Lecture 4 – Colonialism + Orentalism
SLIDES NOTES
1 Link from marx, if we focused on different industries e.g.
(Post-)Coloni International terms
alism CR ignores context such as this
2 Colonialism, Imperialism, Post(-)colonialism:
Defining our
terms “imperialism” means the practice, the theory, and the attitudes of a
dominating metropolitan centre ruling a distant territory;
“colonialism”, which is almost always a consequence of imperialism,
is the implanting of settlements on distant territory
(Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism London: 1993, 8).
Imperialism> broad sense of power
Colonialism> takes up occupation and settles in forgien
territory
The 'age of discovery' and imperialistic word - one country
claiming to have discovered another
19th ce is peak of euproean countries colonising parts of the
world e.g. The scramble of africa, india becoming part of
British rule
Capitalism and colonialism interlinked, show by fact that 19th
ce colonialism coincides with the 2nd industrial revolution
After ww2 > rapid de-colonisation, this form of violent
occupation was no longer a thing after then , indian
independence in 1957 etc... Due to this we might be able to
say that we are at a time now after colonisation, however the
ideologies that have been instilled during colonialism are still
prevelant today. Post colonial in sense that we are still living
in the wake of colonialism.
How does this feed into our understanding of lit studies.
3 Palestinian American born in Mandatory Palestine
Edward Said
Public intellectual (influenced by Foucault, Fanon,
(1935-2003)
Gramsci et al).
Accomplished musician & music critic. Co-Founded the
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
4 University ‘Oriental Studies’ began during the
Orientalism - Renaissance, and developed in the c18th & c19th.
the discipline Entailed study of language, anthropology, literature, art
, & architecture, geography etc.
Today – SOAS; Faculty of Oriental Studies in Oxford
Orientalism was a practice or a study of the East,
culture, goegraphy and stuff.
This disipline still has traces today
As a dicipling always tied up with imperialism and
colonialism, seen as a discipline to aid these forms of
violent expansion.
5 [Orientalism is] an elaboration not only of a basic
Orientalism geographical distinction (the world is made up of two
unequal halves, Orient and Occident) but also of a
whole series of “interests” which, by such means as
scholarly discovery, philological reconstruction,
psychological analysis, landscape and sociological
description, it not only creates but also maintains; it is,
rather than expresses, a certain will or intention to
understand, in some cases to control, manipulate,
even to incorporate, what is a manifestly different (or
alternative and novel) world…
Edward Said, Orientalism (1978), London: Penguin,
2003) 12
Assuming the world is devided into west and east
already assumes power, one over the other. Thus is a
will to manipulate power hierarchy. The west claiming
to know the east in their own terms and frameworks of
understanding assumes the east is a knowable fixed
object of study.
The orient is a construction.
6 the Orient is not an inert fact of nature [...but...] an idea that has a
The Orient as history and a tradition of thought, imagery and vocabulary that have
a given it reality and presence in and for the West
construction
Said, Orientalism, 4-5
It is a construction, not neutral
7 ideas, cultures and histories cannot seriously be understood or
The force of studied without their force, or more precisely their configurations of
Ideas power, also being studied.
Said, Orientalism, 5
This is already doing the work of power even if it does involve
force or violence.
The construction of the east can be found in all sorts of
cultural forms, a sett of traits and features and stereotypes
