Psychological theory of value

Discuss Richards' psychological theory of value.The best and most elaborate exposition of Richards' theory of value to be found in the VII chapter of  The Principles of Literary

Criticism. Before establishing the value of poetry Richards first examines the working of the human mind itself to find out a general

psychological theory of value.

He describes the human mind as a system of impulses. There are conflicting instincts and desires and wants—or appetencies as Richards

calls them in the human mind. These conflicting instincts cause uneasiness to the human mind, and the human mind wants to achieve an

order or systematization of these conflicting instincts and emotions. Thehuman mind possessess an inherent power of putting conflicting

instinces of impulses into a systematic order to which it strives for. Each new experience, however, disturbs the whole system once again,

and again the human mind has to readjust different impulses in a new way to achieve the desired system or poise. But since the impulses

and instincts are conflicting and different, a system can be achieved only when some impulses are satisfied and some give way to others—in

order words are frustrated. The ideal state will be when all the impulses are fully satisfied, but since this is rarely possible, then next best

state is when the maximum number of impulses are satisfied and the minimum are frustrated. The value of art or poetry (and by poetry

Richards means all imaginative literature) is that it enables the mind to achieve this poise or system more quickly and completely than it

could do otherwise. In short, art is a means whereby we can gain emotional balance, mental equilibrium, peace and rest. What is true of the

individual is also true of society. A society in which arts are freely cultivated, exhibits better mental and emotional tranquillity than the

societies in which arts are not valued.

The conduct of human life is throughout an attempt to organise impulses. The mind experiences a state of poise only when

they organise to follow a common course. To achieve poise in a given situation some impulses have to give way to others and where this does

not happen, no poise can take place. The ideal state of poise is one in which all the impulses are able to satisfy themselves to the full when

stirred into activity by some stimulus, but as this is seldom possible, the maximum satisfaction of the maximum number of impulses, with the

minimum frustration to the rest, is all that can be hoped for.

Now again we come face to face with the problem of value. How shall we decide which among these impulses are more important

than others, and how shall we distinguish organisations as yielding more or less value than one another? Here Richards divides impulses into

appetencies and aversions, and says "that anything is valuable which satisfies an appetency or 'seeking after.'

In the chapter "Art and Morals," I. A. Richards says, "The most valuable states of mind then are those which involve the widest and

most omprehensive co-ordination of activities and the least curtailment, conflict, starvation and restriction. States of mind in general are

valuable in the degree in which they tend to reduce waste and frustration." So experiences can be valuable in two different ways—by virtue

of the number of impulses directly satisfied and by virtue of the increased capacity for co-ordinating impulses in the future that results from

the experience.

He sometimes speaks as though only the impulses that will satisfy future desires are more important. But Richard does not deny that

present satisfaction of impulses has some value. However, he says that the effects of experience on our future capacity to satisfy them is

what matters most. He concludes the chapter, "A Psychological Theory of Value" with the following words : "To guard against a possible

misunderstanding it may be added that the organisation and systematisation of which I have been speaking in this chapter are not primarily

an affair of conscious planning or arrangement....We pass as a rule from a chaotic to a better organised state by ways which we know

nothing about. Typically through the influence of other minds, Literature and the arts are the chief means by which these influences are

diffused. It should be unnecessary to insist upon the degree to which high civilisation, in other words, free, varied and unwasteful life,

depends upon them in a numerous society."

This theory of values is important to understand the nature of poetry as envisaged by I. A Richards. There are moments in a man's life

when his impulses respond to a stimulus in such an organised way that the mind has a life's experience. Poetry is a representation on this

uniquely ordered state of mind. By poetry Richards means not only verse but all imaginative literature, which is also the product of the same

state of mind. From this it will appear that the poet is not conscious of embodying any thoughtin his work. All he is interested in is to record

the happy play of impulses on a particular occasion. To approach him therefore for what he says is to misunderstand him. It is to share his

experience, the happy play of his impulses, that the true reader gaes to him. It is all that a poem or poetry is.

Orientalism is the 1978 book by Edward Said that has been highly influential in postcolonial studies. In the book, Said writes that "Orientalism" is a constellation of

false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the Middle East. This body of scholarship is marked by a "subtle and persistentEurocentric prejudice

against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture."[1] He argued that a long tradition of romanticized images of Asia and the Middle Eastin Western culture had

served as an implicit justification for European and the American colonial and imperial ambitions. Just as fiercely, he denounced the practice of Arab elites

who internalized the US and British orientalists' ideas of Arabic culture.

So far as the United States seems to be concerned, it is only a slight overstatement to say that Muslims and Arabs are essentially seen as either oil suppliers or

potential terrorists. Very little of the detail, the human density, the passion of Arab-Moslem life has entered the awareness of even those people whose profession

it is to report the Arab world. What we have instead is a series of crude, essentialized caricatures of the Islamic world presented in such a way as to make that

world vulnerable to military aggression.[2]

"My contention is that Orientalism is fundamentally a political doctrine willed over the Orient because the Orient was weaker than the

West, which elided the Orient’s difference with its weakness. . . . As a cultural apparatus Orientalism is all aggression, activity, judgment, will-to-truth,

and knowledge" (Orientalism, p. 204).

Said also wrote:

"My whole point about this system is not that it is a misrepresentation of some Oriental essence — in which I do not for a moment believe — but that it

operates as representations usually do, for a purpose, according to a tendency, in a specific historical, intellectual, and even economic setting" (p.

273).

Principally a study of 19th-century literary discourse and strongly influenced by the work of thinkers like Chomsky, Foucault and Gramsci, Said's

work also engages contemporary realities and has clear political implications as well. Orientalism is often classed

with postmodernist and postcolonial works that share various degrees of skepticism about representation itself (although a few months before he

died, Said said[citation needed] he considers the book to be in the tradition of "humanistic critique" and the Enlightenment).

The book is divided into three chapters:

The Scope of Orientalism

Orientalist Structures and Restructures

Orientalism Now

[edit]Chapter 1: The Scope of Orientalism

In this section Said outlines his argument with several caveats as to how it may be flawed. He states that it fails to include Russian Orientalism

and explicitly excludes German Orientalism, which he suggests had "clean" pasts (Said 1978: 2&4), and could be promising future studies. Said

also suggests that not all academic discourse in the West has to be Orientalist in its intent but much of it is. He also suggests that all cultures

have a view of other cultures that may be exotic and harmless to some extent, but it is not this view that he argues against and when this view is

taken by a militarily and economically dominant culture against another it can lead to disastrous results.

Said draws on written and spoken historical commentary by such Western figures as Arthur James

Balfour, Napoleon, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Byron, Henry Kissinger, Dante and others who all portray the "East" as being both "other" and

"inferior."

He also draws on several European studies of the region by Orientalists including the Bibliotheque Orientale by French author Barthélemy

d'Herbelot de Molainville to illustrate the depth of Orientalist discourse in European society and in their academic, literary and political interiors.

One apt representation Said gives is a poem by Victor Hugo titled "Lui" written for Napoleon:

By the Nile I find him once again.

