Orientalism is primarily a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures The term Eastern world refers very broadly to the various cultures or social structures and philosophical systems of "the East" or geographically the Eastern Culture. These are namely Asia: the Indian subcontinent, the Far East, the Middle East/Near East, and Central Asia sometimes including many Orthodox Christian regions like Russia, in the West by writers, designers and artists.

Since the 19th century, "orientalist" has been the traditional term for a scholar of Oriental studies Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the newer term Asian studies has mostly replaced it. European study of the region had primarily religious origins, which has remained an important motivation until recent, however the use in English English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into South-East Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, and of of "Orientalism" to describe academic "Oriental studies" is rare; the Oxford English Dictionary The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is a dictionary of the English language. Two fully-bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. As of December 2008[update], the editors had completed one quarter of a third edition cites only one such usage, by Lord Byron George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was an English poet and a leading figure in Romanticism. Amongst Byron's best-known works are the brief poems She Walks in Beauty, When We Two Parted, and So, we'll go no more a roving, in addition to the narrative poems in 1812. Orientalism was more widely used to refer to the works of French France (pronounced /ˈfrænts/ frantss or /ˈfrɑːnts/ frahnts; French pronunciation (help·info): [fʁɑ̃s]), officially the French Republic (French: République française, pronounced: [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a state in Western Europe with several of its overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, artists in the 19th century, who used artistic elements derived from their travels to non-European countries of North Africa North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes seven countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, and Western Sahara Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Mauritania, and and Western Asia Western Asia, West Asia, Southwest Asia or Southwestern Asia are terms that describe the westernmost portion of Asia. The terms are partly coterminous with the Middle East - which describes geographical position in relation to Western Europe rather than location within Asia. Due to this perceived Eurocentrism, international organizations such as.

Nonetheless, the 20th century saw considerable change in the term's usage. In 1978, American scholar Edward Said Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism. Robert Fisk described him as the Palestinians' "most powerful political voice." published his influential and controversial book, Orientalism Orientalism is the 1978 book by Edward Said that has been highly influential in postcolonial studies. In the book, Said writes that "Orientalism" is a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the Middle East. This body of scholarship is marked by a "subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against; he used the term to describe a pervasive Western tradition, both academic and artistic, of prejudiced outsider interpretations of the East, shaped by the attitudes of European imperialism Imperialism, as defined by The Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." Imperialism has been described as a primarily western concept that employs " in the 18th and 19th centuries. Said was critical of both this scholarly tradition and of some modern scholars, particularly Bernard Lewis Bernard Lewis, FBA is a British-American historian, scholar in Oriental studies, and political commentator. He is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He specializes in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West, and is especially famous in academic circles for his. American literary critic Paul De Man supported Said's criticism of these modern scholars as he stated in his article on semiotic rhetoric "Said took a step further than any other modern scholar of his time, something I dare not do. I remain in the safety of rhetorical analysis where criticism is the second best thing I do."^[1]

In complete contrast, some modern scholars have used the term to refer to writers of the Imperialist era with pro-Eastern attitudes.^[2]

More recently, the term is also used in the meaning of "stereotyping A stereotype is a commonly held public belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings. Stereotypes are standardized and simplified conceptions of groups based on some prior assumptions. Generally speaking, of Islam Islam (Arabic: الإسلام‎ al-’islām, pronounced [ʔislæːm] [note 1]) is the monotheistic religion articulated by the Qur’an, a text considered by its adherents to be the verbatim word of their one, incomparable God (Arabic: الله‎, Allāh), and by the Prophet of Islam Muhammad's teachings and normative example (in Arabic called", both by advocates and academics in refugee rights advocacy Under the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees from 1951, a refugee is a person who , "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such. A particular aspect of this stereotyping, described as "neo-Orientalism", occurs in the context of forced migration, particularly affecting women, and its alleged damage to refugee rights both in and outside the Arab Arab people or Arabs (العرب al-ʿarab) are a panethnicity of peoples of various ancestral origins, religious backgrounds and historic identities, whose members, on an individual basis, identify as such on one or more of linguistic, cultural, political, or genealogical grounds. Those self-identifying as Arab, however, rarely do so with it as and Muslim world.^[3]

Meaning of the term

Orientalism refers to the Orient The Orient is a term which means "the East". It is a traditional designation for anything belonging to the Eastern world or the Far East, in relation to Europe. In English it is a metonym describing Eastern Asia. It was also used to indicate the eastern direction in historical astronomy as the adjective Oriental or East,^[4] in contrast to the Occident The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term that can have multiple meanings depending on its context (e.g., the time period, the region or social situation). Accordingly, the basic definition of what constitutes "the West" varies, expanding and contracting over time, in relation to various historical or West.

In the later Roman Empire, the Praetorian prefecture of the East The praetorian prefecture of the East or of Oriens was one of four large praetorian prefectures into which the Late Roman Empire was divided. As it comprised the larger part of the Eastern Roman Empire, and its seat was at Constantinople, the praetorian prefect was the second most powerful man in the East, after the Emperor, in essence serving as, the Praefectura Praetorio Orientis, included most of the Eastern Roman Empire from the eastern Balkans eastwards; its easternmost part was the Diocese of the East, the Dioecesis Orientis, corresponding roughly to Greater Syria Greater Syria , also known simply as Syria, is a term that denotes a region in the Near East bordering the Eastern Mediterranean Sea or the Levant.

