Orientalism
◆◆◆Hello, friends today I discuss about Orientalism. So let's see what is Orientalism? So friends, Orientalism is a book by Edward w. Said and according to him, Orientalism is inextricably tied to the imperialist societies who produced it, which makes much Orientalist work inherently political and servile to power. Edward gives us three parts of the book.
1) The scope of Orientalism.
2) Orientalist structures and restructures.
3) Orientalism Now.
●It's different between West & East.
◆ The West and East; between culturele, religious and political differences are more reliable reasons.
During this age the 'Theological' difference between Islam Judaism, and In the late19th century the population there, according to Ottman records from 1878, was 87 % Muslim, 10 % Christian, and 3 % Jewish. So how religion matters a lot in Oriental studies in this age.
● This book is a accredited text of cultural studies in which he has challenged the concept of Orientalism or the difference between East and West. The start of European colonization the European came in contact with the lesser developed countries of the east. Edward Said wrote about their civilization and culture very exotic, and established the science of Orientalism, which was the study of the orientals of the people from these exotic civilization. He argues that the Europeans divided the world into two parts as I see above; the East and the West. Here two other words to call it like; the Occident and the Orient or another one was the Civilized and the uncivilised. He says this was totally all artificial boundary and of course its truthful because, it's not natural but, Europeans divided and that's why it's call 'artificial.'
● Europeans said that it was their duty towards the world to civilize the uncivilized world. The generalized attributes associated with the orientals can be seen even today, for example, The Arabs are defined as uncivilized people, and Islam is seen as religion of the terrorist.
●So let's see Edward W. Said's three parts in briefly.
◆ (A) The scope of Orientalism;
∆ The scope of Orientalism through he said, how the science of Orientalism developed and how the orientals started considering the orientals as non- human being. World divided into two parts like, Ours and theirs. Edward Said wrote, how European people's minds works on this and their mentality about other countries and civilization. Europeans was that they defined the Orientalism like, qualities such as Lazy, Irrational, Uncivilized, Crudeness were related to the top orientals, and autonomically the Europeans became active, rational, civilized, sophisticated. Orientalism was that the culture of the orientals was explained to the European audience by linking them to the Western culture. For example,
• Islam was made into Mohmmadism because, Mohammad was the founder of this religion and since religion of Christ was called Christianity; thus Islam should be called Mohmmadism.
◆ (B) Orientalist structures and restructures;
● Edward Said explains about two most renowned orientalist of 19th century;
1) Silvestre de Sacy, and
2) Ernest Renan.
● Both were worked and gave Orientalism a new dimension. Renan who took advantage of Sacy's work was as biased as any previous Orientalist. Sasy believed that the science of Orientalism and science of philology both were very important. After Renan this idea was given a lot attention and many future Orientalists worked of in its line. It's the second part of the book and it's very informative for me.
◆ (3) Orientalism New;
● This part related to 20th century means present time in Orientalism, and Said mentioned here two orientalists. Let's see about it, Massignon and Gibb. Massignon was a bit liberal with orientalists and often tried to protect their rights. Gibb was the most famous Islamic orientalist of this time. After World War 1 the center of Orientalism moved from Europe to USA. It's included connected with philology and social science. With the end of world war 2, all the Europeans colonies were lost. Edward Said concludes his book by saying that he is not saying that the orientalists should not make generalization, or they should include the orient perspective too, but creating a boundary at the first place is something which should not be done.
Very well
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