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الاستشراق

Edward W. Said,

كمال أبو ديب (ترجمة)

4.07 · Rating details · 19,910 ratings · 1,058 reviews

يعتبر الاستشراق، انطلاقاً من أواخر القرن الثامن عشر، مؤسسة مشتركة للتعامل مع الشرق وحكمه، إنه أسلوب غربي للسيطرة على الشرق، وإذا لم نكتنه الاستشراق بوصفه إنشاء فلن يكون في وسعنا أن نفهم الفرع المنظم تنظيماً عالياً الذي استطاعت الثقافة الغربية عن طريقه أن تتدبر وتنتج الشرق سياسياً، وعسكرياً، وعلمياً… إضافة الى الحدود المعوقة التي فرضها الاستشراق على الفكر والفعل.

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368 pages

Published 2003 by مؤسسة الأبحاث العربية (first published 1978)

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Apr 11, 2007 Erica rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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. ...more

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Jan 07, 2013 J.G. Keely rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, reviewed, lit-crit

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 We ...more

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Apr 17, 2013 Trevor rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: social-theory, history, religion

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 ...more

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Feb 05, 2017 Sean Barrs rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 4-star-reads, non-fiction, postcolonial, lit-crit

“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 “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)

description

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! ...more

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Jul 07, 2020 Thomas rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, own-physical

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 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. ...more

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Sep 01, 2016 Michael Finocchiaro rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: anti-colonialism, american-20th-c, political-theory, history, non-fiction, favorites

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 ...more

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Oct 02, 2019 Michael rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019, recs

Thoughtful and comprehensive, Orientalism puts forth a biting critique of the West’s dehumanizing, essentialist representations of the East. Across three wide-ranging chapters Said tracks the history of Orientalism as an oppressive style of thought based on epistemological and ontological distinctions between the orient and the occident, in which the former is framed as despotic, hyper-sexual, and feminine and the latter as democratic, rational, and masculine. Said makes clear how modern Orienta ...more

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Jan 14, 2014 Zanna rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: John of Segovia and all who sail in him

Shelves: favourites

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 perfe ...more

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Jun 04, 2009 DoctorM rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: critical-theory, postcolonial

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 "Ori ...more

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Jun 05, 2014 E. G. rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to E. G. by: Karellen

Shelves: non-fiction, philosophy-psychology-sociology, own, middle-east, 3-star

Preface (2003)
Acknowledgments
Introduction

--Orientalism

Afterword (1995)
Notes
Index

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Jul 11, 2008 Adam rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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 translat ...more

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Feb 15, 2007 Lucy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: the-mile, the-orient, indigenous-post-colonial

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 Orienta ...more

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Jan 13, 2008 Rob Salkowitz rated it it was ok · review of another edition

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. ...more

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Apr 24, 2010 Inam rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Everyone

Recommended to Inam by: Professor

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 a 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.

...more

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Sep 29, 2016 Bryn Hammond rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: writing-history

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 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. ...more

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Apr 23, 2019 Marc rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: globalisation, imperialisme, colonialism

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 d ...more

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Mar 08, 2019 Mehrsa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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 an ...more

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Jan 24, 2014 Tim rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: middle-east

Said was required reading in my Conflict Transformation graduate studies and this is the modern classic and standard on the concept of "othering". Yet I'd never read the entire work. Sections of this book are constantly utilized in the academic world, so it was about time to finally read it, and also timely as far as my current location (geographically and personally).