Over time, the common understanding of 'the Orient' has continually shifted eastwards, as Western explorers traveled farther into Asia. It finally reached the Pacific Ocean, in what Westerners came to call 'the Far East The Far East is a term used in English mostly equivalent to East Asia (including the Russian Far East) and Southeast Asia, sometimes to the inclusion of South Asia for economic and cultural reasons'. These shifts in time and identification sometimes confuse the scope (historical and geographic) of Oriental Studies.

Yet, there remain contexts where 'the Orient' and 'Oriental' have kept their older meanings, e.g. 'Oriental spices' typically are from the regions extending from the Middle East to sub-continental India to Indo-China. Travelers may again take the Orient Express The Orient Express is the name of a long-distance passenger train originally operated by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. Its route has changed many times, and several routes have in the past concurrently used the name . Although the original Orient Express was simply a normal international railway service, the name has become train from Paris Paris ([paʁi] in French, pronounced /ˈpærɪs/ in English) is the capital and largest city of France. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region (or Paris Region, French: Région parisienne). The city of Paris, within its administrative limits largely unchanged since 1860, has an estimated to Istanbul Istanbul is the largest city in Turkey and 5th largest city proper in the world with a population of 12.8 million, also making it the second largest metropolitan area in Europe by population, and the largest metropolitan city proper. Istanbul is also a megacity, as well as the cultural, economic, and financial centre of Turkey. The city covers 39, a route established in the early 20th century. It never reached the nations bordering the Pacific Ocean, or what is currently understood to be the Orient.

In contemporary English, Oriental usually refers to goods from the parts of East Asia East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms. Geographically and geo-politically, it covers about 12,000,000 km2 (4,600,000 sq mi), or about 28 percent of the Asian continent, about 15 percent bigger than the area of Europe traditionally occupied by East Asians East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms. Geographically and geo-politically, it covers about 12,000,000 km2 (4,600,000 sq mi), or about 28 percent of the Asian continent, about 15 percent bigger than the area of Europe and most Central Asians and Southeast Asians racially categorized as "Mongoloid The term "Mongoloid" is a word used to describe people of East Asia and North Asian origin. Its use originated from a variation of the word "Mongol", a people who are considered one of its main proto-populations". This excludes Indians India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with 1.18 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world. Mainland India is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal on the, Arabs, most other West Asian peoples. Because of historical discrimination against Chinese and Japanese, in some parts of the United States, the term is considered derogatory; for example, Washington Washington (pronounced /ˈwɒʃɪŋtən/ ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Washington was carved out of the western part of Washington Territory which had been ceded by Britain in 1846 by the Oregon Treaty as settlement of the Oregon Boundary Dispute. It was admitted to the Union as the forty-second state in 1889 state prohibits use of the word "Oriental" in legislation and government documentation, preferring the word "Asian" instead.^[5]

Architecture

Early architectural use of motifs lifted from the Indian subcontinent have sometimes been called "Hindoo style". One of the earliest examples is the façade of Guildhall, London The Guildhall is a building in the City of London, off Gresham Street and Basinghall Street, in the wards of Bassishaw and Cheap. It has been used as a town hall for several hundred years, and is still the ceremonial and administrative centre of the City of London and its Corporation. The term Guildhall refers both to the whole building and to its (1788–1789). The style gained momentum in the west with the publication of views of India by William Hodges, and William and Thomas Daniell from about 1795. One of the finest examples of "Hindoo" architecture is Sezincote House (c. 1805) in Gloucestershire The county town is the city of Gloucester, and other principal towns include Cheltenham, Stroud, Cirencester, and Tewkesbury. Other notable buildings in the Hindoo style of architecture are Casa Loma in Toronto Toronto is the largest city in Canada and the provincial capital of Ontario. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. With over 2.5 million residents, it is the fifth most populous municipality in North America. Toronto is at the heart of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), and is part of a densely populated region, Sanssouci Sanssouci is the former summer palace of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, in Potsdam, near Berlin. It is often counted among the German rivals of Versailles. While Sanssouci is in the more intimate Rococo style and is far smaller than its French Baroque counterpart, it too is notable for the numerous temples and follies in the park. The in Potsdam Potsdam is the capital city of the German federal state of Brandenburg and is part of the Metropolitan area of Berlin/Brandenburg. It is situated on the River Havel, 24 km (15 miles) southwest of Berlin city center, and Wilhelma in Stuttgart Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 (December 2008) while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million (2008).

