Criticism on Edward Said’s Orientalism

Criticism on Edward Said’s Orientalism

Mart, Çağrı Tuğrul
Toker, Alpaslan
Esen, M. Fatih

Orient was a system of ideological fictions whose purpose was and is to legitimize Western cultural and political superiority; furthermore, the Western understanding of the East has grown out of a relationship of power, of dominance, of varying degrees of complex hegemony. The Orient signifies a system of representations framed by political forces that brought the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness, and Western empire. The Orient exists for the West, and is constructed by and in relation to the West. It is a mirror image of what is inferior and alien ("Other") to the West. Orientalism is "a manner of regularized (or Orientalized) writing, vision, and study, dominated by imperatives, perspectives, and ideological biases ostensibly suited to the Orient." It is the image of the 'Orient' expressed as an entire system of thought and scholarship. The Oriental is the person represented by such thinking. The Oriental is a single image, a sweeping generalization, a stereotype that crosses countless cultural and national boundaries. The term Orient particularly included regions that used to be known as Persia, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and Egypt. As awareness of other Asian countries grew in European consciousness, the term often came to mean South Asia, Southeast Asia or East Asia. By the late 19th century, the term usually referred to China, Japan, Korea and surrounding nations while the British colonists frequently used it when speaking of India.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2010-06

720