ORIENTALISM Review and Critiques

Art Choi I38014Theories of Area StudiesProf. Lee, Kyu Young2015.11.02

TABLE OF CONTENTS1. Orientalism2. Orientalism Critiques3. Orientalism and Occidentalism4. Relations Area Studies5. Conclusion6. References

ORIENTALISM Western influences and Western ways of

thinking to the East. Western world dominated East world for 2000 geographically, economically,and politically. (ie Persians and Greeks)

Europe Hegemony and military domination. Said’s: Orientalism claims that

Strong West vs Weak East = stereotypes invented with literary, cultural, and historical texts that are fictitious than factual.

ORIENTALISM Let’s think: Would this bias in these regions

be accepted by all? Just because the West says it is so, does it really make it so?

Said: Europeans wrote the history on Asia and invented the ‘exotic East’ and represented as inferior to the people of the West…After physical and political take over, intellectual conquest started within the people. Western scholars interpreted and translated ‘oriental’ languages and critical study of cultures and history of oriental world.

ORIENTALISM CRITIQUES Orientalism is now a negative connotation

(Martin Kramer)

Said claims of orientalism has been criticized saying that he claims all Europeans that study the ‘orient’ is racist.

ORIENTALISM CRITIQUES Bernard Lewis 99 yrs old!  Lewis is the Cleveland E.

Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies atPrinceton University

Main Rival of Said.

ORIENTALISM CRITIQUES Said said Lewis’ work is prime example of

Orientalism and rather than objective study, it was a tool for imperialistic domination and form of racism.

And that’s when the fight began. “Lewis responded that Orientalism developed

as a facet of European humanism, independently of the past European imperial expansion” and claimed Orientalism has nothing to do with Imperialism.

ORIENTALISM CRITIQUES But did Orientalism really entail racism and

imperialism thoughts?

Lewis claims European humanism, independent of the past European imperial expansion…

Said for example said that Lewis doesn’t know anything about the Middle East, but just portrays what he observes….

ORIENTALISM CRITIQUES But did Orientalism really entail racism and

imperialism thoughts?

Lewis claims European humanism, independent of the past European imperial expansion…

Said for example said that Lewis doesn’t know anything about the Middle East, but just portrays what he observes….

ORIENTALISM CRITIQUES James G. Carrier

Recent debate for Said Orientalism (1978) a critical description of the discipline of oriental studies.

2 images 1) stresses the orients radical separation from and

opposition to the West Politics and Economics are also very different from ‘us’

and ‘them’ 2) timeless essentialism

Portrays unchanging Orient “a closed system in which objects are what they are because they are that, for all time, for ontological reasons that no empirical matter can either dislodge or alter.

ORIENT AND OCCIDENT Said argues we must examine poli econ relations between West

and East to understand how the Orient that concerns him was generated in Western thought.

“Said sees orientalism as an instance of a fundamental process of self-definition by opposition with the alien” (what does this mean?) – author argues and criticizes that

Said believes and self-defines orientalism as a racist view of the alien.

Said is criticized by saying that Orientalism then is ultimately a two way street, ‘they’ can view ‘us’ in their eyes as we view them in our eyes. Although Carrier does agree that it does privilege

the West as the standard within its definition because of historic power.

ORIENTALISM AND OCCIDENTALISM Occidentalism: the characteristics and customs of people situated

in western regions, especially the Western Hemisphere, as western European countries and the United States

Occidentalism is the essentialistic rendering of the West by Westerner

Orientalism," which focuses on the deficiencies of the West's representations of the Orient, to that of "Occidentalism," which refers to the conceptions of the West animating these representations.

“They are seen to mark the displacement of a heretofore alien, coherent, and uniform sort of social life by an equally coherent and uniform sort of social life, that of the West” (Carrier)

ORIENTALISM AND OCCIDENTALISM Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit

Occidentalism “evil twin of Orientalism” Argues that that this reductive dehumanizing

picture of the West isnt a new idea but an idea with history. Stemming from Russian Soviet Union Right winged

Marxists, Nazis, Japanese nationalists Ideas that West are Barbarians and Idolators bent on

capitlization. These are some of the criticisms of

Occidentalism that this creates worldly disorder.

AREA STUDIES B IRAY K OLLUOGLU - K IRLI Bogazici

University Bush Doctrine and how Civilized West needs to

indoctrinate ‘others’ with West supremacy. And this perpetuates a discussion how Orientalism is transcending into a better version = Area studies.

1) area studies needs to be understood in its relation to Orientalism

2) Consideration is that takes under geopolitics Post WWII era

3) distinctive and disruptive places that Orientalism and Area studies hold within social sciences

AREA STUDIES No other Social Science discipline sets out to

identify its content or draws boundaries via geography or by exclusion 19th century- 2nd half was dominated by politics,

economics, and sociology. Liberal Dominant thought

Social sciences could make universal claims valid over time and space, but non-West was excluded. This means the focus was Western societies.

Orientalist is the political scientist, sociologist, and economist of “Oriental Societes” or he is none.

AREA STUDIES Area studies: “Historians, sociologists, economists, political

scientists, geographers, and anthropologists unite their efforts to further the knowledge about all parts of the non-Western world toward the maintenance of the American hegemony in the new world arena marked by “decolonization”, post WWII, and the Cold War.

How does this relate to Area studies vs Orientalism?

AREA STUDIES Post WWII area studies developed Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as a

discourse “as the corp institution dealing with the Orient…Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” So we can claim that organically it is linked to

Eurocentric capitalistic expansion and colonization and ideas.

But what we didn’t know was that initally it was a religious ambition more than a political and economical one.

Christian Missionaries, Christianity in general, played a big role. So we can see a dissemination of christianity in the new territories of European influence within Area Studies. But what’s impt is Orientalism came into formal

existance – Church Council of Vienna in 1312…

AREA STUDIES “Orientalism is one of the happiest and most

durable marriages of power and knowledge housed under the unequal relationship between the West and the East”

WWII was the main reason to turn into Area Studies that took place in the US. The world could no longer be satisfied with what

was offered by Orientalist studies. Regional knowledge was required Govt’ support and foundation support for area

studies

AREA STUDIES Orientalism was a European enterprise until

their hegemony declined and US started Area Studies as their enterprise from their rise to Unipolar hegemonic status.

So what is the difference? Orientalism – Frozen past Area studies – approach to contemporary non

western world

CONCLUSION AND UNDERLYING QUESTIONS Orientalism and Area studies are interrelated

studies that are products of unequal power relations between the West and the ‘others’

Are there other corresponding ways of studying ‘the other’ developed in the non-West?

Was there ever Occidentalism in the first place?

REFERENCES Occidentalism: The World Turned Upside-down James G. Carrier

American Ethnologist, Vol. 19, No. 2. (May, 1992), pp. 195-212. From Orientalism to Area Studies

Biray Kolluoglu-KirliCR: The New Centennial Review, Volume 3, Fall2003, PP93-111 (article)

Beyond Occidentalism: Toward Nonimperial Geohistorical Categories Fernando Coronil Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 11, No. 1. (Feb., 1996), pp. 51-87

http://www.chron.com/life/article/Occidentalism-by-Ian-Buruma-and-Avishai-Margalit-1642289.php

http://www.outlookindia.com/article/the-origins-of-occidentalism/222848

http://science.jrank.org/pages/10519/Occidentalism-East-West-Dialogue-Other.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Lewis#cite_note-60 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_(book)