Egypt shines with the fires of his dawn;

His imperial orb rises in the Orient.

Victor, enthusiast, bursting with achievements,

Prodigious, he stunned the land of prodigies.

The old sheikhs venerated the young and prudent emir.

The people dreaded his unprecedented arms;

Sublime, he appeared to the dazzled tribes

Like a Mahomet of the Occident. (Orientalism pg. 83)

[edit]Chapter 2: Orientalist Structures and Restructures

In this chapter Said outlines how Orientalist discourse was transferred from country to country and from political leader to author. He suggests

that this discourse was set up as a foundation for all (or most all) further study and discourse of the Orient by the Occident.

He states that: "The four elements I have described - expansion, historical confrontation, sympathy, classification - are the currents in eighteenth-

century thought on whose presence the specific intellectual and institutional structures of modern Orientalism depend” (120).

Drawing heavily on 19th century European exploration by such historical figures as Sir Richard Francis Burton and Chateaubriand, Said suggests

that this new discourse about the Orient was situated within the old one. Authors and scholars such as Edward William Lane, who spent only two

to three years in Egypt but came back with an entire book about them (Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians) which was widely

circulated in Europe.

Further travelers and academics of the East depended on this discourse for their own education, and so the Orientalist discourse of the West over

the East was passed down through European writers and politicians (and therefore through all Europe).

[edit]Chapter 3: Orientalism Now

This chapter outlines where Orientalism has gone since the historical framework Said outlined in previous chapters. The book was written in 1978

and so only covers historical occurrences that happened up to that date.

It is in this chapter that Said makes his overall statement about cultural discourse: "How does one represent other cultures? What is another

culture? Is the notion of a distinct culture (or race, or religion, or civilization) a useful one, or does it always get involved either in self-

congratulation (when one discusses one's own) or hostility and aggression (when one discusses the 'other')?" (325).

While there is much criticism centered on Said's book, the author himself repeatedly admits his study's shortcomings both in this chapter, chapter

1 and in his introduction.

[edit]Influence

Orientalism is considered to be Edward Said's most influential work and has been translated into at least 36 languages. It has been the focus of

any number of controversies and polemics, notably withBernard Lewis, whose work is critiqued in the book's final section, entitled "Orientalism

Now: The Latest Phase." In October 2003, one month after Said died, a commentator wrote in a Lebanesenewspaper that

through Orientalism "Said's critics agree with his admirers that he has single-handedly effected a revolution in Middle Eastern studies in the U.S."

He cited a critic who claimed since the publication of Orientalism "U.S. Middle Eastern Studies were taken over by Edward Said's postcolonial

studies paradigm" (Daily Star, October 20, 2003). Even those who contest its conclusions and criticize its scholarship, like George P.

Landow of Brown University, call it "a major work."[3]

However, Orientalism was not the first to produce of Western knowledge of the Orient and of Western scholarship: "Abd-al-Rahman al Jabarti, the

Egyptian chronicler and a witness to Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, for example, had no doubt that the expedition was as much

an epistemological as military conquest."[4] Even in recent times (1963, 1969 & 1987) the writings and research of V. G. Kiernan, Bernard S.

Cohn and Anwar Abdel Malek traced the relations between European rule and representations.[5]

Nevertheless, Orientalism is cited as a detailed and influential work within the study of Orientalism. Anthropologist Talal Asad argued

that Orientalism is “not only a catalogue of Western prejudices about and misrepresentations of Arabs and Muslims”[6], but more so an

investigation and analysis of the "authoritative structure of Orientalist discourse – the closed, self-evident, self-confirming character of that

distinctive discourse which is reproduced again and again through scholarly texts, travelogues, literary works of imagination, and the obiter dicta

of public men [and women] of affairs."[6] Indeed, the book describes how "the hallowed image of the Orientalist as an austere figure unconcerned

with the world and immersed in the mystery of foreign scripts and languages has acquired a dark hue as the murky business of ruling other

peoples now forms the essential and enabling background of his or her scholarship."[7]

[edit]Criticism

[edit]Robert Irwin

In his book For Lust of Knowing, British historian Robert Irwin criticizes what he claims to be Said's thesis that throughout Europe’s history, “every

European, in what he could say about the Orient, was a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.” Irwin points out that long before

notions like third-worldism and post-colonialism entered academia, many Orientalists were committed advocates for Arab and Islamic political

causes.

Goldziher backed the Urabi revolt against foreign control of Egypt. The Cambridge Iranologist Edward Granville Browne became a one-man lobby

for Persian liberty during Iran’s constitutional revolution in the early 20th century. Prince Leone Caetani, an Italian Islamicist, opposed his

country’s occupation of Libya, for which he was denounced as a “Turk.” AndLouis Massignon may have been the first Frenchman to take up the

Palestinian Arab cause. [8]

[edit]George P. Landow

While acknowledging the great influence of Orientalism on postcolonial theory since its publication in 1978, George P. Landow - a professor of

English and Art History at Brown University in the United States - finds Said's scholarship lacking. He chides Said for ignoring the non-Arab Asian

countries, non-Western imperialism, the occidentalist ideas that abound in East towards the Western, and gender issues. Orientalism assumes

that Western imperialism, Western psychological projection, "and its harmful political consequences are something that only the West does to the

East rather than something all societies do to one another." Landow also finds Orientalism's political focus harmful to students of literature since it

has led to the political study of literature at the expense ofphilological, literary, and rhetorical issues [9] (see also the article Edward Said.)

Landow points out that Said completely ignores China, Japan, and South East Asia, in talking of "the East," but then goes on to criticise the

West’s homogenisation of the East. Furthermore, Landow states that Said failed to capture the essence of the Middle East, not least by

overlooking important works by Egyptian and Arabic scholars.

In addition to poor knowledge about the history of European and non-European imperialism, another of Landow’s criticisms is that Said sees only

the influence of the West on the East in colonialism. Landow argues that these influences were not simply one-way, but cross-cultural, and that

Said fails to take into account other societies or factors within the East.

He also criticises Said’s "dramatic assertion that no European or American scholar could `know` the Orient." However, in his view what they have

actually done constitutes acts of oppression [10]. Moreover, one of the principal claims made by Landow is that Said did not allow the views of other

scholars to feature in his analysis; therefore, he committed “the greatest single scholarly sin” inOrientalism.[9]

[edit]Bernard Lewis

Orientalism included much criticism of historian Bernard Lewis, which Lewis in turn answered. Said contended that Lewis treats Islam as a

monolithic entity without the nuance of its plurality, internal dynamics, and historical complexities, and accused him of "demagogy and downright

ignorance."[11] Said quoted Lewis' assertion that "the Western doctrine of the right to resist bad government is alien to Islamic thought". Lewis

continued,

In the Arabic-speaking countries a different word was used for [revolution] thawra. The root th-w-r in classical Arabic meant to rise up (e.g. of a

camel), to be stirred or excited, and hence, especially in Maghribi usage, to rebel.

