Edward Said- Orientalism

The Orient is a European invention and symbolizes romance, exotic beings, haunted memories and landscapes- remarkable, exotic experiences. And now the Orient was dying, like the Vanishing Indian. The European representations of the Orient were concerned about themselves, not about the Orientals who had their identity and existance at stake. To Europe, the Orient is a place of colonies, of languages, of civilizations and contestations, of the Other. Europe finds its identity by the Orient's otherness. Without the Orient, Europe would not have anythig to differentiate itself from. "The Orient is an integral part of European material civilization and culture" (Said).
The term Orientalism refers to several interdependent things:
- Academically, it is a study of the Orient. It is the academic discourse surrounding the lands known as the Orient.
- It is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction between the Orient and the Occident.
- The corporate institution that deals with the Orient. In this sense, it is a Western style of domination over the Orient.
Orientalism is the discourse that allowed Europe to produce and maintain the Orient until Orientals were stripped of their identities and . The Orient is not a free subject of thought and action, even today. It is a human construction to stand in contrast to the Occident.
Said is interested not in how the Orient and Orientalism relate, but what Orientalism says about the Orient and how it defines it. The Orient and Occident share a relationship of power, domination and complex hegemonies. He believes that Orientalism is not about the Orient but about the relationship between the Occident and the Orient.