Edward Said's Orientalism

Orientalism, Colonialism, Near-East, the Other/Othering, Imperialism

Edward Said was a Palestinian-American academic often credited as a founder of the field of post-colonial studies

The goal of this book is to propose a new definition of Orientalism in which the field of study shifts its focus from studying the “Orient” to studying the power dynamics between European colonial hegemonies and the Near East (Said, 1979, p.15). This book proposes that “us” groups define themselves against a distinct “other” to justify their domination (Said, 1979, p.20). 

The book is a mostly chronological attempt at outlining the rise of Anglo-French-American Orientalism in the Arab and Islamic world. The book is divided into three chapters, where Chapter One is a theoretical overview, Chapter Two deals with antiquity until 1870, and Chapter Three deals with 1870 and beyond.   

The book is written for an audience with an assumed level of education in humanities fields. Due to this, it is laden with references to thinkers and texts within the fields of philosophy, sociology, and history, often without much context. Additionally, the book was first published in 1979, making it somewhat outdated in the field of postcolonial studies that it pioneered.

To me, the biggest takeaway from this book is the shift in perspective on how to deal with Orientalism. Before reading, I treated Orientalism as an outdated colonial field that studies Eastern societies through a racist lens. Now I understand it as a discourse on the power dynamics exerted on the Orient by European colonization. The biggest question I have left is how this framework presented by Said can be used to study other victims of European colonization.

Ibn Warraq. (2007). Defending the West : a critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism / Ibn Warraq. Prometheus Books. This review claims that Said’s analysis of Orientalism wrongly paints the West and its scholars unfavorably. 

McCrum, R. (2016, March 21). The 100 best nonfiction books: No 8 – orientalism by Edward Said (1978). The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/21/100-best-nonfiction-books-8-orientalism-edward-said  This review provides an overview of the book and attempts to connect it to more modern times.

Tibawi, A.L. (1964). "English-speaking Orientalists: A Critique of Their Approach to Islam and Arab Nationalism".

Said disputes the main argument of this paper. 

Huggan, Graham. "(Not) reading Orientalism." Research in African Literatures, vol. 36, no. 3, fall 2005, pp. 124+. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A134624839/AONE?u=googlescholar&sid=googleScholar&xid=1cfbb3f8. Accessed 12 Feb. 2024.

This analyzes the reception of Orientalism and argues it has been orientalized. 

Milica Bakic-Hayden and Robert Hayden, "Orientalist Variations on the Theme "Balkans": Symbolic Geography in Recent Yugoslav Cultural Politics" Slavic review, vol. 51, no. 1 (Spring 1992)

This pieces uses the ideas from Orientalism to propose a new form of Orientalism.