Said's assertions would be laughable if they weren't so lacking in credibility, written by pseudo-scholars that are ignored in academia like Ibn Warraq and Daniel Pipes but somehow get 5 stars on amazon.com from xenophobes and islamophobes.

Even Bernard Lewis, at one point the most influential Near Eastern Studies scholar in the West, only criticized Orientalism because he was forced to. In Orientalism, Said asserts that those of a particular culture, with appropriate education, intellect, and experience, were more capable of teaching their culture than a white man who only knows of that culture through his immersion in the academic bubble. Of course, Mr. Lewis couldn't stand by this as a westerner who made his living teaching about the Middle East.

Yet this isn't really a controversial position considering African-American Studies is taught by African-Americans as is Chicano Studies by Latinos. So why is it so shocking that in studies of the East, a minority has a more relevant view of their culture than a random who only knows of that culture through the vacuum of academia? The truth is, it isn't, if anything it's quite logical and reasonable - two characteristics we need more of in a post 9/11 world.

I urge you to not pay mind to the fallacious reasoning of those giving this book bad reviews, there's a reason it's still extremely influential and relevant even 35 years after being published. How many works can stand both the test of time and the test of critical academic scrutiny? Not many, which is why this work has continued to influence many professors and scholars. I hope someday to also join such scholars rising under its shadow like Columbia's eminent Near Eastern professor Massoud.

This was the first book to inspire me to become a professor, philosopher, and cultural critic just like Edward Said and I can proudly say I'm on that path.

To ignore this book is to simply ignore world history. I recommend this book so highly that if you read one book a year, this is the one for 2010.

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the problem with reading Orientalism today is that much of what he says (that was so revolutionary at the time) is so accepted now (at least among most academics). He's a brilliant writer, although he did irritate me at times (he constantly vilified anyone trying to represent anything, claiming, rightfully, that it is only possible to have a misrepresentation of anything built on one's own experiences and culture, and I did truly want to remind him that was what he was doing with Orientalism, too). Some of his scholarship is also a bit off (mistaking certain writers for other people with the same name, that sort of thing), but still, a seminal work. (One last aside--I would have also liked to have seen more women writers acknowledged by him, although at least in the case of Lucie Duff Gordon, he would have been more hardpressed to criticize her as he could some of the major Orientalists.)

[Mohammed omran · Rating 3 out of 5]

انه الكتاب العربي الوحيد في قائمه مائه كتاب غيروا تاريخ العالم للنابغه ادوارد سعيد
امتاع ابداع
لن تعتبر قارىء ومثقف بدون ذلك الكتاب
من وجهه نظرى
سرد
بساطه مفاهيم سلسه انيقه
تم ترجمته الي عده لغات

[Fatima Alammar · Rating 5 out of 5]

السنة التي تقرأ فيها الاستشراق يجب أن تكون في أهميّة السنة التي تخرجت فيها، أو حصلت على أول عملٍ لك، أو تزوجتْ. سنة فارقة؛ لأن الكتاب يشكّل بالفعل علامة فارقة في قائمة القراءات.

يتناول الكتاب تحليل "خطاب" الاستشراق، وينقسم إلى ثلاثة محاور: نطاق الاستشراق، أبنية الاستشراق وإعادة بنائها، الاستشراق الآن. ثيمة الكتاب أو الفرضية التي يقوم عليها تتلخص في أن (الاستشراق مذهب فُرِض فرضاً على الشرق) وهو (جهاز ثقافي ينحصر في العداء والنشاط وإصدار الأحكام وفرض "الحقائق" والمعرفة).

بأسلوبٍ عميق، ونثرٍ آسر، ودقة لافتة يعرض سعيد تاريخ "التحيّزات" التي تكتسي طابعاً علميا زائفا، والرسائل المضمرة في الاستشراق، وتواطؤه المريب مع السلطة. وهو يكرر في صفحاتٍ كثيرة رفضه لتصوّر وجود جوهرٍ ثابت للشرق (أو حتى الغرب). (الاستشراق يقدم الشرق في صورة أنماطٍ ثابتة مجردة)، وبذكاء يلاحظ (الاختلاف المضمر والأقوى القائم بين المستشرق والشرقي، هو أن الأول يقوم بالكتابة، والثاني هو المكتوب عنه، والسلبية هي الدور المفترض للثاني، وأما الأول فيفترض فيه القوة التي تمكنه من الملاحظة والدرس وهلم جرا).

