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- ORIENTALISM
Edward SaidSaid is a University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, but is known just as well for his cultural and political commentary as his literary writings. Said is considered by many one of the most prominent intellectuals in the United States. His writing appears regularly in dozens of publications internationally, and has published more than twelve books translated into over 14 languages. His writings range in subject from music and literature to culture to politics, particularly the conflicts between the First and Third Worlds, and between Jews and Arabs. Said 's decade-long battle with leukemia did not prevent him from recently completing his memoirs. Born in 1935 in Jerusalem to a Palestinian Christian family, Said 's background that region had had a major affect on the focus of his writing. Said and his family were dispossessed from Palestine in 1948, and after living in Cairo with them, he moved to the United States to be educated at Princeton and Harvard. Because of his passionate advocacy for the right to self-determination of Palestinians, he was not allowed to visit Palestine for decades, and he has received death threats throughout his life. Several of his books and many articles concern the Peace process and the history of discrimination and oppression against Palestinians in the region. In particular, the book Orientalism and its semi-sequel Culture and Imperialism have served several important functions: they introduced to the American public the previously unknown concept of Palestinian nationalism (apart from the images of a towel-headed terrorist invoked by the media and pop culture), they challenged us to look at the Middle East in a new and more balanced way. One tension in his work concerns his advocacy of Palestinian statehood. On the one hand, he has remained committed to Palestinian liberation for decades. It is an issue that because of his personal connection, he is the most passionately political about. On the other hand, he recognizes the limits of nationalism, and believes that when groups strive for statehood merely for the sake of having a state of their own, emancipation loses its meaning and human relationships are degraded. Thus he, just as he asks the readers of his books to do, continues with his daily activism while consistently keeping in the back of his mind the potential problems with the goal he seeks. Much of his critical writings can be taken that very way. They may not make a substantial change in the way we act overtly, but they should always be kept in mind so as to subtly affect the way we treat other people. Despite his support for Palestinian self-determination, he has won over many members of the Jewish community because of his even-handed approach. When he speaks to Palestinians, he repeatedly insists that in order to create a successful peace accord, it is necessary to be able to empathize with the Jews. To that end, he educates Palestinians about the history of Judaism, particularly the Holocaust, in order to justify their desire for an intact state of Israel. He was also one of the first Palestinian intellectuals to meet with Israelis and American Zionists. Said has been committed, throughout his life, to engaging both sides of every argument in self-reflexive critique. Questions of Said 's legitimacy often rest on the issue of his ethnic identity. Praised as one of the United State 's most respected writers, he is also considered the Arab world 's prominent intellectual. Whether he ought be considered a member of the Western world, the Arab world, or both, is hotly contested. In 1999, Said was criticized in the publication Commentary as having overstated his family 's connections to Palestine, and therefore describing him as an inadequate spokesperson for the Palestinian cause. However, looking merely at his writings and political stance, that position seems unsupportable. After disproving those charges, he pointed out that his loyal devotion to the Palestinian cause should be enough to qualify him to speak on the issue; moreover, he rejects the notion of an authentic ethnic identity. One remarkable quality of Said 's is the faithfulness with which he replicates the theory he espouses into his daily life. The common thread in all of Said 's writings (including his literary works) is that he is, above all, a critical scholar. He draws from the writings of Michel Foucault, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Karl Marx, as well as authors as diverse as Joseph Conrad, James Joyce William Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift and Oscar Wilde. However, his writing focuses on several themes. He has a "preoccupation with memory; with the narrative of the oppressed; and with the commitment to never let a dominant myth or viewpoint become history without its counterpoint"(Ahmad The Pen and the Sword 11). ORIENTALISMSaid defines Orientalism in three primary ways. First, it is the study of the area commonly called the Orient. In academia, this would refer most directly to Area Studies programs, but also those disciplines which study Eastern religion, culture, history, etc. The second definition, potentially more applicable to specific debate resolutions, is that Orientalism is "a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction between "the Orient" and (most of the time) "the Occident"" (Orientalism 2). This division