As some have said, the ideas in this book are often acknowledged by many intellectuals (with various degrees of acceptance depen ...more

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Aug 04, 2016 Sidharth Vardhan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, 1-africa, questioning-norms, bestest

“My dear Kepler, what would you say of the learned here, who, replete with the pertinacity of the asp, have steadfastly refused to cast a glance through the telescope? What shall we make of this? Shall we laugh, or shall we cry?”
- Galileo in his Letter to Johannes Kepler

The above quote had a huge impact on me when I first read it. I always thought that even if those learned men so faithful to the Christian ideas they were married to, would have looked through the telescope and saw how the Earth ...more

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Apr 06, 2012 Michael rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I started to pick at this foundational work while I was still in Iraq (2007). Things I saw from both Americans and Iraqis began to remind me faintly of some half-remembered ideas from Said's pen. Said's stated purpose of writing was to show how an intellectual study such as Orientalism can not be viewed independently from the influence of power dynamics on an author. Orientalism, he stated, responded directly to the West's need to possess and control an East that it considered inferior, doing so ...more

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Dec 05, 2020 Ramybe rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: palestinian, non-fiction, american, 3-star

Most of it's statements are probably true to reality given the fact that there are so many realities. But where is the analysis ...more

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Nov 25, 2016 Liz Janet rated it really liked it · review of another edition

“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.”

I recently read Said’s “Culture and Imperialism”, which I adored for its study on the effects of imperialism on literature, and this one is equally at par. This work should’ve been read first though, as it explores orientalism as a Western-created concept in order to assimilate Eastern culture into a simple e “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.”

I recently read Said’s “Culture and Imperialism”, which I adored for its study on the effects of imperialism on literature, and this one is equally at par. This work should’ve been read first though, as it explores orientalism as a Western-created concept in order to assimilate Eastern culture into a simple entity, as to make it easier for people in the other side of the world to understand, forgoing all real understanding in exchange for an exotic fixation.

I’ve read a couple reviews that seem to completely miss the park when it comes to Said’s views. They see him as pro-Islam or pro-East, rather than as a person who sees East and West as terms that hold no actual definition of the places it refers to. Said does not hate the West, in fact, his writing barely carries any emotion towards either side when it comes to non-fiction works, as he rather give a good introduction to people from both sides. One of his main points instead is to show how those two terms are unnecessary, one cannot pair Saudi Arabia, China, and India as the same, even thought they are considered East, same as one should not pile Russia, the U.K. and Sweden in the same specter. One should try to read this as a complex work on orientalism and the human error often presented in naming things, rather than as an attack on our “Western values”. One should focus on his desire to explain how both sides of the globe have traditions and intellectual achievements, and at the same time the lack thereof of it, not simply a West versus East ideal.

“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.”

But perhaps the most truth comes from his view on “civilizing” other cultures, a thing that the West has done repeatedly in the centuries it spent trying to colonize (or managed to do so) the East. Some people now see the “Middle East” as a trouble area that would be best to the rest of the world if it were eradicated, and Islam as a vicious faith that has contributed nothing to society except a concept of stoning and female degradation, neither of these are true statements. It seems to be forgotten among many, that for centuries, places such as Baghdad, Alexandria, Beijing, Ur, Yinxu, Constantinople, Carthage, and many more were centers of learning and education for centuries, even millennia, and many of those were largely encouraged by the Islamic idea of achieving knowledge “Attain knowledge from the cradle to the grave. (Prophet Muhammad pbuh).

In general, a magnificent piece of comprehension, that obviously deserves a through re-read, with my own copy. ...more

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Nov 18, 2018 Kaelan Ratcliffe ▪ كايِلان راتكِليف rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: anti-semitism, civilisation-critique-of, horror, classic, religion, favorites, history, linguistics, radical-history, colonialism-imperialism

God Bless Edward Said

For those who may ask why one should pick up and read Edward Said's Orientalism, my response would be a difficult one to articulate. This was a book I knew I had to tackle; Orientalism started a whole intellectual counter-movement in the 1970's after all. However, the work I just finished reading was one I wrestled with intellectually throughout. The subject raised by Said is one that I agree with whole-heartedly; that wasn't the point of contention when reading this. God Bless Edward Said

For those who may ask why one should pick up and read Edward Said's Orientalism, my response would be a difficult one to articulate. This was a book I knew I had to tackle; Orientalism started a whole intellectual counter-movement in the 1970's after all. However, the work I just finished reading was one I wrestled with intellectually throughout. The subject raised by Said is one that I agree with whole-heartedly; that wasn't the point of contention when reading this. In reality, I found this to be an incredibly difficult book to read. I agree with another reviewer here that this is a book primarily aimed at academics. This becomes clear in its long passages, intensely obsessive and detailed scrutiny of scholars previous work in the field (dating as far back to the 1700's, with names you will simply not remember unless you work in this field), as well as long expositions (philological laboratory are two words I will never forget for as long as I live), in which the author attempts to penetrate the mind of those, who in turn, had made it their job to penetrate the minds of those in the so called Orient.