سيجعلك المؤلف في النهاية تنفر من لغة التعميمات الفضفاضة، والحشو والتطويل، والأحكام الساذجة، والصور الموغلة في السلبية، والقوالب الفكرية المغلقة، والمواقف العدائية المُغرِضة، وضيق الأفق.

إنه كتاب في (تهافت) الاستشراق، يمتاز بقدرة رهيبة على تفحص عيوبه ومساوئه، وسعيد يخلص إلى أن (الاستشراق رغم أوجه فشله، ورطانته المؤسفة، ونزعته العنصرية التي لا تكاد تخفى، وجهازه الفكري الهزيل، يزدهر اليوم. بل أني أرى ما يدعو إلى الانزعاج في انتشار تأثيره إلى "الشرق" نفسه، إذ تحفل صفحات الكتب والمجلات المنشورة بالعربية (وبلا شك باليابانية وشتى اللهجات الهندية وغيرها من اللغات الشرقية) بتحليلاتٍ من الدرجة الثانية يكتبها العرب عن "العقل العربي" وعن "الإسلام" وغير ذلك من أقوال في عداد الأساطير).

[J TC · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edward W Said - Orientalismo. Representações Ocidentais do Oriente
Orientalismo de Edward Said é um livro sobre as representações que o ocidente faz do “Oriente”, tema que o autor analisa em três dimensões – numa perspectiva histórica, uma outra literária e de filologia e uma última política. São dimensões diferentes que Said entrelaça e entre as quais estabelece pontes. Sendo ele professor de literatura comparada e especialista em filologia, como decorre do texto, dá mais ênfase a estes aspetos, o que me parece excessivo para que um leigo o possa acompanhar. Contudo, nesta abordagem que seguramente faz com adequação e profundidade, a limitação é seguramente minha. Porém o que mais me interessa são os lados político e histórica que no contexto do livro me parecem ficar demasiado perdidos.
Quando o autor aborda o “orientalismo” pelo lado político e histórico o texto ganha uma outra vitalidade e capacidade de agarrar o leitor, e fá-lo com tal intensidade que fico com curiosidade em ler outras obras suas como “A Questão da Palestina” ou “Cultura e Imperialismo”.
Em Orientalismo a questão essencial para Edward Said é a forma como o ocidente vê o oriente, e de que forma essa visão deturpa a realidade mas também inquina o que o ocidente conhece do “Oriente”, atribuindo-lhe características que ele não tem. Diz o autor – quem observa, o que observa não corresponde ao observado. Diz ainda que este erro de paralaxe resulta de preconceitos, e que estes resultam em novos preconceitos dificultado o conhecimento da realidade quanto mais se aprofunda esta abordagem de conhecimento.
A leitura que Said faz da realidade está correta, mas tirando preconceitos óbvios o autor deveria ser mais prolixo em nomeá-los. E este aspecto parece-me importante porque a distância entre quem observa e o que é observado existe sempre. Quantos estrangeiros como Henry Fielding; Ramón del Valle-Inclán; Richard Francis Burton; Miguel de Unamuno; Edith Wharton; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; Charles Dickens; Hans Christian Andersen escreveram sobre os portugueses descrevendo-os como um povo dado à saudade, à melancolia e fatalismo, à espiritualidade e à introspecção. Estavam errados? Enquanto povo damos estas impressões a quem nos visita, ou são injustas estas observações? É óbvio que os observados têm sempre uma opinião enviesada sobre si. Empresas e organizações quando pretendem uma avaliação isenta não a procuram fora do seu círculo interno?
A relação entre “Nós e os Outros” é sempre uma relação complicada. Numas coisas vemo-nos piores do que nos descrevem, mas o saldo é habitualmente mais positivo para o nosso lado. Eu sou português, sou melhor que os “outros”. Sou do Porto, sou melhor que os do outro lado do rio. Sou melhor, assim me vejo, que o meu vizinho de cima apesar do mesmo estar em quase tudo um nível acima de mim. Porém, será que isto faz de mim xenófobo, racista, narcisista ou apenas humano? Nunca somos o que achamos que somos e muito menos quem gostaríamos de ser! E é isto que Said não colocou em equação. Nunca somos o que gostaríamos de ser nem provavelmente como os outros nos veem. Somos apenas humanos.
Para Edward Said Orientalismo significa a forma como o ocidente vê e descreve o oriente. Partindo deste pressuposto Edward Said descreve-nos de que forma o conceito foi evoluindo ao longo da história, que transformações teve e como foi transformado e moldado em diferentes contextos por múltiplas figuras que sobre ele se pronunciaram desde a antiguidade clássica mas de forma mais incisiva nos séculos XIX e XX.



XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX


Said argumenta que as primeiras noções de "Oriente" já aparecem na Grécia e na Roma antiga, onde o Oriente (principalmente a Pérsia) era visto como o oposto, uma região exótica e desconhecida, mas em simultâneo uma ameaça ao mundo greco-romano (obras de Heródoto e as descrições das Guerras Persas, começam a delinear uma imagem do Oriente como o "Outro".


Durante a Idade Média, o contato entre o Ocidente e o Oriente intensificou-se durante as Cruzadas e com o comércio com o mundo islâmico. Nesta representação, para além do perigo do outro, perigo que foi amplificado quando os preconceitos religiosos e culturais manifestaram a sua influencia e os muçulmanos eram retratados como inimigos da cristandade (escritos de S. Tomas de Aquino e os cronistas das cruzadas). Com o renascimento as trocas comerciais aumentaram de intensidade e com elas as trocas culturais e uma mais profunda curiosidade pela cultura oriental (relatos de Marco Polo e de outros viajantes europeus).
Com a expansão dos impérios e as fronteiras coloniais (sec XVII e XVIII), o conceito de orientalismo começou a cristalizar no ocidente como uma disciplina académica. Nesse período, o Oriente e particularmente o que se relacionava com o Oriente Médio, a Índia ou a China começou a ser estudado de forma sistemática, mas sempre dentro de uma estrutura de dominação imperial. O conhecimento produzido sobre o Oriente servia para facilitar a dominação colonial (Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle; William Jones). O século XIX marca a consolidação do orientalismo como uma disciplina e temática académica à medida que os impérios europeus (especialmente o britânico e o francês) intensificavam sua presença no Oriente. Durante esse período, o orientalismo tornou-se mais científico e institucionalizado, e figuras como filólogos, historiadores e arqueólogos dedicaram-se ao estudo do Oriente, mas sempre dentro da lógica do poder imperial. O Oriente era visto como algo a ser "classificado", "civilizado" e "controlado" (campanha Egípcia de Napoleão Bonaparte; Ernest Renan; Silvestre de Sacy; Edward William Lane).
No século XX, o orientalismo continuou a ser uma ferramenta poderosa da política imperial dos estados, mesmo com o declínio formal dos impérios europeus após a Primeira Guerra Mundial. As representações do Oriente, especialmente no cinema, na literatura e nos meios de comunicação de massa, perpetuavam estereótipos sobre os povos orientais, agora vistos sob a lente do "subdesenvolvimento" e da necessidade de modernização ocidental. Ao mesmo tempo, movimentos nacionalistas e de resistência nos países orientais começavam a emergir, questionando essas representações e lutando pela descolonização (T.E. Lawrence; Gertrude Bell; obras como "As Mil e Uma Noites" foram adaptadas ao cinema para criar uma imagem de fantasia e exotismo que influenciou gerações de ocidentais, desde Hollywood até os romances de aventura).
Com o fim dos impérios e os movimentos anticoloniais, e em especial a partir da segunda metade do século XX, houve um crescente questionamento do orientalismo, à medida que os países anteriormente colonizados se tornavam independentes e os acadêmicos pós-coloniais começaram a criticar as representações ocidentais do Oriente. Said coloca-se como parte desse movimento de busca e desafio às premissas e ideologias que sustentaram o orientalismo por séculos (Said; Frantz Fanon; Aimé Césaire; Albert Memmi).
Segundo said, o orientalismo, segundo Said, resulta de um processo evolutivo no qual o Ocidente, ao longo dos séculos, construiu e refinou uma visão distorcida do Oriente, cada vez mais institucionalizada e ligada ao poder imperial, um processo pelo qual não se representava apenas um oriente que dessa forma ficava cada vez mais moldado à dominação imperial.

