ASSIGNMENT: E- C 305 POST-COLONIAL LITERATURE.
TOPIC: _- “EDWARD SAID’S ORIENTALISM”.
NAME: SAVANI MANISHA R.
ROLL NO: 15.
SEM: 1.
SUBMITTED TO, DR DILIP BARAD
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
BHAVNAGER UNIVERSITY
.
Orientalism
*Orientalism Edward said is a canonical text of cultural studies in which he has challenged the concept of oriental’s or the difference between east and west, as he puts it he says that with the start of European colonization the European come in contact with the lesser developed countries of the east. They found their civilization and culture them exotic, and established the science of orientalism, or the people from these exotic civilizations. The main thing for the European visitor was a European representation of the orient and it’s had a privileged communal significance for the journalist and his French readers. American will not feel quite the same about the orient, which for them is much more likely to be associated very differently with the east, china and Japan mainly. Unlike the Americans, the French and British less so the German, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Italians and have had a long tradition of what I shall be calling orientalism, a way of coming to terms with the experience. The orient is not only adjustment to Europe, it is also the place of Europe‘s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilization and language, its cultural constant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the other.
Edward said argues that the Europeans divided the world into 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 their and ours. The Europeans used orientalism to define themselves. Some particular attributes, and whether the Orientals weren’t the occident’s were the Europeans defined themselves as the superior race compared to the Orientals and the justified their colonization by this concept. They said that it was their duty towards the ward to civilize the uncivilized ward. The main problem, however, arose when the European started generalizing the attributes they associated with Orientals, and started parting 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 ACERTAIN IMAGE ABOUT THE ORIENTAS IN THEIR European mind and doing that infused bias in the European attitude toward the Orientals. This prejudice was also found in the orientalists 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. 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 parts by using the concept of ours and theirs. An imaginary geographical line was down between what was ours and what was theirs. The orients were regarded as uncivilized people and the western said that since they were the refined race it was their duty to civilize people those 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 through that they had the right to represent the Orientals in the west all by themselves. In doing so, shaped the Orientals the way they perceived them or in other wards they were reinitializing the orient. Various teams have been sent to the east were oriental is silently observed to the Orientals by living with them and everything the west .This resulted in the generalization whatever was seen by the projected to the civilized world of the west. This resulted in the generalization whatever was seen by the oriental action of an individual.
The most important use of oriental ism to the European was that they defined themselves by defining the Orientals. FOR EXA qualities such as lazy irrational uncivilized crudeness were related to the Orientals and automatically the Europeans become active retinal civilized sophisticated. Thus in order to achieve this goal. It was very necessary for the orientalists to generalize the culture of the orients.
Then Edward said goes on to talk about two other scholars’ massing and Gibb. Through massing on bit liberal with orientalist and often tried to protect their right, there was still inherited biased found in him his work, with the changing world situation especially after world war orientalism took a more liberal stance toward s most of its subjects but Islamic orientalism did not enjoy this status .There were constant attacks to show Islam as religion.
Edward said concludes his book by saying that the orientalist should not make generalization or they should include the write perspective too, but creating a boundary at the first place is something which should be not alone.