Orientalism

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Orientalism

Said describes Orientalism as, “...the generic term that I have been employing
to describe the Western approach to the Orient; Orientalism is the discipline by
which the Orient was (and is) approached systematically, as a topic of learning,
discovery and practice”. By this, Said is saying because we treated the East
like a school subject, we have learned to treat the East as an inferior. Which
has developed into something called Orientalism. The poets, authors and
statesmen of the nineteenth-century have made Orientalism every thing that it
is. They started out with the intent of learning about a civilization of people
that was extremely different from ours. Their intentions were academic and
nothing more really. Unfortunately, their almost unconscious prejudices and
fears of the unknown, led to the slow cultural and then political domination of
the place referred to as the Orient. I agree with Said on the matter of
knowledge leading to slow domination, but I think he needs to be much clearer on
the fact that it was arrived at with good intentions. Our predecessors wanted to
understand, unfortunately there were much too eager, and presumptuous. In 1798,
Napoleon invaded down through Syria. Although this was one of the first attempts
to invade the Orient, two people were ahead of him. Both were scholars from
Europe, Antiquetil-Duperron and Abraham-Hyacinthe. These men gave the first
images of language, text and civilization to Europe. The started the fascination
with the Orient, and Napoleon’s urge to dominate it. Out of his failed plan to
take over Egypt, came more people who wrote about the Orient without
experiencing it. Said called these authors “textual children”. Said also
goes on to describe the “textual attitude”; this mindset believes everything
you read. In this case reading about places, and the generalizations made, and
believing these simplifications of a rather complex area, to be the concrete
truth. This is an attitude, which I personally believe exists. It is apparent in
the Western world because an education is such a commonly valued, and widely
available institution. A common phenonmenon has developed in the West, using our
education as a barometer to measure our merit based on how much knowledge we can
cram, and regurgitate. Although that phenomenon doesn’t have a name, it’s
by-product would be the textual attitude. Said reasons that the textual attitude
comes from feeling threatened by the unknown, and formerly unattainable....

The complete article is about 1601 words and 6.4 pages long.

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