Said suggests that this particular passage is "full of condescension and bad faith", that the example of a camel is selected deliberately to debase

Arab revolutionary ambitions: "[I]t is this kind of essentialized description that is natural for students and policymakers of the Middle East." Lewis'

writings, according to Said, are often "polemical, not scholarly"; Said asserts that Lewis has striven to depict Islam as "an anti-Semitic ideology,

not merely a religion".[12]

[Lewis] goes on to proclaim that Islam is an irrational herd or mass phenomenon, ruling Muslims by passions, instincts, and unreflecting hatreds.

The whole point of this exposition is to frighten his audience, to make it never yield an inch to Islam. According to Lewis, Islam does not develop,

and neither do Muslims; they merely are, and they are to be watched, on account of that pure essence of theirs (according to Lewis), which

happens to include a long-standing hatred of Christians and Jews. Lewis everywhere refrains himself from making such inflammatory statements

flat out; he always takes care to say that of course the Muslims are not anti-Semitic the way the Nazis were, but their religion can too easily

accommodate itself to anti-Semitism and has done so. Similarly with regard to Islam and racism, slavery, and other more or less "Western" evils.

The core of Lewis's ideology about Islam is that it never changes, and his whole mission is now to inform conservative segments of the Jewish

reading public, and anyone else who cares to listen, that any political, historical, and scholarly account of Muslims must begin and end with the

fact that Muslims are Muslims.[12]

Rejecting the view that western scholarship was biased against the Middle East, Lewis responded that Orientalism developed as a facet

of European humanism, independently of the past European imperial expansion.[13] He noted the French and English pursued the study of Islam in

the 16th and 17th centuries, yet not in an organized way, but long before they had any control or hope of control in the Middle East; and that much

of Orientalist study did nothing to advance the cause of imperialism. "What imperial purpose was served by deciphering the ancient Egyptian

language, for example, and then restoring to the Egyptians knowledge of and pride in their forgotten, ancient past?"[14]

[edit]Daniel Martin Varisco

Another recent critical assessment of "Orientalism" and its reception across disciplines is provided by anthropologist and historian Daniel Martin

Varisco in his "Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid" (University of Washington Press, 2007). Using judicious satirical criticism to defuse

what has become an acrimonious debate, Varisco surveys the extensive criticism of Said's methodology, including criticism of his use of Foucault

and Gramsci, and argues that the politics of polemics needs to be superseded to move academic discussion of real cultures in the region once

imagined as an "Orient" beyond the binary blame game. He concludes (p. 304)

The notion of Oriental homogeneity will exist as long as prejudice serves political ends, but to blame the sins of its current use on hegemonic

intellectualism mires ongoing mitigation of bad and biased scholarship in an unresolvable polemic of blame. It is time to read beyond

"Orientalism."[15]

[edit]Ibn Warraq

In his criticism of Orientalism, author Ibn Warraq complains Said's belief that all truth was relative undermined his credibility.

In response to critics who over the years have pointed to errors of fact and detail so mountainous as to destroy his thesis, [Said] finally admitted

that he had "no interest in, much less capacity for, showing what the true Orient and Islam really are." [16]

Part of a series on

Edward Wadie Saïd (Arabic pronunciation: [wædiːʕ sæʕiːd] Arabic:  سعيد وديع Idwārd Wadīʿ Saʿīd; 1 November 1935 – 25 ,إدوارد

September 2003) was aPalestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and

Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism.[1] Robert Fisk described him as the Palestinians' "most powerful

political voice."[2]

Said was an influential cultural critic and author, known best for his book Orientalism (1978), which catapulted him to international academic fame.

[3] The book presented his influential ideas on Orientalism, the Western study of Eastern cultures. Said contended that Orientalist scholarship was and

continues to be inextricably tied to the imperialist societies that produced it, making much of the work inherently politicized, servile to power, and

therefore suspect. Grounding much of this thesis in his intimate knowledge of colonial literature such as the fiction of Conrad, and in the post-

structuralist theory of Foucault,Derrida and others, Said's Orientalism and following works proved influential in literary theory and criticism, and

continue to influence several other fields in the humanities. Orientalism affected Middle Eastern studies in particular, transforming the way practitioners

of the discipline describe and examine theMiddle East.[4] Said came to discuss and vigorously debate the issue of Orientalism with scholars in the fields

of history and area studies, many of whom disagreed with his thesis, including most famously Bernard Lewis.[5]

Said also came to be known as a public intellectual who frequently discussed contemporary politics, music, culture, and literature, in lectures,

newspaper and magazine columns, and books. Drawing on his own experience as a Palestinian growing up in a Palestinian Christian family in the

Middle East at the time of the creation of Israel, Said argued for the creation of a Palestinian state, equal rights for Palestinians in Israel, including

the right of return, and for increased pressure on Israel, especially by the United States. He also criticized several Arab and Muslim regimes. [6] Having

received a Western education in the US, where he lived from his high school years until his death, Said tried to use his dual heritage, the subject of his

prize-winning memoir Out of Place (1999), to bridge the gap between the West and the Middle East and to improve the situation in Israel-Palestine. He

was a member of thePalestinian National Council for over a decade and his pro-Palestinian activism made him a figure of considerable controversy. [7]

In 1999, Said co-founded with Daniel Barenboim the award-winning West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, made up of children from Israel, the Palestinian

territories, and surrounding Arab nations. He was also an accomplished concert pianist.[8] Active until his last months, Said died in 2003 after a decade-

long battle with leukemia.

Edward Said and sister,Rosemarie 1940

Said was born in Jerusalem (then in the British Mandate of Palestine) on November 1, 1935.[9] His father, a US citizen

with Protestant Palestinian  origins, was a businessman and had served under General Pershing in World War I. He moved to Cairo in the decade

before Edward's birth. His mother, born in Nazareth, also had a Protestant background[10][11] and was half-Lebanese.[12] His sister was the historian and

writer Rosemarie Said Zahlan.

Said lived "between worlds" in both Cairo and Jerusalem until age 12.[13] He claims to have attended the Anglican St. George's Academy in 1947 in

Jerusalem, but this has been disputed.[nb 1] As the Arab League declared war on Israel in 1947/1948, his family moved from the neighborhood

of Talbiya in Jerusalem and returned to Cairo. In a London Review of Books article, Said gave a more detailed account of his upbringing:

"With an unexceptionally Arab family name like Said connected to an improbably British first name (my mother much admired the Prince of Wales in

1935, the year of my birth), I was an uncomfortably anomalous student all through my early years: a Palestinian going to school in Egypt, with an

English first name, an American passport and no certain identity at all. To make matters worse, Arabic, my native language, and English, my school

language, were inextricably mixed: I have never known which was my first language, and have felt fully at home in neither, al-though I dream in both.