Chinoiserie Chinoiserie, a French term, signifying "Chinese-esque", refers to a recurring theme in European artistic styles since the seventeenth century, which reflect Chinese artistic influences. It is characterized by the use of fanciful imagery of an imaginary China, by asymmetry in format and whimsical contrasts of scale, and by the attempts to is the catch-all term for the fashion for Chinese themes in decoration in Western Europe, beginning in the late 17th century and peaking in waves, especially Rococo Rococo also referred to as "Late Baroque" is an 18th century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly more ornate, florid, and playful. Rococo rooms were designed as total works of art with elegant and ornate furniture, small sculptures, ornamental mirrors, and tapestry complementing Chinoiserie, ca. 1740–1770. From the Renaissance The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Florence in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historic era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not uniform across Europe, this is a general use of the to the 18th century, Western designers attempted to imitate the technical sophistication of Chinese ceramics with only partial success. Early hints of Chinoiserie appeared in the 17th century in nations with active East India companies: England (the British East India Company The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China. The oldest among several similarly formed European East India Companies, the Company was granted an English Royal Charter, under the name), Denmark (the Danish East India Company), Holland (the Dutch East India Company The Dutch East India Company was a chartered company established in 1602, when the States-General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia. It was the first multinational corporation in the world and the first company to issue stock. It was also arguably the world's first megacorporation, possessing) and France (the French East India Company The French East India Company was a commercial enterprise, founded in 1664 to compete with the British and Dutch East India companies). Tin-glazed pottery made at Delft Delft ( pronunciation ) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland (Zuid-Holland), the Netherlands. It is located in between Rotterdam and The Hague. Delft is primarily known for its typically Dutch town centre (with canals); also for the painter Vermeer, Delft Blue pottery (Delftware), the Delft University of Technology, and its and other Dutch towns adopted genuine blue-and-white Ming The Ming Dynasty , or Empire of the Great Ming (simplified Chinese: 大明国; traditional Chinese: 大明國; pinyin: Dà Míng Guó, also anachronistically simplified Chinese: 大明帝国; traditional Chinese: 大明帝國; pinyin: Dà Míng Dìguó), was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led decoration from the early 17th century. Early ceramic wares made at Meissen Meissen is a town of approximately 30,000 about 25 km (16 mi) northwest of Dresden on both banks of the Elbe river in the Free State of Saxony, in eastern Germany. Meissen is the home of Meissen porcelain, the Albrechtsburg castle, the Gothic Meissen Cathedral and the Meissen Frauenkirche. The Große Kreisstadt is the capital of the Meissen and other centers of true porcelain Porcelain is a ceramic material made by heating raw materials, generally including clay in the form of kaolin, in a kiln to temperatures between 1,200 °C and 1,400 °C (2,552 °F). The toughness, strength, and translucence of porcelain arise mainly from the formation of glass and the mineral mullite within the fired body at these high imitated Chinese shapes for dishes, vases and teawares Teaware encompasses a broad international spectrum of equipment used in the brewing and consumption of tea. Many components make up that spectrum, and vary greatly based upon the type of tea being prepared, and the cultural setting in which it is bring prepared. This is often referred to as the tea ceremony, and holds much significance in many (see Chinese export porcelain).

Pleasure pavilions in "Chinese taste" appeared in the formal parterres of late Baroque and Rococo German palaces, and in tile panels at Aranjuez near Madrid Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million (as of December 2009); the entire population of the metropolitan area (urban area and suburbs) is calculated to be nearly 6 million. It is the third-most populous municipality in the European Union after Greater London and Berlin, and its. Thomas Chippendale's mahogany tea tables and china cabinets, especially, were embellished with fretwork glazing and railings, ca 1753–70. Sober homages to early Xing scholars' furnishings were also naturalized, as the tang evolved into a mid-Georgian side table and squared slat-back armchairs that suited English gentlemen as well as Chinese scholars. Not every adaptation of Chinese design principles falls within mainstream "chinoiserie." Chinoiserie media included imitations of lacquer and painted tin (tôle) ware that imitated japanning, early painted wallpapers in sheets, and ceramic figurines and table ornaments. Small pagodas appeared on chimneypieces and full-sized ones in gardens. Kew has a magnificent garden pagoda designed by Sir William Chambers.

After 1860, Japonisme, sparked by the importing of Japanese woodblock prints, became an important influence in the western arts. In particular, many modern French artists such as Monet and Degas were influenced by the Japanese style. Mary Cassatt, an American artist who worked in France, used elements of combined patterns, flat planes and shifting perspective of Japanese prints in her own images. The paintings of James McNeill Whistler and his "Peacock Room" demonstrated how he used aspects of Japanese tradition and are some of the finest works of the genre. California architects Greene and Greene were inspired by Japanese elements in their design of the Gamble House and other buildings.

Depictions of the Orient in art and literature

Depictions of Islamic "Moors" and "Turks" (imprecisely named Muslim groups of North Africa and West Asia) can be found in Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque art. In Biblical scenes in Early Netherlandish painting, secondary figures, especially Romans and Jews, were given exotic costumes that distantly reflected the clothes of the Near East. The Three Magi in Nativity scenes were an especial focus for this. Renaissance Venice had a phase of particular interest in depictions of the Ottoman Empire in painting; Gentile Bellini, who travelled to Constantinople and painted the Sultan, and Vittore Carpaccio were the leading exponents. By then the depictions were more accurate, with men typically dressed all in white. The depiction of Oriental carpets in Renaissance painting sometimes draws from Orientalist interest, but more often just reflects the prestige these expensive objects had in the period.

