Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah university Faculty of letters and humanities

sais Fès
Department of English
2017-2018

Semester: 6
Class: Postcolonial literature
Activity: A presentation on Orientalism
By: Omar Boualloul & Assia Redouane
 Outline:
• Background information (discourse, colonial discourse theory & postcolonial
discourse theory)…………………………………………………………………………………………………
• Edward Said: a brief biography and major works ………………………………………………...
• Orientalism: definitions……………………………………………………….…………………..............
• A brief overview of the history of orientalism (Term and practice)………..……………..
• Orientalist discourse: key characteristics……………………………………………….…………….
• Key ideas of Orientalism……………………………………………………………………………………….
• Questions & Answers session……………………………………………………………………………….
• Orientalism, Edward W. Said. Key Quotes
• bibliography………………………………………………………………………………………….................
 Discourse, Colonial discourse theory & postcolonial theory:

1- Discourse:
A discourse is a system of statements within which and by which the world
can be known. Rather than referring to ‘speech’ in the traditional sense,
Foucault’s notion of discourse is a firmly bounded area of social knowledge.
For him, the world is not simply ‘there’ to be talked about, rather it is
discourse itself within which the world comes into being. It is also in such a
discourse that speakers and hearers, writers and readers, come to an
understanding about themselves, their relationship to each other and their
place in the world (the construction of subjectivity). It is that complex of signs
and practices that organises social existence and social reproduction, which
determines how experiences and identities are categorised.
 What is discourse?
- The term Discourse is used by Edward Said to refer to Western knowledge or
scholarship produced about the orient (in Art, literature, imagination, Common sense,
Media…etc.) and he stresses that we deal with it as such. (politically oriented and
charged)
- «My contention is that without examining Orientalism as a discourse one cannot
possibly understand the enormously systematic discipline by which European culture
was able to manage --and even produce-- the Orient politically, sociologically,
militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment
period” (Orientalism)
- For Michel Foucault (the famous theorist of the term), a "discourse" is a body of
thought and writing that is united by having a common object of study, a common
methodology or way of speaking about that object/thing, and/or a set of common
terms and ideas. (Archeology of knowledge)
- Discourse is about the use of knowledge and ideas, including their influence on
people, as much as the actual content or meaning of such ideas. (Knowledge –
Discourse - power (authority) ) – Foucault’s notion of: Savoir/pouvoir.
- The purpose of oientalism as a discourse is: domination, ruling, subduing, self-
definition..etc..
 Discourse, Colonial discourse theory & postcolonial theory:

2- Colonial discourse theory is that theory which analyses the discourse(s) of

colonialism and colonisation; which demonstrates the way in which such
discourse obscures the underlying political and material aims of colonisation;
and which points out the deep ambivalences of that discourse as well as the
way in which it constructs both colonising and colonised subjects.
3- Post-colonial theory investigates, and develops propositions about, the
cultural and political impact of European conquest upon colonised societies,
and the nature of those societies’ responses. The ‘post’ in the term refers to
‘after colonialism began’ rather than ‘after colonialism ended’ because the
cultural struggles between imperial and dominated societies continue into the
present. Post-colonial theory is concerned with a range of cultural
engagements: the impact of imperialism
 Edward Said: A brief biography:
- Edward Said, in full Edward Wadie Said, sometimes Edward William Said, (born November 1, 1935,
Jerusalem—died September 25, 2003, New York, U.S.), Palestinian American academic, political
activist, and literary critic who examined literature in light of social and cultural politics and was an
outspoken proponent of the political rights of the Palestinian people and the creation of an
independent Palestinian state.
- In 1947 Said’s family moved to Cairo, because of the war, and it is in Cairo that Edward Said had an
English education before he moved to the US in 1951
- He attended Princeton uiniveristy (BA, 1957) and Harvard University (MA, 1960 + PhD, 1964) where
he specialized in English literature.
- He became a literature professor at Columbia University. 1963-2003
- He worked as a visiting professor in a number of universities (Yale, Harvard)
- Lectured in more than 200 universities across the world.
- Criticism of US and Isreali policy in the region (Middle East).
- Misrepresentation of the orient and the Orientals in Western (Literature, Arts, Media, imagination,
thought…etc.)
- Music
- His works are the foundation for poscolonial theory.
- New way of approaching texts. (Worldliness).
 Edward Said: Outstanding works
Edward Said wrote numerous books amongst them:
• Orientalism 1978
• The question of Palestine 1979
• Covering Islam 1981
• Culture and Imperialism 1993
• The World, the Text and the Critic 1983
• Out of Place: Al Memoir 1999
• Power Politics and Culture 2001
• Culture and Resistance 2003
 What has Said done in Orirntalism?:
• He identifies a series of inaccurate assumptions that the West makes about Arabs:
“they are irrational, anti-Western, menacing and dishonest.”
• He explores how these assumptions are constructed in opposition to what the West
thinks about themselves, and therefore defines this projected image of "Arabs" in the
mind of Westerners as the other we define the other by what we are not. The
danger is that these assumptions come to be treated as truth and therefore impact
our relations and our ideologies.
• Calls for a new treatment of "the Orient" - allowing for self-representation of authors
belonging to the Orient rather than depending on second hand representation
• Argues that the Europeans divided the world into two parts by using the concept of
ours and theirs ; the east and the west or the occident and the orient or the civilized
and the uncivilized
• Provides us with a methodology (framework) for understanding and also decoding
the the relationship between east and west and the discourse the west has
constructed about the orient.
 Definition(s) of Orientalism:
• 1- Academic Field of inquiry (Now we have middle east studies, China studies, Islamic
studies, Arabic studies) the term Orientalism used to be used to mean all this.
• 2- A style of thought based upon distinctions made between “the Orient” and “the
Occident”.
• 3- A western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over "the
Orient.”
→ Orientalism is a body or library of texts, studies, ideas, paintings…etc produced by
the West (Western scholars) about the orient and the Orientals. It is the act of writing,
exploring, describing, dominating and creating discourse about the Orient.
→ An Orientalist is anybody who studies the orient. “Anyone who teaches, writes
about, or researches the Orient--and this applies whether the person is an
anthropologist, sociologist, historian, or philologist--either in its specific or its general
aspects, is an Orientalist, and what he or she says or does is Orientalism.”
→ Everything related to the Orient, Arabs or Islam could be the subject of orientalism.
Orientalism: (Book cover)