Saids aim in these pages can easily be found anywhere on the internet. It does not seem worthy of repeating here again. However, having come out of this particular experience very exhausted - 70 pages in one day utterly annihilated me, to the point where I couldn't muster the same enthusiasm for the text again, and proceeded at a mediocre 10 pages a day - yet extremely grateful, and stimulated. I feel quite strongly about encouraging others to pick this up and finish it's 328 pages (354 if we include the afterword).

It wasn't until mid-way in this book, that I realised why I was so knackered with reading it. It wasn't solely the style of writing; I've read tough books before. It was the fact that I found myself mildly depressed at the topic. It was my first encounter with truly institutionalised, academised, racism in written form. I am not referring to Said, I refer to the work he exposes. For what another reader like myself will discover - one who would identify as a casual reader - is there is no limit to the absolute absurdities certain so called "intellectuals" will go to to try and justify a certain world view. It truly is the epitome of 'wilful ignorance' when contradictions are found in amply supply upon analysing western views of billions of people throughout different countries and cultures. I was exposed to utterly astonishing - farcical even - explanations of Islam, the Middle East, central Asian, and East Asian cultures and beliefs. No less shocking than the fact it was by individuals considered "well-to-do" in their day. It was truly ridiculous. Yet, it was at this moment that I realised what Said was doing, and grew a true appreciation for his work that went beyond simply reading out of respect for the fact that his work was the first to tackle this topic.

It can be boiled down to this well known phrase: "They were people of their time". This emerged in my head after reading a particularly subtle racist passage Said illuminates to the reader (something I must also thank him for, as he pointed out latent racism quotes that I missed, despite him preparing me before the passage was quoted, as well as me knowing what book I was reading and being of sharp mind), and it suddenly dawned on me. Why did people think that way, and within their own time more specifically? Where did their information come from? In this case, what informed them of their world view of the East? Said deconstructs the institutions that actually form the ideas that are then assimilated into the general knowledge of a particular time, culture and place. That unto itself makes for essential reading for anyone who wants to challenge or understand structures of power.

It is, finally, the new found knowledge I gained from his book, that gave me the nudge to rate it as 'must-read' in my own experience of reading non-fiction. We are sold the idea that social progress is always moving forward, linear, and unbreakable. Said exposes this as fraud. I learned - and hope you do to, if you choose to pick this up - that if ideas are institutionalised, guarded as borderline law, and sustained by succeeding generations of those attached to the institutions in question; then said ideas can be perpetuated, in theory, forever. Not only this, but they can lie dormant for years. They change, morph, and grow new faces to suit some urgent need by those using the institutions housing the ideas. Usually as justification for their own purpose, and ultimately making it nigh impossible to pin down in definition, the ideas first made popular, especially when they are written and re-written by many important names. For this I would draw attention to the shift from the mysterious and mystical Orient in the 1700's, to it becoming something described as backward, dangerous and barbaric in the 1800's, only to then morph into something useful for Orientalists to use as physical guiders of policy in the colonial era (overwhelmingly to justify oppression), only to then shift from European to American Orientalism mid 20th Century.