Turquerie, which began as early as the late 15th century, and continued until at least the 18th.

In the nineteenth century, when more artists traveled to the Middle East, they began representing more numerous scenes of Oriental culture. In many of these works, they portrayed the Orient as exotic, colorful and sensual. Such works typically concentrated on Near-Eastern Islamic cultures, as those were the ones visited by artists as France became more engaged in North Africa. French artists such as Eugène Delacroix, Jean-Léon Gérôme and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres painted many works depicting Islamic culture, often including lounging odalisques. They stressed both lassitude and visual spectacle. The later Russian artist Alexander Roubtzoff was also fascinated by what he saw on travels to Tunisia.

When Ingres, director of the French Académie de peinture, painted a highly colored vision of a turkish bath (illustration, right), he made his eroticized Orient publicly acceptable by his diffuse generalizing of the female forms (who might all have been the same model.) More open sensuality was seen as acceptable in the exotic Orient. This imagery persisted in art into the early 20th century, as evidenced in Matisse's orientalist semi-nudes from his Nice period, and his use of Oriental costumes and patterns.

In his novel Salammbô, Gustave Flaubert used ancient Carthage in North Africa as a foil to ancient Rome. He portrayed its culture as morally corrupting and suffused with dangerously alluring eroticism. This novel proved hugely influential on later portrayals of ancient Semitic cultures.

The use of the orient as an exotic backdrop continued in the movies, for instance, those featuring Rudolph Valentino. Later the rich Arab in robes became a more popular theme, especially during the oil crisis of the 1970s. In the 1990s the Arab terrorist became a common villain figure in Western movies.

Examples

Literature

• Montesquieu — Persian Letters (Lettres persanes) (1721)
• William Thomas Beckford — Vathek (1786)
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge — Kubla Khan (published 1816)
• Thomas Moore — Lalla-Rookh (published 1817)
• Percy Bysshe Shelley — Ozymandias (1818)
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — Westöstlicher Diwan (1819)
• Ralph Waldo Emerson — poem Indian Superstition (1821)
• Edgar Allan Poe — Tamerlane (1827), Al Aaraaf (1829), and Israfel (1831)
• Victor Hugo — Les Orientales (1829)
• Gustave Flaubert — Salammbô (1862)
• Eça de Queiroz — The Relic (A Relíquia) (1887) and The Mandarin (O Mandarim) (1889)
• Anatole France Thaïs (1890)
• Richard Francis Burton — translation of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (1885–1888)
• Victor Segalen — René Leys (1922)
• Herman Hesse — Siddhartha (1922)
• André Malraux — Man's Fate (1934) (La Condition humaine, 1933)
• Marguerite Yourcenar's Nouvelles Orientales (1938)

Opera, ballets, musicals

• Antonio Lucio Vivaldi — Juditha triumphans (1716)
• Georg Friedrich Händel — Tamerlano (1724) and Serse (1738)
• Jean-Philippe Rameau — Les Indes Galantes (1735–1736)
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782)
• Gioachino Rossini — Semiramide (1823)
• Giuseppe Verdi — Nabucco (1842)
• Jacques Offenbach — Ba-ta-clan (1855)
• Georges Bizet — Les Pêcheurs de Perles (1863)
• Giuseppe Verdi — Aida (1871)
• Emmanuel Chabrier — Fisch-Ton-Kan (1875)
• César Cui — The Mandarin's Son (1878)
• Gilbert and Sullivan — The Mikado (1885)
• Alexander Borodin — Prince Igor (1890)
• Sidney Jones — The Geisha (1896)
• Sidney Jones — San Toy (1899)
• Pietro Mascagni — Iris (1899)
• Howard Talbot — A Chinese Honeymoon (1896)
• Giacomo Puccini — Madama Butterfly (1904)
• Richard Strauss — Salome, Opera in one act based on Wilde's play (1905)
• Giacomo Puccini — Turandot (1926)
• Sigmund Romberg, Oscar Hammerstein II & Otto Harbach — The Desert Song (1926) and film (1929)
• Richard Strauss — The Egyptian Helen, Opera with libretto by Hugo von Hofmanstahl (1929)

Orchestral works

• Mily Balakirev' — Tamara.
• Alexander Borodin — In the Steppes of Central Asia; "Polovetsian Dances" from Prince Igor.
• Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov — Caucasian Sketches.
• Modest Mussorgsky — "Dance of the Persian Slaves" from Khovanshchina.
• Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov — Antar; Scheherezade.