can be easily translated to any discussion of East versus West, global South versus North, and also to any artificial distinction between the self and a group branded "the other". The final, more normative, definition of Orientalism addresses the way that it, by defining the Orient, exercises a power over it. Said adapts Foucault 's to argue that Orientalism is not merely a field of study, but a discourse. And a discourse always reproduces that which it comments upon. The result is that Orientalism exercises a hegemonic through which it reproduces the concept of an other and simultaneously dominates it. It is important, when using Said 's writing, not to get caught up on the word Orientalism itself. While Said 's research for the book was specifically on the ways the Orient was constructed by the discourse of Orientalism, it is perfectly applicable to any situation where a philosopher or debater constructs the identity of a group of people. For example, on a resolution which stated that Native American Indians ought to be given back land stolen from them when the United States broke its treaties, many debaters (and the authors they cite) will make broad claims about what "Indians" want and need. Obviously, there is no monolithic group described by the term "Indian." An appropriate use of the theory of Orientalism would be to explain how the study of Indians oppresses (or Orientalizes) them, so to speak. In a later book, Culture and Imperialism, Said addressed the way the West perceives other areas beyond the Middle East. These include: India, Africa, the Caribbean, Australia, etc. It is, therefore, appropriate to apply Said 's theory to all sorts of colonized peoples, not just those from the Middle East. He writes that even if there is no longer a clear division between the Orient and the Occident, there is still "the North/South one, the have/have-not one, the imperialist/anti-imperialist one, the white/colored one"(Said Orientalism 327) Perhaps the central point we can draw from Orientalism is that the creation of the self and, resultantly, of others, is a false one. Said argues that "the Orient" does not exist in any real way. There is no monolithic body "whether geographical, cultural, or human" to which that term refers. Rather, the Orient is a construction of Western thought. Similarly, the way that we construct ourselves, in terms of any aspect of our identity, in contrast to an other, is an illusion. The other we define ourselves in opposition to only exists insofar as we define it into existence. Thus, Said 's critique undermines the whole notion of a stable identity," Far from a static thing then, identity of self or of "other" is a much worked-over historical, social, intellectual, and political process that takes place as a contest involving institutions and individuals in all societies"(Said Orientalism 332). These identities are fluid and constructed. One criticism of Said 's writing might be that it is too historically grounded, and does not comment sufficiently on the present. This is untrue for several reasons. First, one of the primary purposes of the book Orientalism is to provide a genealogical critique of how, historically, the Orient has been constructed. However, the purpose of a genealogical critique is often to explain a modern phenomenon. Said wishes to explain modern Orientalism by examining its historical roots. Second, Said does examine the modern ramifications of Orientalism. For one thing, he writes, it results in a proliferation of stereotypes about Arabs in modern media," One aspect of the electronic, postmodern world is that there has been a reinforcement of the stereotypes by which the Orient is viewed"(Said ORIENTALISM 26). Arabs are oil-mongers, camel driving, money-grubbing, often holding large knifes or scantily dressed women. In many films in the last decade, the image of the Arab as the generic terrorist has taken hold. Ironically, Said notes that in these films, they are unable to get Arab actresses and actors to play the Muslim and Arab roles. As a result, they are most commonly played by Israeli actresses and actors. This indicates the way that our beliefs regarding what an Oriental person should look like are constructed entirely apart from reality. Third, he describes how the educational systems in Arab countries are modeled after Western education, but while universities and other institutions in the United States often have programs for studying the Orient, that there are not the reciprocal institutions in the Arab world for the purpose of studying the West. This indicates the imbalance of power the whole book is critiquing. Finally, one of the most recent examples of Orientalism in practice that Said examines is the treatment of Palestinians in the Peace process. He argues that the demonization of Arabs in those negotiations indicate the powerful and long-ranging affect of stereotypes propagated for centuries. There are a whole new class of Orientalists whose job is to advise policymakers and the American media based on their expertise of what the Arabs need and want and how much of a threat they are, etc. These Orientalists are considered an integral component of the Peace process, because without them, the West might be forced to ask the Arabs themselves. These "experts" are the ones who perpetuate the new stereotypes of Orientalism, most notably the image of all Arabs as terrorists. 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