Orientalism: Key Names/Terms/Ideas

• The terms “Orientalism” and “Orientalist” have two main usages: (1) “Orientalist” artists and writers who made the East the subject of their art; they were often but not always personally fascinated with the East and may have traveled there; and (2) as defined by Edward Said, author of Orientalism, 1976, a way of “knowing” and portraying the Orient that ultimately justifies Western political domination of the Orient. Said’s book essentially began the field of post-colonial studies, in which power relationships and their expression in colonized areas is studied, often from a politicized viewpoint.

According to the second definition,

• The Orient (The East) is a conceptual entity that exists only in relation to the Occident (The West)
• The West uses its ideas of the Orient to define itself and its values:
• reason vs. irrationality
• progress vs. unchanging stasis
• moderation vs. excess
• reasonable religious belief/practice vs. fanaticism/ fatalism
• equitable family relationships vs. harems and slaves
• moderate rule vs. despotism
• order vs. chaos
• Stereotypical views of Eastern men and women have emerged
• The West’s view of the East is used to justify colonialism and intervention in Eastern political affairs
• “Knowledge” of the Orient has allowed the West to dominate the Orient by virtue of what it “knows”
• False knowledge of the Orient is disseminated by art, literature, travel narrative and even scholarship, that claims to know it
• Orientalist art and literature often uses minute (though sometimes incorrect) detail to create a sense of truth that supports its claim to know (and control) the Orient
• The Orient is often uses as a tool -- a mirror or a foil – through which Westerners examine themselves