Jean Gerome’s “the snake charmer” 1984.

 History of Orientalism: Term & Practice
• 1766 AD A latin dictionary, Father Pollinose.
• 1799 the word orientalism entered the french language.
• 1812 AD the word entered the oxford dictionary.
The word was ued to refer to the writings and knowledge about the orient.

Orientalism in its general sense ‘studying or writing about the orient’ is a very old
phenomenan perhaps as old as the orient itself. That is why it is hard to trace an exact history
of orientalism:
Example: Herodotus (5th cen BC) a Greek historian who is considered in the West to be: «the
father of history» travelled to the Persian empire (Iran), Syria, Iran and other parts of the East
and collected information about these countries and wrote them in his books. (Political
conditions, economical conditions, the knowledge (myths, scholars), the peole and culture) ).
- Was this knowledge politically directed or otherwise?
- It this sense of ideology that characterises orientalism most.
 History of Orientalism: Term & Practice

- The science missions times:

- When the Church was at its peack it used to send priests, scholars and
missionaries to other parts of the world (Including the east) to preech and
dessiminate Christainity. This even goes on to the colonial phase. Colonial
powers used to dessiminate their religion in the colonies and countries they
invaded (India, Egypt, North Africa, South Africa….) as part of the colonial
project.
- Studying Islam and translating its sources (Qur’an, Hadith, life of the
prophet (Books of Sira) and works of prominent Muslim scholars.)
- The First translation of the Qur’an -Into Latin- was made by a French Priest
called Boutors in the year 1142.
 History of Orientalism: Term & Practice
Colonial period.
European colonisation concentrated not only on military and administrative domination of the «orient» but,
this domination was also ‘cultural’ or ideological.
- Example: Napoléon Bonaparte’s colonisation of Eygpt:
Bonaparte came to Eygept with (1) an enormous army & (2) an enourmos army of scholars from different fiels
of human knowledge (Sociologists, philologists, scientists, novelists, Psychologists, Anthropologists. Etc..) with
the aim of 1: describing the country and 2: creating a French record, definition, discourse about Eygpt not for
the sake of Eygpt but, for France.
- 23 large volumes published between 1809 and 1823.
* History ( and knowledge) of the orient would later be taken from these references. (history, literature,
art…etc. ).
Example: (Gerard de Nerval “Journey to the orient” about Syria, almost a rewriting of Edward w. Lane
“Manners and customs of modern Egyptians”. The west deals with the Orientals as being all the same no
matter where you find them (India, Syria, China, Morocco.).
- Colonial powers have always put the knowledge of their colonies at the forefront of the process of
colonisation, because it helps them understand the points of strenght and weakness of these peoples and
therefore, know how to subdue and controle them easily.
- The civilizing mission: The assumption that the orient is uncivilized, unenlightened, barbaric, backward..etc
such discourse aims legitimising the colonial project
- Whatever the Oriantals (Orient) were westerners (West) weren’t. The east is the opposing image of the West.
• The first ‘Orientalists’ were 19th century scholars who translated the writings
of ‘the Orient’ into English, based on the assumption that a truly effective
colonial conquest required knowledge of the conquered peoples.

