-Edward Said

Edward Said:

Edward Wadie Said born in Jerusalem to Palestinian parents.

Preeminent scholar and an important figure in postcolonial studies.

Well known as an activist in Middle Eastern politics

A cultural critic best known for the 1978 book Orientalism.

Orientalism:

Orientalism means the study of Near and Far

Eastern societies and cultures, languages, and

peoples by Western scholars.

Orientalism by Edward Said is a cononical text

of cultural studies in which he challenges the

concept of orientalism or the difference

between east and west.

Crisis ( In Orientalism):

• Edward Said in his essay “ Crisis “ describes the

dissimilarity between reality and what texts say about

reality, using what Orientalists say about the orients in

text.

• “ What seems unexceptionable good sense to these writers

is that it is a fallacy to assume that the swarming,

unpredictable and problematic mess in which human

beings live can be understood on the basis of what books-

texts say; to apply what one learns out of book to reality is

to risk folly or ruin.”

Two situations that favor a textual attitude: One is,when a

human being confronts at close quarters something

unknown and threatening and previously distant, one has

to recourse not only to one’s previous experience but also

to what one has read about it.

For Example : travel books and guide books.

Second is appearance of success.

Said sets this up to describe the Orientalist- a group of

intellectuals from the west .

For the Orientalists the Orient, was something to be

encountered and dealt with to a certain extent.

This happened because of the mysteriousness of the Orient

to the Westerners.It was the text of the Orientalists, from

the West, that shaped the image and reality of the Orient.

They held a textual attitude towards the Orient.

Said next move is “ preposterous transition” – Orientalists

overrode the Orient.

This transition comes down to Westerners wanting to

control the Orient, to dehumanize them in a way to make

the Orient their own, their slave.

Thus, Said relates Orientalism to Colonization.

“ to colonize meant at first the identification – indeed, the

creation of interests; these could be commercial,

communicational, military, religious, cultural.”

Orientalism is grounded in text. It is then a textual and

mental colonization of the Orient. This makes the

Orientalists to control the Orient.

Said says ,“ It is as if ,on the one hand, a bin called ‘

Oriental’ existed into which all the authoritative,

anonymous and traditional Western attitude to the East

were dumped. On the other, true to the trsdition of

storytelling, one could nevertheless tell of experiences

with or in the Orient.”

One important thing that Said points out is that the

modern Orientalists stands apart from the Orient, yet still

shapes that image and forms a textual opinion of

something so far from reality.

His Orient is not the Orient as it is, but the Orient as it has

been Orientalized.

By the end of World War I both Africa and Orient formed

not so much an intellectual spectacle for the West. The

scope of Orientalism matched the scope of empire that

provoked crisis in history of western thought about Orient.

Said brings out that, a white middle-class Westerner

believes that it is human prerogative not only to manage

the non-white world but also to own it, just because by

definition ’it’ is not quite as human as ‘we’ are.

It is this dehumanization that Said connotes with

Orientalism.

CONCLUSION:

Said finishes his essay describing his and the Orient’s crisis.

“ The present crisis dramatizes the disparity between texts and reality.”

He not only exposes the source of Orientalism’s views but also to reflect on its importance, for the contemporary intellectual feels that to ignore a part of the world is to avoid reality.

So this avoiding of reality is the crisis.