Every time I speak an English sentence, I find myself echoing it in Arabic, and vice versa." [13]

In 1951, Said was expelled from Victoria College for being a "troublemaker", [13] and was consequently sent by his parents to Mount Hermon School, a

private college preparatory school in Massachusetts, where he recalls a "miserable" year of feeling "out of place". [13] Said later reflected that the

decision to send him so far away was heavily influenced by 'the prospects of deracinated people like us being so uncertain that it would be best to send

me as far away as possible'.[13] Though these themes of interweaving cultures, feeling out of place, and being far from home affected him dissonantly

and would echo through Said's work for the rest of his life, Said managed to do well at the Massachusetts boarding school often 'achieving the rank of

either first or second in a class of about a hundred and sixty'. [13]

Fluent in English, French, and Arabic,[23] Said earned a Bachelor of Arts (1957) from Princeton University, and a Master of Arts (1960) and a Ph.D.

(1964) in English Literature from Harvard University.[24]

[edit]Career

In 1963, Said joined the faculty of Columbia University, in the departments of English and Comparative Literature, where he would serve until his death

in 2003. In 1974 he was Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard, in 1975-6 Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral

Science at Stanford, and in 1977, Said became the Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia and subsequently became the

Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities. In 1979, Said was Visiting Professor of Humanities at Johns Hopkins University. [25] Said was

also a visiting professor at Yale University and lectured at more than 100 universities.[26] In 1992, he attained the rank of University Professor,

Columbia's highest academic position.[27] He lived near campus in The Colosseum on Riverside Drive.

Said also served as president of the Modern Language Association, editor of the Arab Studies Quarterly, and was a member of the American Academy

of Arts and Sciences, the executive board of PEN, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Royal Society of Literature, the Council of Foreign

Relations,[25] and theAmerican Philosophical Society.[28]

Said's writing regularly appeared in The Nation,[29] The Guardian,[29] the London Review of Books,[30] Le Monde Diplomatique,[31] Counterpunch,[32] Al

Ahram,[33]and the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat.[29] The themes of his writings included literature, politics, the Middle East, music, and culture.

[edit]Literary criticism

After expanding on his thesis to produce his first book, Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography (1966), Said, swirling with a wealth of ideas

which he received from studying the works ofGiambattista Vico and others, presented his award-winning second book, Beginnings: Intention and

Method (1974), a work on the theoretical underpinnings of literary critical projects. [34] Other literary critical texts by Said include The World, the Text,

and the Critic (1983), Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature: Yeats and Decolonization (1988), Culture and Imperialism (1993), Representations of

the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures (1994), and the posthumous Humanism and Democratic Criticism (2004) and On Late Style (2006).

Fascinated, like his postmodern influences, with how people perceive things in cultural contexts, and by the effects of society, politics and power on

literature, Said is considered a founder ofpostcolonial criticism. His work on Orientalism is particularly important, but his interpretations of Conrad, Jane

Austen,[35] Rudyard Kipling,[36] Yeats,[37] and other writers have also proven influential among critics.

[edit]"Orientalism"

Said is most famous for describing and critiquing "Orientalism", which he perceived as a constellation of false assumptions

underlying Western attitudes toward the East. In his most famous book,Orientalism (1978), Said claimed a "subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice

against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture."[38] He argued that a long tradition of false and romanticized images ofAsia and the Middle

East in Western culture had served as an implicit justification for Europe and the US' colonial and imperial ambitions. Just as fiercely, he denounced

the practice of Arab elites whointernalized the US and British orientalists' ideas of Arabic culture.

So far as the United States seems to be concerned, it is only a slight overstatement to say that Moslems and Arabs are essentially seen as either oil

suppliers or potential terrorists. Very little of the detail, the human density, the passion of Arab-Moslem life has entered the awareness of even those

people whose profession it is to report the Arab world. What we have instead is a series of crude, essentialized caricatures of the Islamic

world presented in such a way as to make that world vulnerable to military aggression.[39]

In Orientalism, the book, Said asserted that much western study of Islamic civilization was political intellectualism bent on self-affirmation rather than

objective study,[40] a form of racism, and a tool ofimperialist domination.[38] Orientalism had an impact on the fields of literary theory, cultural

studies and human geography, and to a lesser extent on those of history and oriental studies. Taking his cue from the work of Jacques

Derrida and Michel Foucault, and from earlier critics of western Orientalism such as A. L. Tibawi,[41] Anouar Abdel-Malek,[42] Maxime Rodinson,[43] and

Richard William Southern,[44] Said argued that Western writings on the Orient, and the perceptions of the East purveyed in them, are suspect, and

cannot be taken at face value. According to Said, the history of European colonial rule and political domination over the East distorts the writings of

even the most knowledgeable, well-meaning and sympathetic Western ‘Orientalists’ (a term that he transformed into a pejorative): [45]

I doubt if it is controversial, for example, to say that an Englishman in India or Egypt in the later nineteenth century took an interest in those countries

which was never far from their status in his mind as British colonies. To say this may seem quite different from saying that all academic knowledge

about India and Egypt is somehow tinged and impressed with, violated by, the gross political fact – and yet that is what I am saying in this study of

Orientalism.[46]

Said argued that the West has stereotyped the East in art and literature, since antiquity—such as the composition of The Persians by Aeschylus.

[47] Even more so in modern times, Europe has dominated Asia politically so that even the most outwardly objective Western texts on the East were

permeated with a bias that Western scholars could not recognize. Western scholars appropriated the task of exploration and interpretation of the

Orient’s languages, history and culture for themselves, with the implication that the East was not capable of composing its own narrative. They have

written Asia’s past and constructed its modern identities from a perspective that takes Europe as the norm, from which the "exotic", "inscrutable" Orient

deviates.[48]

Said concluded that Western writings about the Orient depict it as an irrational, weak, feminised "Other", contrasted with the rational, strong, masculine

West, a contrast he suggests derives from the need to create "difference" between West and East that can be attributed to immutable "essences" in the

Oriental make-up.[49] In 1978, when the book was first published, with memories of the Yom Kippur war and the OPEC crisis still fresh, Said argued that

these attitudes still permeated the Western media and academia. [50] After stating the central thesis, Orientalism consists mainly of supporting examples

from Western texts.

[edit]Criticism

Orientalism and other works by Said sparked a wide variety of controversy and criticism.[51] Ernest Gellner argued that Said's contention that the West

had dominated the East for more than 2,000 years was unsupportable, noting that until the late 17th century the Ottoman Empire had posed a serious

threat to Europe.[52] Mark Proudman notes that Said had claimed that the British Empireextended from Egypt to India in the 1880s, when in fact the

Ottoman and Persian Empires intervened.[53] Others argued out that even at the height of the imperial era, European power in the East was never

absolute, and remained heavily dependent on local collaborators, who were frequently subversive of imperial aims. [54] Another criticism is that the areas

of the Middle East on which Said had concentrated, including Palestine and Egypt, were poor examples for his theory, as they came under direct

European control only for a relatively short period in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These critics suggested that Said devoted much less

attention to more apt examples, including the British Raj in India, and Russia’s dominions in Asia, because Said was more interested in making political

points about the Middle East.[55]

Strong criticism of Said's critique of Orientalism came from academic Orientalists, including some of Eastern backgrounds. Albert Hourani, Robert

Graham Irwin, Nikki Keddie, Bernard Lewis,[56][57]and Kanan Makiya addressed what Keddie retrospectively calls "some unfortunate consequences" of