Shorter musical pieces

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart—Rondo alla turca from Piano Sonata No.11 (K.331)
• Mily Balakirev — Islamey
• Albert Ketèlbey — In a Persian Market (1920), In a Chinese Temple Garden (1925), and In the Mystic Land of Egypt (1931)
• Sergei Rachmaninoff — Oriental Sketch (1917)

Theatre

• Tobias Bamberg's magic stage act as "Okito" (Germany, 1893 – United States, 1908)
• Oscar Wilde's Salomé (1893, first performed in Paris 1896)
• Alexander's mentalism stage act (United States, c. 1890s–1910s)
• William Ellsworth Robinson's, magic stage act as "Chung Ling Soo" (United States, 1900–1918)

Painting

• Théodore Chassériau (1819–1856)
• Léon Comerre (1850–1916)
• Richard Dadd (1817–1886)
• Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863)
• Ludwig Deutsch (1855–1935)
• Alphonse Étienne Dinet
• Edmund Dulac
• Eugène Fromentin (1820–1876)
• Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904)
• William Holman Hunt (1827–1910)
• Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780–1867)
• Edward Lear (1812–1888)
• Frederic Leighton (1830–1896)
• John Frederick Lewis (1805–1876)
• Alberto Pasini (1826–1899)
• Théodore Ralli (1852–1909)
• David Roberts (painter) (1796–1864)
• Alexandre Roubtzoff (1884–1949)
• James Tissot (1836–1902)
• Horace Vernet
• David Wilkie (1785–1841)
• Jean Baptiste Vanmour (1671–1731)
• Jean-Étienne Liotard (1702–1789)
• Ecem Kafadar (1885–1940)

Photography

• Roger Fenton
• Francis Frith

Pulp magazines

• Oriental Stories: A pulp magazine released 1930–34 by Chicago based Popular Fiction specialising in Orientalist fiction. The title was later changed to The Magic Carpet Magazine.

Films

• Broken Blossoms (1919)
• The Sheik (1921)
• The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)
• The Thief of Bagdad (1940)
• My Geisha (1962)
• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Comics

• The Adventures of Tintin (1929–1983)
• The upside down circle by Don Gilbert (1990).
• Dragon and Tiger (2008)

Edward Said and "Orientalism"

A central idea of Edward Said is that Western knowledge about the East is not generated from facts or reality, but from preconceived archetypes that envision all "Eastern" societies as fundamentally similar to one another, and fundamentally dissimilar to "Western" societies. This a priori knowledge establishes "the East" as antithetical to "the West". Such Eastern knowledge is constructed with literary texts and historical records that often are of limited understanding of the facts of life in the Middle East.^[6]

Before Said's book, "Oriental" was widely used as the opposite of "occidental" ('Western'). The comparisons between them generally were unfavorable to the Orient; however, respected institutions like the Oriental Institute of Chicago, the London School of Oriental and African Studies or Università degli studi di Napoli L'Orientale, also carried the term. The word "Orient" fell into disrepute after the word "Orientalism" was coined with the publication of Said's book.^{[citation needed]} Following the ideas of Michel Foucault, Said emphasized the relationship between power and knowledge in scholarly and popular thinking, in particular regarding European views of the Islamic Arab world. Said argued that Orient and Occident worked as oppositional terms, so that the "Orient" was constructed as a negative inversion of Western culture. The work of another thinker, Antonio Gramsci, was also important in shaping Edward Said's analysis in this area. In particular, Said can be seen to have been influenced by Gramsci's notion of hegemony in understanding the pervasiveness of Orientalist constructs and representations in Western scholarship and reporting, and their relation to the exercise of power over the "Orient".^[7]

Although Edward Said limited his discussion to academic study of Middle Eastern, African and Asian history and culture, he asserted that "Orientalism is, and does not merely represent, a significant dimension of modern political and intellectual culture." (p. 53) Said's discussion of academic Orientalism is almost entirely limited to late 19th and early 20th century scholarship. Most academic Area Studies departments had already abandoned an imperialist or colonialist paradigm of scholarship. He names the work of Bernard Lewis as an example of the continued existence of this paradigm, but acknowledges that it was already somewhat of an exception by the time of his writing (1977). The idea of an "Orient" is a crucial aspect of attempts to define "the West". Thus, histories of the Greco–Persian Wars may contrast the monarchical government of the Persian Empire with the democratic tradition of Athens, as a way to make a more general comparison between the Greeks and the Persians, and between "the West" and "the East", or "Europe" and "Asia", but make no mention of the other Greek city states, most of which were not ruled democratically.

Taking a comparative and historical literary review of European, mainly British and French, scholars and writers looking at, thinking about, talking about, and writing about the peoples of the Middle East, Said sought to lay bare the relations of power between the colonizer and the colonized in those texts. Said's writings have had far-reaching implications beyond area studies in Middle East, to studies of imperialist Western attitudes to India, China and elsewhere. It was one of the foundational texts of postcolonial studies. Said later developed and modified his ideas in his book Culture and Imperialism (1993).

Many scholars now use Said's work to attempt to overturn long-held, often taken-for-granted Western ideological biases regarding non-Westerners in scholarly thought. Some post-colonial scholars would even say that the West's idea of itself was constructed largely by saying what others were not. If "Europe" evolved out of "Christendom" as the "not-Byzantium," early modern Europe in the late 16th century (see Battle of Lepanto (1571)) certainly defined itself as the "not-Turkey."