Para Said o termo orientalismo representa um discurso no sentido foucaultiano, ou seja, um conjunto de práticas, representações e conceitos que moldam a forma como o Oriente é conhecido e entendido, e o poder é exercido pelo de forma a justificar o colonialismo e o imperialismo ocidentais. O oriental é visto como o outro, alguém, um local oposto ao ocidente, um lugar de exotismo, irracionalidade, atraso e despotismo, em contraste com o Ocidente. Para Said estas representações são simplificações distorcidas que negam a complexidade e a diversidade das culturas orientais.
Neste processo de descrição, há o poder de controlar o que se descreve o que de acordo com Michel Foucault é uma forma de poder. O ocidente ao descrever o seu oposto, o oriente, controla e domina o conhecimento que produz. Este poder legitimado pela descrição desempenhou um papel importante no processo de colonização (Médio Oriente, Ásia e Norte da África(.
Para Said, esta visão deturpada que o Ocidente fazia do Oriente resultava de o tratar como uma entidade única; frequentemente descrito com estereótipos simplificados de exotismo, sensualidade, misticismo ou o despotismo; as narrativas orientais construídas pelo Ocidente descreviam o Oriente como passivo, decadente ou incapaz de autogovernar-se. O Oriente era visto como algo a ser "descoberto", "estudado" e "civilizado" pelo Ocidente, negando qualquer agência ou iniciativa própria aos povos orientais. O oriental era um objeto da história, enquanto os ocidentais eram os sujeitos, ou seja, os protagonistas do progresso e da civilização; as narrativas ocidentais descreviam o Oriente como atrasado e irracional, e deixavam de fora todos os aspectos que não se encaixavam nessa imagem. Mesmo eventos históricos complexos, como revoluções ou resistências, eram interpretados como sinais de fraqueza ou desordem, sem um esforço genuíno para entender as causas profundas desses movimentos; o Oriente era frequentemente retratado como exótico, misterioso e sensual – um lugar de fantasias e escapismo. Essa imagem, em grande parte fantasiosa, era usada tanto na literatura quanto na arte, reforçando a ideia de que o Oriente era algo "outro", diferente e inferior ao Ocidente, mas ao mesmo tempo atraente no seu exotismo; Said acusa ainda os estudiosos ocidentais de se terem apropriado do saber sobre o Oriente para seu próprio benefício, sem reconhecer ou valorizar os intelectuais e pensadores orientais; o Orientalismo é ainda uma ferramenta de poder político que justifica a expansão colonial, a intervenção militar e as políticas imperialistas do Ocidente. Ao representar o Oriente como incapaz, o Ocidente encontrava uma justificativa para invadir, colonizar e dominar essas regiões, afirmando que era para "ajudar" ou "civilizar"; as representações ocidentais frequentemente retratavam o Oriente como algo preso ao passado, incapaz de se modernizar ou acompanhar o progresso. No entanto, Said argumenta que isso ignorou os processos e transformações que ocorreram nas sociedades orientais, especialmente na segunda metade do século XIX e no início do século XX reforçando dessa forma as estruturas de domínio.