Said's Orientalism on the perception and status of their scholarship.[nb 2] Bernard Lewis in particular was often at odds with Said following the publication

of Orientalism, in which Said singled out Lewis as a "perfect exemplification" of an "Establishment Orientalist" whose work "purports to be objective

liberal scholarship but is in reality very close to being propaganda against his subject material".[60] Lewis answered with several essays in response,

and was joined by other scholars, such as Maxime Rodinson, Jacques Berque, Malcolm Kerr, Aijaz Ahmad, and William Montgomery Watt, who also

regarded Orientalism as a deeply flawed account of Western scholarship.[61]

Some of Said's academic critics argue that Said made no attempt to distinguish between writers of very different types: such as on the one hand the

poet Goethe (who never travelled in the East), the novelist Flaubert (who briefly toured Egypt), Ernest Renan (whose work is widely regarded as

tainted by racism), and on the other scholars such as Edward William Lane who was fluent in Arabic.[62]According to these critics, their common

European origins and attitudes overrode such considerations in Said's mind; Said constructed a stereotype of Europeans. [63] The critic Robert Irwin

writes that Said ignored the domination of 19th century Oriental studies by Germans and Hungarians, from countries that did not possess an Eastern

empire.[64]

Such critics accuse Said of creating a monolithic "Occidentalism" to oppose to the "Orientalism" of Western discourse, arguing that he failed to

distinguish between the paradigms of Romanticism and the Enlightenment; that he ignored the widespread and fundamental differences of opinion

among western scholars of the Orient; that he failed to acknowledge that many Orientalists (such as William Jones) were more concerned with

establishing kinship between East and West than with creating "difference", and who had often made discoveries that would provide the foundations for

anti-colonial nationalism.[65] More generally, critics argue that Said and his followers fail to distinguish between Orientalism in the media and popular

culture (for instance the portrayal of the Orient in such films asIndiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) and academic studies of Oriental languages,

literature, history and culture by Western scholars (whom, it is argued, they tar with the same brush). [66][67]

Said's critics argue that by making ethnicity and cultural background the test of authority and objectivity in studying the Orient, Said drew attention to

the question of his own identity as a Palestinian and as a "Subaltern".[68] Given Said's largely Anglophone upbringing and education at an elite school in

Cairo, the fact that he spent most of his adult life in the United States, and his prominent position in American academia, his own arguments that "any

and all representations … are embedded first in the language and then in the culture, institutions and political ambience of the representer … [and are]

interwoven with a great many other things besides the 'truth', which is itself a representation" [69] could be said to disenfranchise him from writing about

the Orient himself. Hence these critics claim that the excessive relativism of Said and his followers trap them in a "web of solipsism",[70] unable to talk of

anything but "representations", and denying the existence of any objective truth.

[edit]Supporters

Said’s supporters argue that such criticisms, even if correct, do not invalidate his basic thesis, which they say still holds true for the 19th and 20th

centuries and in particular for general representations of the Orient in Western media, literature and film. [71] His supporters point out that Said himself

acknowledges limitations of his study's failing to address German scholarship [72] and that, in the "Afterword" to the 1995 edition of Orientalism, he, in

their view, convincingly refutes his critics, such as Lewis.[73] Orientalism is regarded as central to the postcolonial movement, encouraging scholars

"from non-western countries...to take advantage of the mood of political correctness it helped to engender by associating themselves with 'narratives of

oppression,' creating successful careers out of transmitting, interpreting and debating representations of the non-western 'other.'" [74]

Said's importance in the fields of literary criticism and cultural studies is represented by his influence on scholars studying India, such as Gyan

Prakash,[75] Nicholas Dirks,[76] and Ronald Inden,[77]and Cambodia, such as Simon Springer,[78] and literary theorists such as Hamid Dabashi, Homi

Bhabha [79]  and Gayatri Spivak.[80] His work continues to be widely discussed in academic seminars, disciplinary conferences, and scholarship. [4]

[edit]Influence

Both supporters and critics of Edward Said acknowledge the profound, transformative influence that his book Orientalism has had across the spectrum

of the humanities. But whereas his critics regret his influence as limiting, [81] his supporters praise his influence as liberating.[82] Postcolonial theory, of

which Said is regarded as a founder and a figure of continual relevance,[1] continues to attract interest and is a thriving field in the humanities.

[83] Orientalism continues to profoundly inform the field of Middle Eastern studies.[4] He was a prominent public intellectual in the United States, praised

widely as an "intellectual superstar," engaging in music criticism, public lectures, media punditry, contemporary politics, and musical performance.

[74] His breadth of influence is regarded as "genuinely global," resting on his unique and innovative blend of cultural criticism, politics, and literary theory.

[4]

Edward Said died at age 67 in the early morning of September 25, 2003, in New York City, after a 12 year-long battle with chronic lymphocytic

leukemia.[109] He was survived by his wife of 33 years, Mariam (née Cortas); a son, Wadie, and a daughter, Najla. [110][111]

[edit]Awards

Besides being honored with memberships and posts to several prestigious organizations and institutions, Said was the recipient of twenty honorary

degrees from universities around the world.[120] Said was the recipient of Harvard University's Bowdoin Prize. He received the Lionel Trilling Award

(twice), the first occasion being the first time the award was given. He also received the Wellek Prize of the American Comparative Literature

Association, and the inaugural Spinoza Lens Award.[121] In 2001, Said received the Lannan Literary Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 2002, he

received the Prince of Asturias Award for Concord, and he was the first U.S. citizen to receive the Sultan Owais prize. [122] His autobiography, Out of

Place, won him the 1999 New Yorker Book Award for Non-Fiction; the 2000 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Non-Fiction; and the Morton Dauwen Zabel

Award in Literature.[123] Said Was named an honorary patron of the University Philosophical Society, Trinity College, Dublin in 2003, shortly before his

death.

Edward Said and sister,Rosemarie 1940

Said was born in Jerusalem (then in the British Mandate of Palestine) on November 1, 1935.[9] His father, a US citizen

with Protestant Palestinian  origins, was a businessman and had served under General Pershing in World War I. He moved to Cairo in the decade

before Edward's birth. His mother, born in Nazareth, also had a Protestant background[10][11] and was half-Lebanese.[12] His sister was the historian and

writer Rosemarie Said Zahlan.

Said lived "between worlds" in both Cairo and Jerusalem until age 12.[13] He claims to have attended the Anglican St. George's Academy in 1947 in

Jerusalem, but this has been disputed.[nb 1] As the Arab League declared war on Israel in 1947/1948, his family moved from the neighborhood

of Talbiya in Jerusalem and returned to Cairo. In a London Review of Books article, Said gave a more detailed account of his upbringing:

"With an unexceptionally Arab family name like Said connected to an improbably British first name (my mother much admired the Prince of Wales in

1935, the year of my birth), I was an uncomfortably anomalous student all through my early years: a Palestinian going to school in Egypt, with an

English first name, an American passport and no certain identity at all. To make matters worse, Arabic, my native language, and English, my school

language, were inextricably mixed: I have never known which was my first language, and have felt fully at home in neither, al-though I dream in both.