Said puts forward several definitions of "Orientalism" in the introduction to Orientalism. Some of these have been more widely quoted and influential than others:

• "A way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient's special place in European Western experience." (p. 1)
• "a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between the Orient' and (most of the time) 'the Occident'." (p. 2)
• "A Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient." (p. 3)
• "...particularly valuable as a sign of European-Atlantic power over the Orient than it is as a veridic discourse about the Orient." (p. 6)
• "A distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, historical, and philological texts." (p. 12)

In his Preface to the 2003 edition of Orientalism, Said also warned against the "falsely unifying rubrics that invent collective identities," citing such terms as "America," "The West," and "Islam," which were leading to what he felt was a manufactured "clash of civilisations."

Criticisms of Said

Critics of Said's theory, such as the historian Bernard Lewis, argue that Said's account contains many factual, methodological and conceptual errors. Said ignores many genuine contributions to the study of Eastern cultures made by Westerners during the Enlightenment and Victorian eras. Said's theory does not explain why the French and English pursued the study of Islam in the 16th and 17th centuries, long before they had any control or hope of control in the Middle East. Critics^[who?] have noted Said ignored the contributions of Italian, Dutch, and particularly the massive contribution of German scholars. Lewis claims that the scholarship of these nations was more important to European Orientalism than the French or British, but the countries in question either had no colonial projects in the Mideast (Dutch and Germans), or no connection between their Orientalist research and their colonialism (Italians). Said's theory also does not explain why much of Orientalist study did nothing to advance the cause of imperialism.

As Lewis asks,

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? —^[8]

Lewis argued that Orientalism arose from humanism, which was distinct from Imperialist ideology, and sometimes in opposition to it. Orientalist study of Islam arose from the rejection of religious dogma, and was an important spur to discovery of alternative cultures. Lewis criticised as "intellectual protectionism" the argument that only those within a culture could usefully discuss it.^[9]

In his rebuttal to Lewis, Said stated that Lewis' negative rejoinder must be placed into its proper context. Since one of Said's principal arguments is that Orientalism was used (wittingly or unwittingly) as an instrument of empire, he contends that Lewis' critique of this thesis could hardly be judged in the disinterested, scholarly light that Lewis would like to present himself, but must be understood in the proper knowledge of what Said claimed was Lewis' own (often masked) neo-imperialist proclivities, as displayed by the latter's political or quasi-political appointments and pronouncements.

Bryan Turner critiques Said’s work saying there were a multiplicity of forms and traditions of Orientalism. He is therefore critical of Said’s attempt to try to place them all under the framework of the orientalist tradition.^[10] Other critics of Said have argued that while many distortions and fantasies certainly existed, the notion of "the Orient" as a negative mirror image of the West cannot be wholly true because attitudes to distinct cultures diverged significantly.^[11]

According to Naji Oueijan, Orientalism manifested in two movements: a genuine one prompted by scholars like Sir William Jones and literary figures such as Samuel Johnson, William Beckford, and Lord Byron; and a false one motivated by religious and political literary propagandists.^[12] Another view holds that other cultures are necessarily identified by their "otherness", since otherwise their distinctive characteristics would be invisible, and thus the most striking differences are emphasized in the eyes, and literature, of the outsider.^[13] John MacKenzie notes that the Western "dominance" critiqued by Said has often been challenged and answered, for instance in the ‘Subaltern Studies’ body of literature, which strives to give voice to marginalized peoples.^[14] Further criticism includes the observation that the criticisms levied by Said at Orientalist scholars of being essentialist can in turn be levied at him for the way in which he writes of the West as a hegemonic mass, stereotyping its characteristics.^[15]

Eastern views of the West

Much of Said's criticism of Western "Orientalism" is based on particularizing trends also present in Asian works by Indian, Chinese and Japanese writers and artists, in their views of Western culture and tradition. The term Occidentalism has sometimes been used to refer to negative or stereotypical views of the Western world found in Eastern societies.

Although the core of Said's criticism of the concept of "Orientalism" implies a Western view of Eastern culture, some Eastern artists adopted Western styles that particularize Eastern peoples. The Indian painter Ravi Varma painted several works that are virtually indistinguishable from some Western "Orientalist" images.^{[citation needed]}

In the late 20th century many Western cultural themes and images began appearing in Asian art and culture, especially in Japan. English words and phrases are prominent in Japanese advertising and popular culture, and many Japanese anime are written around characters, settings, themes, and mythological figures derived from various Western cultural traditions.^{[citation needed]}

See also

Resources

• Ancient Indian & Iran Trust, London UK
• Eurasian Orientalist Server
• The Orientalist Painters

