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- APPLICATIONS OF ORIENTALISM TO DEBATE
SOLUTIONS?What might the solution to Orientalism be? Said does not give us a clear answer to what the solution is, but he gives us many clues as to what the solution is not. To begin with, he draws some authority for his writing because of his own personal relationship to the issue, as a Palestinian. However, he writes, "I certainly do not believe the limited proposition that only a black can write about blacks, a Muslim about Muslims, and so forth"(Said Orientalism 322). On the contrary, he does not believe that we can begin to eradicate the vestiges of Orientalism from our current news-media, educational textbooks, etc. until Western people can critically self-reflect on the manifestations of Orientalism in our own writing. Should Orientalism be taken, then, as a universal condemnation of all things Western? Said is frequently accused of being blindly anti-Western. However, in his 1994 afterword to Orientalism, Said explained that he is not advocating the rejection of all of Western culture and tradition. The solution is not, he clarifies, to privilege the Eastern over the Western in some sort of an inverted hierarchy. He specifies that he is inditing only one aspect of the West, not the entire West, and although it pervades much of Western culture, that does not warrant a blind demonization of the West as a response. The solution is not to stop Western academics from writing about the Orient, but to make them more open to the voices of the people they are writing about Said has clear political beliefs and advocacy, as is natural since he is one of the primary spokespeople for advocates of Palestinian statehood. However, those policies do not directly address the criticisms he brings up in Orientalism. We are left, in Orientalism, with only the most fleeting and insubstantial solution: to take the philosophy he espouses into account, to critically examine our own behavior, and to keep his writings in mind when we read, see or hear descriptions of Arabs in our daily lives, and realize that those images are constructions distinct from reality. This is a common, although unsatisfying, alternative proposed by many critical theorists. APPLICATIONS OF ORIENTALISM TO DEBATEThere are many of ways that Said 's critique could be used in a Lincoln-Douglas debate. I will name only a few. It is important to remember that because of his grounding in critical and postmodern theory, Said 's writing can be used to respond to any philosophies grounded in modernism, realism, etc. Rather than focusing on the name he gives his theory, "Orientalism," debaters can use it to address diverse topics and groups of people. The most obvious use of Said would be to critique debaters who assert an identity for a group of people. I gave the example earlier of debaters who argue that Native American Indians have a monolithic common interest. That argument is ripe for a Saidian critique. However, many of the other uses of his philosophy are more complex. There is a unfortunate tendency, in Lincoln-Douglas debate, to rely on European philosophy, like John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, and Jean Jacques Rousseau, to justify or dejustify the resolution. These philosophers are valuable, and their use is often justified. However, there are many non-Western philosophies (from all regions of the world) that could also be useful. In addition to their applicability to debate, they have added utility. Because of their under-use by debaters, they are less well know about, so they are also a strategic choice. Said 's writing could be used to justify the use of those philosophies. He would argue that it is absurd to take one ethical or moral standard "developed in the West" and assume it applies to all people. For example, the use of natural law theory presumes that there is a universally correct standard of behavior. By assuming a more relativist approach, and arguing that Western natural law philosophies don 't apply to all people (using Said), you undermine the fundamental premise of a natural law, thus inditing the entire philosophy. Moreover, many of the Western philosophers that are commonly used in Lincoln-Douglas debate held views that were very Orientalist. One example of this will suffice. John Locke referred to the Native American Indians as "noble savages," and argued that it was justified to take their land. Because of his intense focus on the right to property "the pursuit of which he saw as a law of nature" he believed that if the Indians were not properly cultivating their land (as Western settlers believed it should be used), they had no right to the land. A Saidian analysis would begin by criticizing the language and imagery Locke used to describe the Indians. Then, it would justify criticizing the way values were universalized across cultures. Finally, it could be used to criticize the way Locke characterizes the proper behavior as per the laws of nature (in this case regarding property) and the way those beliefs were used to justify violent expansion, robbing the Indians of land, and paternalistic treatment of an autonomous people. Said can also be used to challenge values based on individual identity. Because Said argues that identity (whether in ourselves or others) is a construction, to base an ethical system on the assumption that one 's identity is stable would be nonsensical. Said explains that "human identity is not only not natural and stable, but constructed and occasionally even invented outright"(Said Orientalism 322). Values like "individualism", or even philosophies like the social contract which assume that there are stable, autonomous individual agents, could be attacked using Said. This follows directly from his challenge to the reality of geographical borders. Just as there is no truth to a division between East and West, there is no real division between the self and the other. We can only define ourselves as individuals in opposition to what is not "I", but he criticizes this process as causing racism. He also adds an interesting twist to this argument. Not only does the division between self and other foster racist mindsets (because there is always a hierarchy implicit in that division, with the self on top and the otherized people beneath), but it actually constructs the other in the way we want to see them. Using an example from before, one can only define what an Arab is by describing and Arab in contrast to one 's self. Therefore, not only to they get assigned all of the negative characteristics that reciprocate all the virtues we assign ourselves e.g., "I am generous, so Arabs are stingy; I am hygienic, so Arabs are dirty" but that in turn constructs them in that way. The next time we meet someone who appears Arab (based on our preconceived stereotypes) we will treat them as stingy and will feel that they are being stingy. It thus becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. 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