Every time I speak an English sentence, I find myself echoing it in Arabic, and vice versa." [13]

In 1951, Said was expelled from Victoria College for being a "troublemaker", [13] and was consequently sent by his parents to Mount Hermon School, a

private college preparatory school in Massachusetts, where he recalls a "miserable" year of feeling "out of place". [13] Said later reflected that the

decision to send him so far away was heavily influenced by 'the prospects of deracinated people like us being so uncertain that it would be best to send

me as far away as possible'.[13] Though these themes of interweaving cultures, feeling out of place, and being far from home affected him dissonantly

and would echo through Said's work for the rest of his life, Said managed to do well at the Massachusetts boarding school often 'achieving the rank of

either first or second in a class of about a hundred and sixty'. [13]

Fluent in English, French, and Arabic,[23] Said earned a Bachelor of Arts (1957) from Princeton University, and a Master of Arts (1960) and a Ph.D.

(1964) in English Literature from Harvard University.[24]

[edit]Career

In 1963, Said joined the faculty of Columbia University, in the departments of English and Comparative Literature, where he would serve until his death

in 2003. In 1974 he was Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard, in 1975-6 Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral

Science at Stanford, and in 1977, Said became the Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia and subsequently became the

Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities. In 1979, Said was Visiting Professor of Humanities at Johns Hopkins University. [25] Said was

also a visiting professor at Yale University and lectured at more than 100 universities.[26] In 1992, he attained the rank of University Professor,

Columbia's highest academic position.[27] He lived near campus in The Colosseum on Riverside Drive.

Said also served as president of the Modern Language Association, editor of the Arab Studies Quarterly, and was a member of the American Academy

of Arts and Sciences, the executive board of PEN, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Royal Society of Literature, the Council of Foreign

Relations,[25] and theAmerican Philosophical Society.[28]

Said's writing regularly appeared in The Nation,[29] The Guardian,[29] the London Review of Books,[30] Le Monde Diplomatique,[31] Counterpunch,[32] Al

Ahram,[33]and the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat.[29] The themes of his writings included literature, politics, the Middle East, music, and culture.

[edit]Literary criticism

After expanding on his thesis to produce his first book, Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography (1966), Said, swirling with a wealth of ideas

which he received from studying the works ofGiambattista Vico and others, presented his award-winning second book, Beginnings: Intention and

Method (1974), a work on the theoretical underpinnings of literary critical projects. [34] Other literary critical texts by Said include The World, the Text,

and the Critic (1983), Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature: Yeats and Decolonization (1988), Culture and Imperialism (1993), Representations of

the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures (1994), and the posthumous Humanism and Democratic Criticism (2004) and On Late Style (2006).

Fascinated, like his postmodern influences, with how people perceive things in cultural contexts, and by the effects of society, politics and power on

literature, Said is considered a founder ofpostcolonial criticism. His work on Orientalism is particularly important, but his interpretations of Conrad, Jane

Austen,[35] Rudyard Kipling,[36] Yeats,[37] and other writers have also proven influential among critics.

[edit]"Orientalism"

Said is most famous for describing and critiquing "Orientalism", which he perceived as a constellation of false assumptions

underlying Western attitudes toward the East. In his most famous book,Orientalism (1978), Said claimed a "subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice

against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture."[38] He argued that a long tradition of false and romanticized images ofAsia and the Middle

East in Western culture had served as an implicit justification for Europe and the US' colonial and imperial ambitions. Just as fiercely, he denounced

the practice of Arab elites whointernalized the US and British orientalists' ideas of Arabic culture.

So far as the United States seems to be concerned, it is only a slight overstatement to say that Moslems and Arabs are essentially seen as either oil

suppliers or potential terrorists. Very little of the detail, the human density, the passion of Arab-Moslem life has entered the awareness of even those

people whose profession it is to report the Arab world. What we have instead is a series of crude, essentialized caricatures of the Islamic

world presented in such a way as to make that world vulnerable to military aggression.[39]

In Orientalism, the book, Said asserted that much western study of Islamic civilization was political intellectualism bent on self-affirmation rather than

objective study,[40] a form of racism, and a tool ofimperialist domination.[38] Orientalism had an impact on the fields of literary theory, cultural

studies and human geography, and to a lesser extent on those of history and oriental studies. Taking his cue from the work of Jacques

Derrida and Michel Foucault, and from earlier critics of western Orientalism such as A. L. Tibawi,[41] Anouar Abdel-Malek,[42] Maxime Rodinson,[43] and

Richard William Southern,[44] Said argued that Western writings on the Orient, and the perceptions of the East purveyed in them, are suspect, and

cannot be taken at face value. According to Said, the history of European colonial rule and political domination over the East distorts the writings of

even the most knowledgeable, well-meaning and sympathetic Western ‘Orientalists’ (a term that he transformed into a pejorative): [45]

I doubt if it is controversial, for example, to say that an Englishman in India or Egypt in the later nineteenth century took an interest in those countries

which was never far from their status in his mind as British colonies. To say this may seem quite different from saying that all academic knowledge

about India and Egypt is somehow tinged and impressed with, violated by, the gross political fact – and yet that is what I am saying in this study of

Orientalism.[46]

Said argued that the West has stereotyped the East in art and literature, since antiquity—such as the composition of The Persians by Aeschylus.

[47] Even more so in modern times, Europe has dominated Asia politically so that even the most outwardly objective Western texts on the East were

permeated with a bias that Western scholars could not recognize. Western scholars appropriated the task of exploration and interpretation of the

Orient’s languages, history and culture for themselves, with the implication that the East was not capable of composing its own narrative. They have

written Asia’s past and constructed its modern identities from a perspective that takes Europe as the norm, from which the "exotic", "inscrutable" Orient

deviates.[48]

Said concluded that Western writings about the Orient depict it as an irrational, weak, feminised "Other", contrasted with the rational, strong, masculine

West, a contrast he suggests derives from the need to create "difference" between West and East that can be attributed to immutable "essences" in the

Oriental make-up.[49] In 1978, when the book was first published, with memories of the Yom Kippur war and the OPEC crisis still fresh, Said argued that

these attitudes still permeated the Western media and academia. [50] After stating the central thesis, Orientalism consists mainly of supporting examples

from Western texts.