References

1. ^ Nosal, K R. American Criticism. New York Standard, New York. 2002
2. ^ For example Thomas R. Trautmann in Aryans and British India, 1997, ISBN 0-520-20546-4
3. ^ Susan Musarrat Akram "Orientalism Revisited in Asylum and Refugee Claims", International Journal of Refugee Law 2000 12(1):7–40
4. ^ from the Latin oriens; Oxford English Dictionary
5. ^ Senate bill (pdf file)
6. ^ Edward Said and The Production of Knowledge, by Sethi,Arjun (University of Maryland) accessed April 20, 2007.
7. ^ Zachary Lockman, "Contending Visions of the Middle East: the History and Politics of Orientalism" (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004), p. 205.
8. ^ Lewis, Bernard, Islam and the West, Oxford University Press, 1993, p.126
9. ^ Kramer, Martin (1999). "Bernard Lewis". Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing. Vol. 1. London: Fitzroy Dearborn. pp. 719–720. http://sandbox.blog-city.com/bernard_lewis.htm. Retrieved 2010-01-31.
10. ^ Turner, B.S., 1994, Orientalism, Postmodernism and Globalism, London, Routledge
11. ^ David Pryce-Jones, "Enough Said", review of Ibn Warraq, Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism, New Criterion, January 2008, accessed 25 Apr 2009
12. ^ The Progress of an Image: The East in English Literature (New York: Peter Lang,1996)
13. ^ Ibn Warraq, "Edward Said and the Saidists: or Third World Intellectual Terrorism", Secular Islam
14. ^ MacKenzie, J.M., 1995, Orientalism: history, theory and the arts, Manchester, Manchester University Press, page 11
15. ^ MacKenzie, J.M., 1995, Orientalism: history, theory and the arts, Manchester, Manchester University Press

Articles

• "China in Western Thought and Culture" Dictionary of the History of Ideas, etext, University of Virginia
• John E. Hill, translation, Hou Hanshu
• Brian Whitaker, "Distorting Desire", review, Joseph Abbad, Desiring Arabs, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007, from Al-Bab.com, on Reflections of a Renegade blog site
• Adel Iskandar, "Whenever, Wherever! The Discourse of Orientalist Transnationalism in the Construction of Shakira", The Ambassadors, Jul 2003
• Martin Kramer, "Edward Said's Splash", from his book, Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America, Washington: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001, pp. 27–43.
• Andre Gingrich, "Frontier Orientalism", Camp Catatonia blog
• Orientalism in the "History of Art", All Art
• Orientalist art and photography, London Times Online
• "Alexander Roubtzoff" (1884–1949), Artistic Association Alexander Roubtzoff
• "Edward Said and the Production of Knowledge", CitizenTrack
• "Orientalism as a tool of Colonialism", Citizen Track