This is still so important for so many current day issues of our time. It doesn't bare thinking about where we would be if it weren't for writers like Said challenging the status quo. ...more

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Feb 05, 2016 Stef Rozitis rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1971-1980

The way this book was explaining the prevalence ond logic of Islamophobia I had to check the date, expecting it to be a very current book. Frightening that although it was written in the 70s the sort of racism and terror-mongering described in it is if anything more wide-spread than ever. This book very eloquently shows how orientalism works- it makes no parallels to things like the male/female binary (who speaks, who describes whom, who is exoticised as "other", less and deficit) but to me read ...more

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Mar 24, 2011 William2 rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: empire-post-colonial, 20-ce, us, criticism

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

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Mar 24, 2020 Bob Newman rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: political-commentary, anthropology, arab-world

A Seminal Work for Cultural Understanding

Relations between people of different cultures is a vital part of today’s world, not only for culture’s sake, but in terms of diplomacy, business, travel, military action, and even just general knowledge for daily life. Unlike in previous eras, we are extremely likely to find ourselves living and working with those “others” who used to inhabit unknown spaces “out there”. Governments have to deal intimately with foreigners in a variety of ways. So, intercu A Seminal Work for Cultural Understanding

Relations between people of different cultures is a vital part of today’s world, not only for culture’s sake, but in terms of diplomacy, business, travel, military action, and even just general knowledge for daily life. Unlike in previous eras, we are extremely likely to find ourselves living and working with those “others” who used to inhabit unknown spaces “out there”. Governments have to deal intimately with foreigners in a variety of ways. So, intercultural relations can impact on our daily life in new ways that our grandparents never dreamt of. The quality and success of those relationships are going to depend on what we know as individuals about those “others” or on what we know as a society. That is why the process by which we get that knowledge and the actual contents of that knowledge are so important. ORIENTALISM is the work that over the last 40 years has most influenced the way people think and write about that process.

Edward Said concentrated on what is commonly known as “the Middle East”, but would be better known as the largely-Muslim countries east of Europe and west of India, or maybe “western Asia”. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, this part of the world was often called “the Orient”. (Though people often applied that term to the rest of Asia too.) The method in which he looks at this so-called Orient can be extended to any other area. He examines the process by which Euro-Americans sought information about the Orient. They gleaned it from the writings of diplomats, soldiers, colonial administrators, travelers, and businessmen who had stayed for varying lengths of time in the Orient. They got it from the paintings of artists who wished to sell paintings of exotic scenes or from poets and novelists who wished to write of exotic locales. In almost all cases, the presenters of knowledge treated the Orient as homogenous, simple, dangerous, crude, full of exoticism or fanaticism and above all, unchanging. People there were not separate individuals like “us”; they were the undifferentiated “others” with whom we could make contrasts favorable to ourselves. Some Westerners might dream of escape to the exotic world of the Orient, where society would be the reverse of their own. Some presenters of the Orient knew a lot about what they wrote or painted, others had an extremely superficial knowledge. In all cases, Said writes, the information collected and presented was used by governments in the West to control the Orient. Information was power. The people in the so-called Orient had, and needed, no independent existence. They were only shadows brought to life by the Light of Knowledge emanating from the West. They might be guided to proper ways by Western powers, Westerners with power. Orientalism underlay colonialism.

Said examines the vast body of written work—that “Orientalism”—very extensively. He notes that it has had its own paradigms of research, its own learned societies, its own establishment, not to mention university departments labelled “Oriental Studies” in many countries. Through such bodies, the Orient has been labelled, packaged, and presented to the world for two hundred years. We can see this process alive and well today. All you have to do is watch Hollywood movies, turn on your TV for the news, or read travel/geographic magazines. All you have to do is listen to current American pronouncements about the same area, regard their lack of trust in its people, their lack of respect. Think about the labels that are put on Palestinians or Iranians. It is not a question of whether you support this particular cause or that. It is a question of how you get your information. Think about it. The world may depend on a radical change in Western thinking, equal to a stop to suicide bombings, teaching of hatred in schools, and terrorist plots. When is a man a terrorist and when is he a freedom fighter? When an international news magazine tells us so? An information establishment shapes the presentation of that old “Orient” and many other parts of the world. Said took the first mighty step in forcing the West to see its own constructions. For that, and for a detailed, well-argued book, five stars are obligatory.

