School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) London founded 1916, trained colonial
administrators
Experts such as Ernest Renan, Albert Hourani, and Bernard Lewis (called ‘the perfect
exemplification’)
General Western approach to cultures of the ‘East’ that emphasises their
exotic ‘otherness’, revealing a patronising ethnocentrism
• Edward Said was a Palestinian American (1935-2003). He had a sense of both dual
Arab/ Western self-identification. He became known as an established cultural critic
with his book Orientalism He insisted that Orientalism as the source of cultural
representations with which the Western world perceives the Middle East- the
narratives of the West sees the East
Orientalism in ‘Islam as News’
• Very little of the detail, the human density, the passion of Arab-Muslim life has entered
the awareness of even those people whose profession it is to report on the Islamic
world….
• What we have instead is a limited series of crude, essentialized caricatures of the
Islamic world presented in such a way as, among other things, to make that world
vulnerable to military aggression.”
• Said: In contrast to simple and barbarous East, the West is shown as complex and
sophisticated
Orientalism in Aladdin (1992)
“Oh I come from a land, from a faraway place, where the caravan camels roam, where
they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face, it’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.” original
1992 lyrics.
Changed: “where it’s flat and immense and the heat is intense”
1
, Monday, 26 March 2018
Limits of Orientalism
• What are some possible limits to the thesis?
- Edward Said’s work focused too narrowly on Orientalist scholars, generalising from
their biases to a ‘Western’ approach
- He focused on Arabs, missing key cases e.g India.
- He has been accused of ‘Occidentalism’ in oversimplifying Western attitudes
• Even if Said’s work was flawed, it has had a pivotal influence on postcolonial
scholarship
Colonialism
• Colonialism is territorial expansion & exploitation via colonies. It can be compared to
imperialism, which is an attitude of justified expansion.
• Mercantile Colonialism 16th to the 20th century colonies placed in servile relationship
to the ‘Mother Land’
- trade restrictions and tariffs ensured dependency
• Colonial powers redrew borders to suit their ends
- Peace to End All Peace David Fromkin (1989)
NeoColonialism
• Even though colonialism has formally ended, structures of power and domination
continue to be reproduced via economics, politics, & culture
• Immigr.: “we are here because you were there”
• Theories of neocolonialism:
- Orientalism
- Electronic Colonialism Theory
- World-Systems Theory
- Jihad vs. McWorld
2
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