External links

• Academic Information Centre

Further reading

• App, Urs William Jones's Ancient Theology. Sino-Platonic Papers Nr. 191 (September 2009) (PDF 3.7 Mb PDF, 125 p.; includes third, sixth, and ninth anniversary discourses. Case study showing the importance of religious ideology in early modern orientalism)
• App, Urs Arthur Schopenhauer and China. Sino-Platonic Papers Nr. 200 (April 2010) (PDF, 8.7 Mb PDF, 164 p.; case study documenting early oriental influences, including transcriptions and translations of Schopenhauer's early notes)
• Balagangadhara, S. N. "The Future of the Present: Thinking Through Orientalism", Cultural Dynamics, Vol. 10, No. 2, (1998), pp. 101–23. ISSN 0921-3740.
• Benjamin, Roger “Orientalist Aethetics, Art, Colonialism and French North Africa: 1880-1930”, California UP, 2003
• Benjamin, Roger "Orientalism; Delacroix to Klee", Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1997.
• Biddick, Kathleen. "Coming Out of Exile: Dante on the Orient(alism) Express", The American Historical Review, Vol. 105, No. 4. (Oct., 2000), pp. 1234–1249.
• Davies, Kristian. The Orientalists: Western artists in Arabia, the Sahara, Persia & India. New York: Laynfaroh, 2005 (hardcover, ISBN 0-9759783-0-6).
• Crawley, William. "Sir William Jones: A vision of Orientalism", Asian Affairs, Vol. 27, Issue 2. (Jun. 1996), pp. 163–176.
• Fleming, K.E. "Orientalism, the Balkans, and Balkan Historiography", The American Historical Review, Vol. 105, No. 4. (Oct., 2000), pp. 1218–1233.
• Halliday, Fred. "'Orientalism' and Its Critics", British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2. (1993), pp. 145–163.
• Irwin, Robert. For lust of knowing: The Orientalists and their enemies. London: Penguin/Allen Lane, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN 0-7139-9415-0). Published in the USA as Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents. New York: Overlook Press, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN 1-58567-835-X).
• Jersild, Austin. Orientalism and Empire: North Caucasus Mountain Peoples and the Georgian Frontier, 1845–1917. Montreal: McGill–Queen's University Press, 2002 (hardcover, ISBN 0-7735-2328-6); 2003 (paperback, ISBN 0-7735-2329-4).
• Kabbani, Rana. Imperial Fictions: Europe's Myths of Orient. London: Pandora Press, 1994 (paperback, ISBN 0-04-440911-7).
• Kalmar, Ivan Davidson & Derek Penslar. Orientalism and the Jews; Brandeis 2005
• Kennedy, Dane. "'Captain Burton's Oriental Muck Heap': The Book of the Thousand Nights and the Uses of Orientalism", The Journal of British Studies, Vol. 39, No. 3. (Jul., 2000), pp. 317–339.
• Kincheloe, Joe L. and Shirley R. Steinberg, The Miseducation of the West: How the Schools and Media Distort Our Understanding of Islam. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Press, 2004. (Arabic Edition, 2005).
• Klein, Christina. Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003 (hardcover, ISBN 0-520-22469-8; paperback, ISBN 0-520-23230-5).
• Knight, Nathaniel. "Grigor'ev in Orenburg, 1851–1862: Russian Orientalism in the Service of Empire?", Slavic Review, Vol. 59, No. 1. (Spring, 2000), pp. 74–100.
• Kontje, Todd. German Orientalisms. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2004 (ISBN 0-472-11392-5).
• Little, Douglas. American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East Since 1945. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001 (hardcover, ISBN 0-8078-2737-1); 2002 (paperback, ISBN 0-8078-5539-1); London: I.B. Tauris, 2002 (new ed., hardcover, ISBN 1-86064-889-4).
• López-Calvo, Ignacio, ed. Alternative Orientalisms in Latin America and Beyond. Newcastle, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007 (hardcover, ISBN 1-84718-143-0; ISBN 13: 9781847181435
• López-Calvo, Ignacio, ed. One World Periphery Reads the Other: Knowing the 'Oriental' in the Americas and the Iberian Peninsula." Newcastle, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009 (hardcover, ISBN 1-4438-1657-4; ISBN 13: 978-1-4438-1657-1
• Lowe, Lisa. Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalisms. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992 (hardcover, ISBN 978-0-8014-2579-0; paperback, ISBN 978-0-8014-8195-6).
• Macfie, Alexander Lyon. Orientalism. White Plains, NY: Longman, 2002 (ISBN 0-582-42386-4).
• MacKenzie, John. Orientalism: History, theory and the arts. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995 (hardcover, ISBN 0-7190-1861-7; paperback, ISBN 0-7190-4578-9).
• Murti, Kamakshi P. India: The Seductive and Seduced "Other" of German Orientalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001 (hardcover, ISBN 0-313-30857-8).
• Noble dreams, wicked pleasures: Orientalism in America, 1870–1930 by Holly Edwards (Editor). Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000 (hardcover, ISBN 0-691-05003-1; paperback, ISBN 0-691-05004-X).
• Orientalism and the Jews, edited by Ivan Davidson Kalmar and Derek Penslar. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2004 (paperback, ISBN 1-58465-411-2).
• The Orientalists: Delacroix to Matisse: The Allure of North Africa and the Near East, edited by Mary Anne Stevens. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1984 (paperback, ISBN 0-297-78435-8).
• Oueijan, Naji. A Compendium of Eastern Elements in Byron's Oriental Tales. New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 1999.
• Oueijan, Naji. The Progress of an Image: The east in English Literature. New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 1996.
• Paul, James. "Orientalism Revisited: An Interview with Edward W. Said", MERIP Middle East Report, No. 150. (Jan.–Feb., 1988), pp. 32–36.
• Peltre, Christine. Orientalism in Art. New York: Abbeville Publishing Group (Abbeville Press, Inc.), 1998 (hardcover, ISBN 0-7892-0459-2).
• Prakash, Gyan. "Orientalism Now", History and Theory, Vol. 34, No. 3. (Oct., 1995), pp. 199–212.
• Richardson, Michael. "Enough Said: Reflections on Orientalism", Anthropology Today, Vol. 6, No. 4. (Aug., 1990), pp. 16–19.
• Roberts, Mary. "Intimate Outsiders: The Harem in Ottoman and Orientalist Art and Travel Literature (Objects/Histories)", Duke University Press, 2007 (paperback, ISBN 0-8223-3967-6 )
• Rotter, Andrew J. "Saidism without Said: Orientalism and U.S. Diplomatic History", The American Historical Review, Vol. 105, No. 4. (Oct., 2000), pp. 1205–1217.
• Sahni, Kalpana. Crucifying the Orient: Russian Orientalism and the Colonization of Caucasus and Central Asia. Bangkok; Oslo: White Orchid Press, 1997 (hardcover, ISBN 974-8299-50-3).
• Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978 (ISBN 0-394-42814-5); New York: Vintage, 1979 (ISBN 0-394-74067-X).
• Schneider, Jane. Italy's "Southern Question": Orientalism in One Country. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1998 (hardcover, ISBN 1-85973-992-X; paperback, ISBN 1-85973-997-0).
• Springer, Simon. Culture of violence or violent Orientalism? Neoliberalisation and imagining the ‘savage other’ in post-transitional Cambodia. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 34: 305-319 (2009)
• Varisco, Daniel Martin. "Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid." Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007. (hardcover ISBN 978-0-295-98758-3; paperback 978-0-295-98752-1).
• Visions of the East: Orientalism in film by Matthew Bernstein (Editor), Gaylyn Studlar (Editor). Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997 (hardcover, ISBN 0-8135-2294-3; paperback, ISBN 0-8135-2295-1).

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