P.S. I wrote this review 15 years ago. Do you think a lot has changed?
...more

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Aug 07, 2018 Mahima rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Let me say first that this will be a very gross summation of this classic that I first encountered through literary theory, in particular, postcolonial theory, but it is an attempt that I nevertheless will make. If I could I would make the entire world read this book, extremely relevant as its subject matter remains today.

Edward Said’s Orientalism is a treatise on the cultural construction that is Orientalism, which, far from merely an academic and scholarly discipline, is inextricably bound wit Let me say first that this will be a very gross summation of this classic that I first encountered through literary theory, in particular, postcolonial theory, but it is an attempt that I nevertheless will make. If I could I would make the entire world read this book, extremely relevant as its subject matter remains today.

Edward Said’s Orientalism is a treatise on the cultural construction that is Orientalism, which, far from merely an academic and scholarly discipline, is inextricably bound with power (as knowledge always is), in particular imperial and colonial, and which rests on the binary opposition between East and West and the connotations that go with such a divide. The point that Said makes above all else is that Orientalism, a science in its own right from the nineteenth century onwards, part of a dominant discourse, gives rise to epistemological systems that formulate the Orient as an atavistic, essentialist object of study, which, seen as a platonic concept, inert and unable to represent itself, is thus dehumanised and in no way a true picture of the real Orient. In fact, what Said says is that there can be no real Orient; it is an invention of Orientalists, a representation, not an ontologically stable picture. The point is that there is no real, separate and distinct essence of any culture or people and anything anyone says about them, grouping them thus, will be only a representation that can in no way be taken for objective knowledge, steeped as it is, for one thing, in the Orientalist’s own contexts. Said emphasizes that Orientalism is very political indeed and not a pure science or just innocent scholarly endeavours given that it is deeply connected with European Imperialism as well as the neo-imperialism of today in which America dominates. Said focuses specifically on Islamic Orientalism and argues that Islam or the Arabs cannot be reduced to an essentialist and reductive definition by either the West, as they doubtless are, or the East itself because such objective formulations cannot help but be false. Said also clarifies that in no shape or form is this book anti-Western or a defense of Islamicist fundamentalism, doing which would in fact defy the very anti-essentialist position that he is taking in it. It is instead a multicultural work which studies the way knowledge, culture, and power, work together, and ultimately takes, despite postmodern critiques of the term, a humanistic position, resisting the way human history is disfigured through most other approaches and aiming “to go beyond coercive limitations on thought toward a non-dominative, and non-essentialist, type of learning.” ...more

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Aug 23, 2008 Andrew added it · review of another edition

Shelves: theeeeeeory, postcolonial-theory

This is a great example of a paradigm shift in the social scientist's perspective. Something like "orientalism" was so taken for granted over the centuries that it took someone like Said to simply take a step back and say "dude, what the fuck." As I read it, I found myself trying to step back from the orientalizations in my own life and in the cultural/social life around me. For the life examined. ...more

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Oct 12, 2016 Londi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is a seminal postmodern postcolonial work of critical theory and cultural studies, deconstructing one of the most dominant grand narratives of our civilization, that continues to fuel xenofobia and wars.

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Apr 23, 2019 Sense of History rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history-middle-east, islamic-history, intellectual-history, cultural-history, history-of-mentality, civilizations

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 differ 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, if it is a frozen concept (“the typical Arab always is lazy”).

So I certainly recognize myself in 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. 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 really not justified. In this book, 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 book: 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. ...more

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Oriental/Russian/Non Europe medieval or recent history books	2	22	May 18, 2016 11:52PM
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About Edward W. Said

Edward W. Said

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(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 ed (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. ...more

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Quotes from الاستشراق

“The Orient and Islam have a kind of extrareal, phenomenologically reduced status that puts them out of reach of everyone except the Western expert. From the beginning of Western speculation about the Orient, the one thing th orient could not do was to represent itself. Evidence of the Orient was credible only after it had passed through and been made firm by the refining fire of the Orientalist’s work.” — 58 likes

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