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Taj Taher
HONORS 394 B
11 January 2015
Response Paper 1
Not really mounting a serious critique of it [Orientialism], the Arabs have participated
and have continued to allow themselves to be represented as Orientals in this Orientalist way
[Arabs are] in desperate need of US patronageso theyre not about to criticize the United
States. And in that respect I think the Arabs keep themselves, collectively, in a way thatin fact
fulfills the kinds of representations that most Westerners have. I find Edward Saids
observation, taken from the film Edward Said on Orientalism, particularly interesting for the
implication that Arab-Americans are in a small part responsible for their own victimization.
However, his criticism does not condemn Arabs with significant strength, for it is their passivity
he remonstrates; were they directly taking action to create their own plight, their culpability
would cast them in a negative light. As it stands in fact, Saids criticism seems to shed further
sympathy upon the Arabs, characterizing them as powerless to properly oppose the inaccurate
portrayal of their people. However, I still find the notion that Arabs themselves perpetuate
Orientalism compelling, and what Saids ineffective condemnation may reveal is that Orientalist
discourse is established in a way that emphasizes a dynamic of oppression between a villainous
West and victimized East to invoke pathos for the Arab people while shielding them from
culpability.
The very definition of Orientalism assumes a lack of agency on the part of the Arabs. As
it is described by Sut Jhally in the aforementioned film and agreed upon in class, Orientalism is a
distorted lens through which the West perceives the Orient, creating a perception which stands at
odds with reality. This conceptual framework assumes a unidirectional relationship in which the
West alone sets the terms of engagement. By placing a lens in their hands, it implies a conscious
decision on their part to perceive the Orient incorrectly. Arabs, in this framework, are merely

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caught in the spotlight of this lens. As such, they come to be characterized like deer struck by a
cars headlights. While this invokes sympathy for the Arabs and squares the blame on the West,
the unidirectional relationship precludes the possibility that Arabs would have any power in
correcting this visual aberration. The Arabs are saved from facing any culpability for their role in
shaping Western perceptions, but the cost of doing so is an emphasis on their lack of agency and
strength.
This phenomenon is seen with much more clarity when Orientalism is referred to as the
more generic neocolonialism, such as when critic Nadine Naber writes Neocolonialist media
images, for example, portray a dominated group as a homogeneous mass with no differences
among them and then characterize them as inherently different from and inferior to the dominant
group. As a result, these images serve to justify and maintain colonialist, imperialist and/or racist
practices against the dominated group, (Naber 44). Whereas in the definition of Orientalism the
Wests misperception of the Arab people is not explicitly malicious, neocolonialism directly ties
the West to colonialism and imperialism and thus harkens back to a history of violence and
abuses. There is no doubt that Orientalism is an ethically unacceptable process predicated by the
West, but by using these specific terms Naber suggests the media-based abuses of modernity bear
the same level of horror as the physically violent abuses of the past. Beyond vilifying the
present-day West, Nabers respective illustration of the West and East as dominant and
dominated once more emphasizes that this relationship between the two exists in one direction
where the Arabs are powerless and passive acceptors of the West (and the Wests alone)
tyrannical tactics. As such, Arabs can hardly be held responsible for their role in Orientalism
when they are within such a framework so clearly the helpless victims of oppression.
The consequences of grounding Orientalism on a dynamic of villainous West and
victimized East is that the discourse it inspires focuses less on the phenomenon itself and the

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ramifications on the Arab people, and more on the matter of blame. In a review of Saids seminal
Orientalism, scholar Matthew Scott writes that Saids early critics charged Said with cherrypicking his sources for bits of especial nastiness in order to make the case against Western
imperial xenophobia. But whether guilty of that or notthe assessment provokes an angry
moment in Orientalism, anger which can cloud our appreciation of Said's much subtler argument
that attempts such as Bell's to comprehend the East were necessarily doomed to fail because of
their avowedly sympathetic intentions, (Scott 64). At the heart of Scotts observation is the
suggestion that as much as Orientalism concerns itself with illustrating what the East is not, its
method of accomplishing this rests in illustrating what the West is in contrast. The integrity of
identity is the inspiration for Saids Orientalism, so it is not surprising that when their own
identity comes to be characterized in a manner at odds with their own perception, Western critics
would clamor in dissent (there is, in fact, an equally opposite phenomenon to Orientalism coined
Occidentalism).
Indeed, in the fairly recent Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism
by Ibn Warraq, the critic devotes the majority of this text to highlighting the elements of the West
that make it noble by referencing the philosophies of rationalism and universalism touted by
revered Western critics from Locke to Mill who have had such an immense effect on Western
culture, resulting in a portrayal as far away from the malevolent one presented by Orientalism.
Not content to rest there though, Warraq goes on to then cite multiple examples of Eastern
human rights abuses in order to characterize the East as historically malicious as the West. In a
review of Warraqs tome, Silvia Croydon concludes The message one is left with after reading
Defending the West is that it is not Western Orientalists who are to blame for the ills of those in
the East, but Said and his slavish followers, who have reinforced their already well-developed
sense of victimhood, (Croydon 431). Warraqs arguments add little value to Orientalism

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discourse for it loses sight of the issue at hand: the misrepresentation of the Arab people in the
eyes of the world. The ardency with which he presents his arguments and the fact that he feels
the need to slander the East in retribution of Saids case illuminates a significant issue with the
manner Oriental discourse is approached. While appealing to human sympathy by establishing an
oppressive dynamic between West and East certainly makes the plight of Arabs relevant to the
West and provides a compulsion to cast aside the lens of Orientalism, it also emphasizes an
element of blame and guilt on the part of the West and an element of entitlement on the part of
the East. As such, the framework establishes a dynamic not of equals and prevents meaningful
discourse between East and West towards a unified solution.
Orientalism exists, of that there is no doubt. That its misrepresentation of the Arab people
has resulted in a relationship between the East and the West steeped in anxiety, terror, and
distrust is equally evident. However, as long as Oriental discourse is based upon a dynamic of
villainous West and victimized East, the conversation between Arabs and the West will concern
itself with forcing acceptance of the phenomenon rather than the ramifications of it. This fact is
lamentable, for Said especially so, as Bryan Turner writes Disciples of Said have been content
too frequently to take the critique of Orientalism for granted, merely exploring further
complexities in the divisions between Occident and Orient. Saids purpose by contrast was not
merely to understand these divisions of discourse, but to overcome them.
Works Cited
Croydon, Silvia. Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism, Ibn Warraq.
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 39.3 (2012): 430-1. Print.
Edward Said on Orientalism. Dir. Sut Jhally. Perf. Edward Said. The Media Education
Foundation, 1998. Film.
Naber, Nadine. Ambiguous insiders: an investigation of Arab American invisibility. Ethnic
and Racial Studies 23.1 (2000): 37-61. Print.
Scott, Matthew. Edward Saids Orientalism. Essays in Criticism 58.1 (2008): 64-81. Print.
Turner, Edward. Edward W. Said: Overcoming Orientalism. Theory, Culture, and Society 21.1
(Feb. 2004): 173-7. Print.

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