Orientalism Essay

Here is the essay I did for class. It is long and I don't advise that you read it.


Orientalism is a specific viewpoint that is held by Western observers who observe Eastern culture. It is a viewpoint that stresses the differences between the East and West, and portrays the East as the alien ‘other’. Thus the truth about the reality within the East is obscured by Western dominated sentiments and blatant biases. What emerges from Orientalist study is a portrayal of an “Orient” which is simultaneously alluring and mysterious with its wealth and its women, yet grotesque and untouchable with its backward ways and strange religions. This viewpoint is not held just by academics, but by writers, artists and other broadcasters of information. These people unknowingly (and perhaps unintentionally) propagate a vision of the Middle East and Asia that is based on archetype and generalizations. This process of stereotyping and generalizing has lead to the erosion of distinctions between multiple ethnic groups: Americans may be able to tell the difference between a Mexican and American, but are unable to tell the difference between a Kurd and an Israelite, or an Indian and a Mongolian. The marginalization of such important factors such as race, religion and location in the East has led to Orientalist scholars creating a fictional “Orient” in which to study. This is an important success for the Orientalist, as they can now frame everything Eastern in terms of its relation to Western counterparts. The Orient is constructed as the antithesis of the Occident (West). In addition, distinctions between individual cultures in the East no longer need to be made. It is seen from Western eyes as a dark, unintelligible, forsaken land, with otherworldly tendencies leaning in the direction of the exotic and erotic. This fictionalized, all encompassing place only exists in the mind of the Western viewer. However, one of the more harmful aspects of Orientalism is that is has become so ingrained in the collective conscious with images of the East, that Orientalism itself becomes invisible. Racism and stereotyping become non offensive once they become routine. Once racism against the Arab or the Indian seems normal, it has become the norm. It seems only natural that the events that play out in the Middle and Far East to become framed in Western rhetoric. This Western rhetoric about the East has been the long held reason for colonization, occupation, and general interference. Consider the colonization and division of Africa by imperialist forces. Their rational was the “White Man’s Burden” – The notion that cultured, civilized Europeans had a duty to occupy Africa and free the Africans from their savage backward ways and pagan religions. This assumed the destruction of the previous African culture and way of life, as such a thing was seen from the West as inferior. The imperialist nations used this rational to justify a measure that was really done for economic and political power grabs. Even in our most recent rational for the most recent war has been to “Free the Iraqi people”, as if occupation is freedom, or that there were and aren’t more repressive regimes. The West cannot fathom a nation where people don’t pine for democracy and capitalism. As such they use such words such as “free” “help” and “democracy” to justify military expansionism that cares little about such ideals. And in our current unipolar geopolitical era, the only threats to Western expansionism, interventionism, occupations or other acts of imperialism come from those non aligned states who are being intervened with. This view that scholarly discourse about the Orient is not only an extension of imperialist thought, but actually helps enable divides between the East and West, has been proposed by Edward Said. He called this discourse “a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient's special place in European Western Experience.” This proposal meant that all those scholars of the Orient had been subliminally promoting bias and prototyping. This concept was met with some criticism, notably Daniel Martin Varisco, who said that Orientalism assumed “its harmful political consequences are something that only the West does to the East rather than something all societies do to one another." He called this theory a “binary blame game”. Bernard Lewis has criticized the racist and imperialist implications of Orientalism, noting that studies of the Orient arose from Humanism. He stated: “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?” The preceding statement shows the subtle, near-invisible ethnocentric thought held by the Orientalist. For one it assumes that the Egyptians care about the knowledge and pride of their past the way a Westerner would – with its translation and preservation. The second part of the statement assumed that the Egyptians could not, or would not decipher it themselves eventually, so imperialist had to do it for them. Phrases such as “deciphering the ancient” and “forgotten, ancient past” are distancing techniques, used to make Egypt seem far off and remote. It is always there and never here. And Orientalism is alive and well today in popular culture. Take Aladdin for instance, which opens with the lines of “I come from a land, a far away place, where the caravan camels roam.” Who would describe their home as a far away place? Nobody. This is simply a western projection of an Oriental. Even William Burroughs “Naked Lunch” was turned into a bastion of Orientalist sediment when David Cronenberg translated it for the big screen. In that movie, the character travels to a place called Interzone, where every stereotype about North African, Indian, Middle and Far East peoples was put into play.