[edit]Criticism

Orientalism and other works by Said sparked a wide variety of controversy and criticism.[51] Ernest Gellner argued that Said's contention that the West

had dominated the East for more than 2,000 years was unsupportable, noting that until the late 17th century the Ottoman Empire had posed a serious

threat to Europe.[52] Mark Proudman notes that Said had claimed that the British Empireextended from Egypt to India in the 1880s, when in fact the

Ottoman and Persian Empires intervened.[53] Others argued out that even at the height of the imperial era, European power in the East was never

absolute, and remained heavily dependent on local collaborators, who were frequently subversive of imperial aims. [54] Another criticism is that the areas

of the Middle East on which Said had concentrated, including Palestine and Egypt, were poor examples for his theory, as they came under direct

European control only for a relatively short period in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These critics suggested that Said devoted much less

attention to more apt examples, including the British Raj in India, and Russia’s dominions in Asia, because Said was more interested in making political

points about the Middle East.[55]

Strong criticism of Said's critique of Orientalism came from academic Orientalists, including some of Eastern backgrounds. Albert Hourani, Robert

Graham Irwin, Nikki Keddie, Bernard Lewis,[56][57]and Kanan Makiya addressed what Keddie retrospectively calls "some unfortunate consequences" of

Said's Orientalism on the perception and status of their scholarship.[nb 2] Bernard Lewis in particular was often at odds with Said following the publication

of Orientalism, in which Said singled out Lewis as a "perfect exemplification" of an "Establishment Orientalist" whose work "purports to be objective

liberal scholarship but is in reality very close to being propaganda against his subject material".[60] Lewis answered with several essays in response,

and was joined by other scholars, such as Maxime Rodinson, Jacques Berque, Malcolm Kerr, Aijaz Ahmad, and William Montgomery Watt, who also

regarded Orientalism as a deeply flawed account of Western scholarship.[61]

Some of Said's academic critics argue that Said made no attempt to distinguish between writers of very different types: such as on the one hand the

poet Goethe (who never travelled in the East), the novelist Flaubert (who briefly toured Egypt), Ernest Renan (whose work is widely regarded as

tainted by racism), and on the other scholars such as Edward William Lane who was fluent in Arabic.[62]According to these critics, their common

European origins and attitudes overrode such considerations in Said's mind; Said constructed a stereotype of Europeans. [63] The critic Robert Irwin

writes that Said ignored the domination of 19th century Oriental studies by Germans and Hungarians, from countries that did not possess an Eastern

empire.[64]

Such critics accuse Said of creating a monolithic "Occidentalism" to oppose to the "Orientalism" of Western discourse, arguing that he failed to

distinguish between the paradigms of Romanticism and the Enlightenment; that he ignored the widespread and fundamental differences of opinion

among western scholars of the Orient; that he failed to acknowledge that many Orientalists (such as William Jones) were more concerned with

establishing kinship between East and West than with creating "difference", and who had often made discoveries that would provide the foundations for

anti-colonial nationalism.[65] More generally, critics argue that Said and his followers fail to distinguish between Orientalism in the media and popular

culture (for instance the portrayal of the Orient in such films asIndiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) and academic studies of Oriental languages,

literature, history and culture by Western scholars (whom, it is argued, they tar with the same brush). [66][67]

Said's critics argue that by making ethnicity and cultural background the test of authority and objectivity in studying the Orient, Said drew attention to

the question of his own identity as a Palestinian and as a "Subaltern".[68] Given Said's largely Anglophone upbringing and education at an elite school in

Cairo, the fact that he spent most of his adult life in the United States, and his prominent position in American academia, his own arguments that "any

and all representations … are embedded first in the language and then in the culture, institutions and political ambience of the representer … [and are]

interwoven with a great many other things besides the 'truth', which is itself a representation" [69] could be said to disenfranchise him from writing about

the Orient himself. Hence these critics claim that the excessive relativism of Said and his followers trap them in a "web of solipsism",[70] unable to talk of

Unlike the Americans, the French and British--less so the Germans, Russians, Spanish, Portugese, Italians, and Swiss--have had a long tradition of what I shall be calling Orientalism, a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient's special place in European Western Experience. 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. . . .

It will be clear to the reader...that by Orientalism I mean several things, all of them, in my opinion, interdependent. The most readily accepted designation for Orientalism is an academic one, and indeed the label still serves in a number of academic institutions. Anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient--and this applies whether the persion 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. . . .

Related to this academic tradition, whose fortunes, transmigrations, specializations, and transmissions are in part the subject of this study, is a more general meaning for Orientalism. Orientalism is a style of thought based upon ontological and epistemological distinction made between "the Orient" and (most of the time) "the Occident." Thus a very large mass of writers, among who 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 corrsespondence, or lack thereof, with a "real" Orient. (1-3,5)

An Introduction to Edward Said’s OrientalismHaroon Khalid

Author: Edward W. SaidPublisher: VintageYear: 1994 Orientalism by Edward Said is a cononical text of cultural studies in which he

has challenged the concept of orientalism or the difference between east and west, as he puts it. He says that with the start of European colonization the Europeans came in contact with the lesser developed countries of the east. They found their civilization and culture very exotic, and established the science of orientalism, which was the study of the orientals or the people from these exotic civilization.

Edward Said argues that the Europeans divided the world into two parts; the east and the west or the occident and the orient or the civilized and the uncivilized. This was totally an artificial boundary; and it was laid on the basis of the concept of them and us or theirs and ours. The Europeans used orientalism to define themselves. Some particular attributes were associated with the orientals, and whatever the orientals weren’t the occidents were. The Europeans defined themselves as the superior race compared to the orientals; and they justified their colonization by this concept. They said that it was their duty towards the world to civilize the uncivilized world. The main problem, however, arose when the Europeans started generalizing the attributes they associated with orientals, and started portraying these artificial characteristics associated with orientals in their western world through their scientific reports, literary work, and other media sources. What happened was that it created a certain image about the orientals in the European mind and in doing that infused a bias in the European attitude towards the orientals. This prejudice was also

found in the orientalists (scientist studying the orientals); and all their scientific research and reports were under the influence of this. 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.

Here is a brief summary of the book, followed by a critique by Malcolm Kerr. 

Chapter 1:  The Scope of OrientalismIn this chapter, Edward Said explains how the science of orientalism

developed and how the orientals started considering the orientals as non-human beings. The orientals divided the world in to two parts by using the concept of ours and theirs. An imaginary geographical line was drawn between what was ours and what was theirs. The orients were regarded as uncivilized people; and the westerns said that since they were the refined race it was their duty to civilize these people and in order to achieve their goal, they had to colonize and rule the orients. They said that the orients themselves were incapable of running their own government. The Europeans also thought that they had the right to represent the orientals in the west all by themselves. In doing so, they shaped the orientals the way they perceived them or in other words they were orientalizing the orients. Various teams have been sent to the east where the orientalits silently observed the orientals by living with them; and every thing the orientals said and did was recorded irrespective of its context, and projected to the civilized world of the west. This resulted in the generalization. Whatever was seen by the orientals was associated with the oriental culture, no matter if it is the irrational action of an individual.

The most important use of orientalism to the Europeans was that they defined themselves by defining the orientals. For example, qualities such as lazy, irrational, uncivilized, crudeness were related to the orientals, and automatically the Europeans became active, rational, civilized, sophisticated. Thus, in order to achieve this goal, it was very necessary for the orientalists to generalize the culture of the orients.

Another feature of 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 Mohammadism because Mohammad was the founder of this religion and since religion of Christ was called Christianity; thus Islam should be calledMohammadism. The point to be noted here is that no Muslim was aware of this terminology and this was a completely western created term, and to which the Muslims had no say at all.

