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What Said Means

A summary of Said's positions on Orientalism as worked out in class

2003-04 class

Orient

  • inherited from Christianity

  • anti-female

  • tribally organized / apolitical

  • outside

  • static/ancient

  • penetrable

  • despotic

  • target of our own fears / mysterious

2002-03 class

Orientalism:

     A domineering, essentializing, objectifying, homogenizing, feminizing, positivist discourse about an allochronic, sensual, and ineffective Orient marked by inequality. It was added that this "discourse" is often used to solve problems within the West rather than dealing with the East for its own sake.

2001-02 class

Orientalism

  • as studied in literature reveals facts about the socio-economic context
  • is domination through knowledge
  • is a discourse that entrains events
  • is a misprepresentation of the "Orient" and of Islam
  • creates and justifies the West's subject position versus the East as object
  • is an institution
  • essentializes in binary terms (East/West)
  • strips the "orientals" of their voice and history
  • has roots in antiquity (Greece)
  • is negative even when it appears to be "positive"