• This idea of knowledge as power is present throughout Said’s critique. By

knowing the Orient, the West came to own it. The Orient became the
studied, the seen, the observed, the object; Orientalist scholars were the
students, the seers, the observers, the subject. The Orient was passive; the
West was active.
 The difference between European and American
Orientalism:
Said suggests that the differences between different kinds of Orientalisms are
the differences between different experiences of the orient.
- European (British & French) orientalism is different to the American in the
sense that it was direct relationship, experience of the Orient. (India, several
hundred years, North Africa, Indo China, Middle East etc.).
- The US hadn’t had full occupation of the orient: INDIRECT.
- US orientalism have been very politicized by the presence of Isreal for which
america is the main ally.
- The INDIRECT relationship with the orient makes American orientalism very
ABSTRACT.----- «THE REAL ORIENT.»
 Characteristics of Orientalism:
• Power (Hegemoney) based. (The relationship between the east and the west is defined and
determined by power), "the relation of the West and the Orient was a relationship of power
and of complicated dominance".
“What is more important, Orientalism is not simply the work of European imagination—it is
all about power, domination, hegemony and authority.”
• Politically charged and oriented. (Pure vs Political knwoledge).
• Misrepresentation. (stereoptypes, wrong assumption, myths) – It is Intended.
• Abstract «The real orient» “the Western image of the Orient.. Has little to do with the “real”
Orient”.
• Based on the idea of the distinction between the Orient and the Occident. (for the sake of
self definition.)
• Generalizations. – the whole of the Orient is all the same –
• Depiction of the orient as mysterious, exotic..(stereotypical depictions)
• Objective: description, domination, authority, ruling, theorizing, constructing images and
ideas about the orient (DISCOURSE). «"The concept of the Orient is in essence a construct of
these academic and literary discourses".
- «The orient is a European invention».
 Orientalism- The problem

- Orientalism doesn’t aim at describing the orient and honoring it (richness, history,
difference, culture, civilisation…etc).
- It diminishes the people of the orient into an image of a biological inferior and
culturally backward. (NOT HUMAN).
- «East is east and West is West and Never shall the twin meet» (Kipling).
- Orientalist scholarship determines the course of policy making and distortes
Westerners preception of people of the orient. (It limits thier chances to know the
orient.)
 Orientalism. Edward. W Said Key Quotes:

• “Every writer on the Orient (and this is true even of Homer) assumes some
Oriental precedent, some previous knowledge of the Orient, to which he
refers and on which he relies. Additionally, each work on the Orient affiliates
itself with other works, with audiences, with institutions, with the Orient
itself. The ensemble of relationships between works, audiences, and some
particular aspects of the Orient therefore constitutes an analyzable
formation[…]whose presence in time, in discourse, in institutions (schools,
libraries, foreign services) gives it strength and authority.”
 Orientalism. Edward. W Said Key Quotes:

• “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.”
 Orientalism. Edward. W Said Key Quotes:

• The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe's
greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and
languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most
recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Orient has helped to define
Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience.
Yet none of this Orient is merely imaginative. The Orient is an integral part
of European material civilization and culture. Orientalism expresses and
represents that part culturally and even ideologically as a a mode of
discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery,
doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles”.
 Orientalism. Edward. W Said Key Quotes:
• Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and
epistemological distinction made between "the Orient" and (most of the
time) "the Occident." Thus a very large mass of writers, among whom are
poet, novelists, philosophers, political theorists, economists, and imperial
administrators, have accepted the basic distinction between East and West
as the starting point for elaborate accounts concerning the Orient, its
people, customs, "mind," destiny, and so on ... the phenomenon of
Orientalism as I study it here deals principally, not with a correspondence
between Orientalism and Orient, but with the internal consistency of
Orientalism and its ideas about the Orient . . despite or beyond any
correspondence, or lack thereof, with a "real" Orient.
 Bibliography:
• Fundamental Criticisms and Characteristics of Orientalism/
Link: https://historyplex.com/orientalism-characteristics
• https://www.britannica.com/print/article/516540 (Biography)
• Edward W. Said. “Orientalism” New Your: Rendom House, 1978. Print.
• Edward said. Routledge Critical thinkers. 2nd ed. Bill Ashcroft and Pal
Ahluwalia. New York: Tylor & Francis e-library 2008.
• Edward Said On Orientalism, YouTube.