 Chapter 2: Orientalist Structures and Restructures

In this chapter, Edward Said points the slight change in the attitude of the Europeans towards the orientals. The orientals were really publicized in the European world especially through their literary work. Oriental land and behaviour was highly romanticized by the European poets and writers and then presented to the western world. The orientalists had made a stage strictly for the European viewers, and the orients were presented to them with the colour of the orientalist or other writers perception. In fact, the orient lands were so highly romanticized that western literary writers found it necessary to offer pilgrimage to these exotic lands of pure sun light and clean oceans in order to experience peace of mind, and inspiration for their writing. The east was now perceived by the orientalist as a place of pure human culture with no necessary evil in the society. Actually it was this purity of the orientals that made them inferior to the clever, witty, diplomatic, far-sighted European; thus it was their right to rule and study such an innocent race. The Europeans said that these people were too naive to deal with the cruel world, and that they needed the European fatherly role to assist them.

Another justification the Europeans gave to their colonization was that they were meant to rule the orientals since they have developed sooner than the orientals as a nation, which shows that they were biologically superior, and secondly it were the Europeans who discovered the orients not the orients who discovered the Europeans. Darwin’s theories were put forward to justify their superiority, biologically by the Europeans.

In this chapter, Edward Said also explains how the two most renowned orientalists of the 19th century, namely Silvestre de Sacy and Ernest Renan worked and gave orienatlism a new dimension. In fact, Edward Said compliments the contribution made by Sacy in the field. He says that Sacy organized the whole thing by arranging the information in such a way that it was also useful for the future orientalist. And secondly, the prejudice that was inherited by every orientalist was considerably low in him. On the other hand, Renan who took advantage of Sacy’s work was as biased as any previous orientalist. He believed that the science of orientalism and the science of philology have a very important relation; and after Renan this idea was given a lot attention and many future orientalists worked of in its line.

 Chapter 3 : Orientalism Now

This chapter starts off by telling us that how the geography of the world was shaped by the colonization of the Europeans. There was a quest for geographical knowledge which formed the bases of orientalism.

The author then talks about the changing circumstances of the world politics

and changing approach to orientalism in the 20th century. The main difference was that where the earlier orientalists were more of silent observers the new orientalists took a part in the every day life of the orients. The earlier orientalists did not interact a lot with the orients, whereas the new orients lived with them as if they were one of them. This wasn’t out of appreciation of their lifestyle but was to know more about the orients in order to rule them properly. Lawrence of Arabia was one of such orienatlists.

Then Edward Said goes on to talk about two other scholars Massignon and Gibb. Though Massignon was a bit liberal with orientalists and often tried to protect their rights, there was still inherited biased found in him for the orientals, which can be seen in his work. With the changing world situation especially after World War 1, orientalism took a more liberal stance towards most of its subjects; but Islamic orientalism did not enjoy this status. There were constant attacks to show Islam as a weak religion, and a mixture of many religions and thoughts. Gibb was the most famous Islamic orientalist of this time.

After World War 1 the centre of orientalism moved from Europe to USA. One important transformation that took place during this time was instances of relating it to philology and it was related to social science now. All the orientalists studied the orientals to assist their government to come up with policies for dealing with the orient countries. With the end of World War 2, all the Europeans colonies were lost; and it was believed that there were no more orientals and occidents, but this was surely not the case. Western prejudice towards eastern countries was still very explicit, and often they managed to generalize most of the eastern countries because of it. For example Arabs were often represented as cruel and violent people. Japanese were always associated with karate where as the Muslims were always considered to be terrorists. Thus, this goes on to show that even with increasing globalization and awareness, such bias was found in the people of the developed countries.

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.

 Malcolm Kerr’s review on Orientalism

Malcolm Kerr did his specialization in International Relations and specialized in the Middle East from Princeton University. He worked on his PhD thesis with Gibb, and spent two years with him in Cambridge University.1 Malcolm’s review on Orientalism can be concluded by his following remarks, “This book

reminds me of the television program “Athletes in Action,” in which professional football players compete in swimming, and so forth. Edward Said, a literary critic loaded with talent, has certainly made a splash, but with this sort of effort he is not going to win any major race. This is a great pity, for it is a book that in principle needed to be written, and for which the author possessed rich material. In the end, however, the effort misfired. The book contains many excellent sections and scores many telling points, but it is spoiled by overzealous prosecutorial argument in which Professor Said, in his eagerness to spin too large a web, leaps at conclusions and tries to throw everything but the kitchen sink into a preconceived frame of analysis. In charging the entire tradition of European and American Oriental studies with the sins of reductionism and caricature, he commits precisely the same error”2. He further goes on to say “The list of victims of Said’s passion is a long one, too long to examine in detail. Some of them deserve it: he has justly taken the measure of Ernest Renan. Some others are probably not worth it. One wonders why he is so ready to lump nineteenth-century travellers with professional philologists; why he found it necessary to twist the empathy of Sylvain Levi for colonized peoples into an alleged racism (pp. 248-250), or to dismiss the brilliance of Richard Burton as being overshadowed by a mentality of Western domination of the east (p. 197); why he condemns Massignon for his heterodoxy, and Gibb for his orthodoxy; or why he did not distinguish between Bernard Lewis’s recent polemics on modern politics and his much more important corpus of scholarship on the history of Islamic society and culture. For those who knew Gustave von Grunebaum and were aware of his scholarly genius and his deep attraction to Islamic culture in all its ramifications, Said’s exercise in character assassination (pp. 296-298) can only cause deep dismay. Suffice it to say that von Grunebaum’s view of Islamic culture as “antihumanist” was a serious proposition, and in fact not an unsympathetic one, denounced but not rebutted by Said, who seems not to recognize the difference between an antihumanist culture and an inhumane one. He might have done well to note that Abdallah Laroui, whose penetrating criticism of von Grunebaum’s work he invokes, earned thereby an invitation from von Grunebaum to teach at UCLA”3.  

1 - Edward Said  has focused on what he called «The literary Orientalism » in his analysis and monitoring of his data and ideas, and what can be

considered as a subset of the heritage of Orientalism, which can not be confined to literature only, He in many places exceeded the literary outputs to the

historical ones. 

2 - The author's language was literary and romantic influenced by the texts of the books that he  tried  to criticize and investigate. A language  that might

not be commensurate with the rational scientific method in criticizing and analyzing of the efforts and productions of Orientalism from a non-literary

perspective that is  interested in the study of  how to form the ideas and images about Arabs and Muslims. 

3 - An author was trapped in an impressive admiration  of some Orientalists (Irving) and American Orientalism in general, considering it as a different

model, or better shape, at least, than his European counterpart, although he confessed many times the existence the European compact on the American

orientalism.

4 -  The author is characterized by his high analytical ability and his critique was objective to a large extent, although the reader will note  his

emotionality, in some topics, in the defense of Arabs and Muslims. 

5 - The book is suffering, in some of its chapters , from repetition and elaborating that the author would be able to overcome if he had another division to

the book's chapters  than the historical one.

The book remains an important knowledgeable effort that has a great deal of objectivity and criticism. The author tried in this book to explain the

mechanisms of the image of Arabs and Muslims in the Western mind and the American in particular.