[Sense of History]

A Pioneering Study in Intellectual History
Make no mistake: this book is not about the East at all - no matter how you fill in that geographical-political-cultural term - but about the West, Western culture in the broad sense of the word (including its political, social and economic dimension). The essence of Said’s thesis is that in Western culture an image of the East was created very early on as the fundamentally different: mysterious, strange, exotic, somewhat attractive, but above all different and therefore threatening. He delves deeply into history, and devotes most of his book to how 'Orientalism' has evolved from a rather vague mythical-social concept to a concrete literary movement (after all Said was a literary scientist) and in the course of the 19th century also into a branch of scientific practice. In addition, he discusses concrete writers such as Dante, Chateaubriand and E.M. Forster, but also scientists such as Ernest Renan, Edward William Lane and Louis Massignon.

strengths
Said certainly has an eye for nuances: with each of these authors there are different accents, and throughout history the concept of the 'Orient' is constantly evolving, if only geographical: ranging from ancient Persia and Egypt, to Arabia and Islam, to India and even South East Asia, to shrink back to the Middle East and especially Islam in the 2nd half of the 20th century. Three things keep coming back: the orientalist discourse always has Western superiority as a starting point, and in the 19th century that even led to the overt mission to drag the 'passive and backward' Orient along in the advance of (Western) civilisation. Said was clearly inspired by the work of Michel Foucault and his thesis that any discourse is an expression of a power relationship, in this case colonialism and imperialism; Said adds that Orientalism also precedes that colonialism, made it possible, supported it and also was strengthened and influenced by it. A second characteristic of 'Orientalism' that is stressed is that it mainly says something about the West itself, because it is simply constitutive of Western identity: as there is a ‘different, retarded and strange’ East, it is also immediately clear that the West must stand for civilization and enlightenment. And a third important characteristic is that the concept of ‘Orient’ among the Orientalists is unchanging, does not allow nuance; it is a frozen concept (“the typical Arab always is lazy”).

So I certainly support the extensive praise that this work has received, which has led to a much more critical view of Western culture, both in the West itself and beyond. Of course, it also has something to offer for the view of the West on other cultures: the African, the native American, Chinese, Polynesian (and why not: the Russian, those of the Balkans), and so on. Edward Said only focussed on the ‘Orient’, because he is right that no other approach was as deep, elaborate, persistent and as fundamental to Western civilization in general as 'Orientalism'.

Since its publication, in 1978, this book also has received a lot of criticism. Said is said to have written a purely anti-Western book and has feeded the hateful movements against the West in their (sometimes violent) struggle. Anyone who has read this book thoroughly will have to admit that this reproach is unjustified. Said really does his best to elaborate his thesis from a nuanced theoretical framework (the relationship between culture and society), with a subtle eye for constant shifting, the fluidness of concepts and opinions, and at the same time placing ‘Orientalism’ in a context that immediately exposes how generally human that tendency is to reduce the other to a reductionist essence ("otherness").

weaknesses
But the book also contains elements that in a certain sense justify criticism. Said does not always write coherently, has been rather sloppy in the construction of this book, and occasionally is fiercely polemic (especially his criticism of the Arabist Bernard Lewis is extremely harsh). Ultimately, this book is an engaged piece of writing: it is an explicit position against ‘Orientalism’, that is to say, against reducing the East to an essence that is constructed and self-nourishing. Also in his personal life, Said did not shy away from polemics, and in the United States in particular, that - as an advocate of the Palestinian cause – has done his reputation much harm.

Detail criticism is certainly also possible on the selectiveness in this work: Said only focuses on authors who support his thesis. This can be scientifically justified at the level of hypothesis formation, but not in a final assessment of reality. I notice that very influential works such as Marco Polo’s report of his (alleged?) trip to Mongolian China and Montesquieu's Persian homage in “Lettres Persanes” are completely missing. And that is strange.

