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krussek's review against another edition
5.0
I’ve always thought it was strange to rate “great books.” It’s seems weird to quantify how good Herodotus, or the Bible, or even Foucault is when what’s great about the text is so much bigger than the text itself. I sort of feel that way about Orientalism. It’s a seminal work, the first (to my knowledge) to delve into the discursive production of the Orient, and the relation of that discourse to imperial power. It’s a starting point for large chunks of postcolonial theorizing.
While I wish Said had discussed in more depth the gendering and sexualizing of the subaltern, many feminist works building off of Orientalism do just that.
In any case, I spent 3 weeks slogging through this very dense book- enormous French block quotes included. I didn’t retain nearly enough of it, and know I’ll be revising it often.
While I wish Said had discussed in more depth the gendering and sexualizing of the subaltern, many feminist works building off of Orientalism do just that.
In any case, I spent 3 weeks slogging through this very dense book- enormous French block quotes included. I didn’t retain nearly enough of it, and know I’ll be revising it often.
sidharthvardhan's review against another edition
5.0
“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 moves around the Sun, they still would have dismissed it as sorcery or witchcraft. But comes in Said and corrects me, “One of them did look through the telescope,” he tells me, “and he still saw that it was the Sun going around the Earth” And I am like, “But how is it possible. “That is just what happened” Said answers nodding wisely, “and the guy wasn’t lying.”
Some of the racist stuff like ‘White man’s burden’ – looks likes a justification of imperialism but in reality the racism predated imperialism. It began first as a European effort to understand the rise of Islam. It begin with earliest travel accounts –people trying to be honest but also trying to be interesting about their visits. It is a tendency among the travelers to generalize their experience as the truth of the whole region.
In fact, whenever we don't share some sort of identity with people by whom we feel wounded, we always run to worst ever generalised judgements about those 'others' - so 9/11 was followed by Islamophobia which generalised the fear of terrorists to all muslims. It didn't generalise to all men because there were men in white Americans (who were ones making judgements) - it didn't generalise to all gun carrying people because white Americans carried guns too. So it was religion that became the identity prejudiced. Sheriyar and Hamlet jump to similar conclusions. So a prejudice based on regional identity is equally possible - and for centuries, Europeans thoughts were sure that those living to the East of Caspian sea were somehow not human in same sense as they were. May be there is something in soil.
... Then some intellectuals followed in same vein as travelers. There was now a systematic education available in this increasingly organised pseudo-knowledge. This image of Arab World in particular (and what is called ‘Eastern civilization’ in general) is what author means by Orient. But believe me, it gets worse. While those first travelers were lazy in their generalizations the later were worse, they simply depended upon accounts of those old travelers for their purposes. The first intellectuals even with their preconceived ideas at least studied the language and read the original texts, their successors need do neither but only read commentaries. And so – a terrible game of Chinese Whispers got started, and you know wonderfully good such a game is at preserving information. No one ever thought of checking the truthiness of the taught information (or they saw what they hoped to saw, rather than what was.)
That is always the thing with prejudice – it always goes hand-in-hand with laziness. In fact, it is born of lack of willingness to think critically of one’s own views.
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
― Stephen Hawking
But there were subsequent travelers and colonists, didn’t they correct those accounts? No they were very well taught in this ignorance before they reached in colonies and like that guy who only confirmed Sun’s orbit around Earth after glancing through telescope, these new travelers only saw what their education taught them to see even after having a more intimate contact with real people of East. A general image of what Orientals are supposed to look like remained in their mind and overruled what they saw. If sometimes truth made itself too obvious to refuse, it was called a case of rare exception. If some great mind really did overcome the illusion of knowledge and found and spoke the truth, he would only be ignored by others for not knowing what he is talking about.
Moreover this image didn’t change. It has remained more or less the same throughout the centuries since the Orient is supposed to be simply incapable of change. This is convenient because 'we' (Orientalists) need only read a book or two written by them a couple of centuries ago to know them.
The image, if we can call it that, is created through use of overloaded words to describe everything. So there is an ‘Islamic warfare’ 'Hindu way of life' etc.(but not Christian warfare) – the generalizations were so fantastic that for a time Jews and Muslims were grouped in same category.
Orientals supposed to be largely homogeneous mass of people; who show high similarity in behavior – they mostly look alike, are just clever enough to make good slaves and have most sensual women. Another things about Orientals is that they can’t speak for themselves. They must be spoken for – they need their Conrads and Naipauls.
But then what is true Orient? There is no real Orient, just as there is no real Occident, and no real Western or Eastern world, ‘White’ or ‘Black’ people. If you want to travel from U.S.A. to China, you will travel westwards not eastwards, Africa is in South of Europe not East They are only social constructs. And the only reason that good people go on using these words is to fight back the discrimination done on their basis.
What the author has done in the book is look at how orient is represented by a score of big authors – which might not seem so big a thing but we must remember that those were the books that formed the world view of Europeans. And that is worrying – as it shows how even the best of the minds can fall prey to racism.
You may also think, like I used to, that it is about a subject of past. But it isn’t. People in west still prefer reading account of their own people travelling to East or immigrants coming from East; rather than people who have lived and continue to live in these regions. They also seem to promote a particular world view. People of a country might still be thought of as carrying a certain common characteristic or other. Often people of East are shown in Hollywood movies as caricatures of Western idea of them (Indiana Jones movies). A score of adjectives come to mind - spiritual, introvert etc.
And people in the East and everywhere shows similar tendentcies of prejudice.
Also the author is not saying anything about the countries orient is supposed to represent. Because such a representation might not be possible - particularly in terms of generalisations. Where we must, I guess, we should notice the diversity of people. Unfortunately most of us are too lazy to make an effort to understand such diversity, so we are happy with generalisations and ignoring what doesnt suit us. So human rights activists working in Middle-East never find a mention in western media unless they get killed or exiled, in which case their fate is often given rightful importance, but nothing is done to avoid further such tragedies.
P.S. See the first comment below if you haven't yet seen the stupidity of review.
sophoph's review against another edition
I will have to come back to this book. I didn’t realize how academically dense this would be, and I checked it out from the library when I should get my own copy to highlight + annotate. I want to finish this book, but right now I’m not able to absorb all the information and I’m only picking up bits and pieces. need to come back to this after I improve my reading skills a bit + get my own copy.
elcordobazo's review against another edition
challenging
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
mimosaeyes's review against another edition
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.5
Opened my eyes to something that feels like it should have been obvious. I don't know most of the Orientalist scholars Said refers to, but I could still follow the arguments. Much to think about, regarding the sociology of knowledge itself, and of how culture is constructed.