But for me, the weaknesses of this work do not entirely outweigh the strengths of it. Perhaps it’s best to view this book as a pioneering work: Said has shown us how the dominant position of the West in the 19th and 20th centuries found its inspiration and justification in a much longer existing way of looking at that 'other' East, and how that ‘Orientalism’ in turn was strengthened and inspired by concrete colonial and imperialist action. More nuances and more context may be appropriate, but you cannot ignore this fact. And a relevant evolution is that after Said, a whole scientific branch of post-colonial, "subaltern" studies has started that continue to feed the debate. That debate is also very varied: sometimes nuanced, sometimes very extreme, but at least it is an intellectual debate, and only through this a multifaceted, enriching view of history and reality can only be won.

[HajarRead · Rating 5 out of 5]

Une lecture essentielle pour tout le monde, qui que vous soyez. La postface écrite par Edward Said 16 ans après la publication de son essai est très intéressante et enrichissante puisqu'il y revient sur les critiques et diverses interprétations faites de son texte aux quatre coins du monde et nous rappelle ce que son texte N'EST PAS, mais l'expérience démontre qu'il est très difficile de ne pas y voir ce que chacun espère ou redoute... La citation choisie par Edward Said au début de son essai prend tout son sens "Ils ne peuvent se représenter eux-mêmes ; ils doivent être représentés." Karl Marx.

[Tala🦈 (mrs.skywalker.reads) · Rating 5 out of 5]

nie będę udawać, że wszystko zrozumiałam, ale czułam, jak powiększa mi się mózg

[Bryn Hammond · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been ashamed I hadn’t read Orientalism, and now I know I had reason to be ashamed. It’s rightly a classic. Though its ideas have seeped out so that much was familiar, there was a lot of clarity in going back to source.

I expected a more ‘pugnacious’ book, to use a word from the back cover. But it’s not pugnacious in style or content. Perhaps in the first shock of publication it seemed so. It’s a fair-minded book, ‘humanist’ in a word he refuses to relinquish (that wins my heart). His point is not to condemn or consign to oblivion the entirety of the West’s scholarship and art on the Orient. He just makes us aware of the structures of thought in place. When it came to figures I have an attachment to (T.E. Lawrence; his hero Charles Doughty; other travelers), I never felt Said was telling me I have to cease to read them. And I wasn’t disenchanted, because I knew these guys were riddled with Orientalism even if I didn’t have the terms (in fact, I’m stalled in Doughty from years back where he has an egregious instance; I’ll get over it and pick him up again, for his wonderful observation and the prose style Lawrence so admired). You cannot say fairer than what he says of Richard Burton, along with the useful analysis that only Said has said.

This book is a feat of thought that probably has its little inexactitudes as his detractors like to point out. It re-visioned things and has a larger scope than the still-contentious area of 'Islam' and 'the West' (still? I’m glad he’s not alive). He explains how scholarship isn't innocent of politics – not just in the case of the West on Islam, and not even to fault that case, because scholarship cannot exist in a safe bubble, away from the hustle and bustle of the politicised world around us. I think it is this which gets backs up, more than the charge that he is anti-West (he isn’t). I’ve seen scholars respond that they are indeed innocent of politics; but if I ever cherished that thought, too much reading history has ruined me. If I can tell a not-irrelevant tale: in my own research area, in Asia, in his Orient, as an innocent researcher who didn’t know much about historiography, I grew increasingly flummoxed and exasperated by the attitudinal problems in mainstream, prestigious histories. It turns out, the best thing I could have done in order to understand what I saw was wrong with Mongol history-writing, was read Said. Its applicability goes wider than Islam-and-the-West.

The only time I think he’s irascible in tone is in the 1995 Afterword, when he’s obviously been in a feud with Bernard Lewis. I’m sorry his book met hostility in certain quarters, because, as I say, it’s not damnatory of the tradition, and if Orientalists or their heirs don’t see there’s room for this sort of criticism, that’s sad. With his 2003 Preface – the year he died – he has returned to the serene tones of the main work, although, with the downturn in world events, he sounds a sadder and a wiser man.

The book was written as a classic ought to be, without the jargon of the day and a pleasure to read. It may become too detailed in its case studies for most people’s purposes; I used the skip button, but this is not my last encounter with Said’s great work.

[Morgan Blackledge · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one has been on my list for decades.

I finally read it.

Part of me CANT BELIEVE I waited this long.

Another part of me is GRATEFUL I did.

This book is so POWERFUL.

It’s a KNOCKOUT.

I’m kind of speechless. And I’m DEFINITELY unqualified to comment on this field defining, historic, landmark piece of critical scholarship.

But (for the sake of me in the future, and maybe you if you become inspired to read it) I will attempt to cite some of the major ideas/themes.

Edward Said was a Palestinian-American scholar, literary critic, and public intellectual.

His work has had a MASSIVE impact on post-colonial theory and literary/cultural criticism.

Said brought attention to the Palestinian struggle and genocide throughout his career.

Said died in 2003, but his intellectual legacy endures through his writings (particularly this book) and the ongoing relevance of his ideas.

Orientalism is a term Said coined to refer to the derogatory stereotypical, and racist depictions of Arab and East Asian people and cultures by Western scholars, writers, artists and politicians.

Said argues that Orientalism sets up a TOXIC binary between the West (Occident) and the East (Orient), where the West is seen as rational, developed, humane, and superior, while the East is irrational, undeveloped, barbaric, and violent.

Said argued that Orientalist scholarship and cultural production served as a justification for colonial and imperial ambitions, providing a rationale for Western military and geopolitical domination, and cultural/economic exploitation of Eastern and Arab people and their resources.

Said was a RELENTLESS critique of racist scholarship that studies Arabs and Islam and which perpetuates antisemitic stereotypes.

Said posited that historically (and presently), Orientalist scholarship isn’t simply an academic pursuit, but also functions as a mechanism in the larger apparatus of anti Arab anti Muslim racism, exploitation, oppression, and genocide.

NOTE:

Said is NOT PRO/ANTI WESTERN.

Said is not PRO/ANTI ARAB/MUSLUM.

Said is DEFINITELY not PRO/ANTI JEWISH/ISREAL.

Said is a cultural critic and historical scholar.

Siad is PAINSTAKINGLY careful in his approach.

Said RESISTS the TOXIC BINARY of ORIENTAL/OCCIDENTAL

Said is ANTI RACISM/COLONIALISM/GENOCIDE.

Orientalism is NOT an ANTI WESTERN polemic.

Orientalism is a focused, well resourced deconstruction and critique of a particular racist ideology and practice.

GREAT BOOK.

IMPORTANT BOOK.

GREAT TIME TO READ IT.

5/5 ⭐️

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ever since its publication in 1978, this has been an iconic work, a book that is constantly referred to, be it in very divergent ways: it is praised in heaven by some and banned to hell by others. So, the least you can say is that this work gives a very own, original view of the way the West has looked and still looks to the East.

I immediately stress two fraught terms here: "West" and "East", because that is where it all starts, with that distinction. It is to the great credit of Said that he demonstrates that precisely that distinction - philosophically formulated as a reductionist essentialism - has played a very important role in Western history: “Orientalism was ultimately a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the familiar (Europe, the West, "us") and the strange (the Orient, the East, "them"). This vision in a sense created and then served the two worlds thus conceived.” For Said that interaction between image and action is crucial. Specifically: the conception of the Orient (a very broad and constantly fluctuating concept) as mysterious but also passive, backward and at the same time threatening became the source of inspiration and the justification of a colonialism and imperialism that in turn reinforced the Orientalist view. This book is therefore primarily a topic intellectual history.

Much of what Said put forward in 1978 has now become more or less commonplace, although it is also regularly taken under fire from a conservative angle, but rather because of its political implications. In this sense "Orientalism" is a pioneering work that has rightly received praise. But it also has some flaws, because Said sometimes used a rather sloppy and polemic approach in this book, and in turn he is to a certain extent selective and reductionist. See more about this in my Senseofhistory-account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[William2 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did not finish. A tone more for scholars than general readers like myself. May try again.