The Introduction to Orientalism - Coursework Example

Edward Said During the Victorian era, a period filled with the concept of colonization, society was encountering many new cultures and ways of life. Rather than appreciating them for what they offered – differing perspectives, alternate means of solving common societal issues or a way of life that eliminated some of the more common social ills experienced in the newly industrialized societies – colonizing nations sought to overcome these ‘others’ and force them into a worldview in keeping with their own. When this wasn’t possible, as in dealing with faraway nations in the Orient, inventions were made of the bits and pieces of information that came back that defined entire sections of the world according to what was imagined about them rather than on true accounts of them. In doing so, comparisons were made between the ‘other’ and the self, meaning the dominant culture of the colonizing nation which is, in this case, predominantly England, that placed the self at an aggrandized level and the ‘other’ at a level quite inferior. In other words, in encountering the ‘other’, the colonizing nation reacted in a way that demonized them, reduced them to second-class humans and thereby contained them within a less-threatening context while boosting the self to new levels of superiority. This is the subject of Edward Said’s book Orientalism. Within the introduction, he informs his readers regarding the ‘truth’ of orientalism, outlines its fallacies and demonstrates how these have served to attempt reshaping and redefining the world from a particular viewpoint; ideas that have been expanded since Said published his book and can be applied to contemporary spaces such as that of the belly dancer. The introduction to Orientalism is essentially an argument in three parts illustrating how he plans to support the key arguments he makes in the remainder of the book. To begin with, he indicates his plan to show how the Orient has become something that is not a “free subject of thought or action” because of the more imaginary concept of Orientalism. After that, he indicates his plan to demonstrate how the “European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self” (Said, 1979: 3). The book starts with three basic observations regarding the use of the term ‘orientalism.’ First is the idea that ‘orient’ doesn’t refer to the truth of the region even as much as American refers to the United States alone. Instead, the term refers to an idea that has been fostered in the minds of Europeans beginning with the age of colonization. Even though there is no actual truth involved in the idea, it is continued in Western thought through academic and other social institutions thanks to an established vocabulary, specific agreed upon imagery and colonial styles. The second observation illustrates how ‘the Orient” has been given the distinction of the Other. This allows the Europeans to view themselves as the enlightening colonizers, bringing the ‘inferior’ culture as the Europeans themselves had defined it into a more acceptable line with European ideals and beliefs. The third observation borrows theory from Michel Foucault, showing how the distinctions that are made between the Orient and the European world (the Occident) through vocabulary, imagery, discussion and academic instruction necessarily confines the Orient into a pre-conceived idea formed before Europeans are even given a chance to consider the validity or limitations of these definitions. Said’s primary argument though is to prove that the method he uses to prove his claims are valid and meaningful for this study. To do this, he attempts to prove that there is no such thing as pure knowledge because “no one has ever devised a method for detaching the scholar from the circumstances of life, from the fact of his involvement (conscious or unconscious) with a class, a set of beliefs, a social position, or from the mere activity of being a member of a society” (Said, 1979: 10). In claiming this, Said indicates that there is no individual scholar in the Western world who has grown to the age of scholar without having already been infected by the preconceptions of the Western world. No matter how hard he may try to distance himself from that early training, he will never be able to take a completely objective stance on the subject and understand it merely as a human being rather than a member of the Western community. This argument is supported by the theory of deconstruction, a means of interpreting text that indicates “texts cannot be deconstructed from ‘within’. For one thing, this would involve the inescapable loops of recursion: each attempt at deconstruction would need deconstructing. And quite apart from its logical absurdity, any such attempt would also be an epistemological impossibility, since (as Derrida would point out) authors cannot fully understand what they have written: the deep ground of the ideas which underlies the text is forever invisible and inaccessible to the author” (Chandler, 1995: 228). In pointing out that even the conscientious author is not immune to these early teaching, Said argues that the concept of the Orient as it has been created within the minds of the West is so deeply ingrained in Western life that it ‘unconsciously’ manifests itself through the intertextual context and is indistinguishable to the Western writer from his own ‘pure’ thought. Having proved that there can not really be separation of the political concept of ‘Oriental’ from the writings of the Western author, Said works to justify his methodological approach to the study of Orientalism. He begins this process by narrowing the field of investigation to the Anglo-French-American experience as it is applied to the Arabs and the religion of Islam. This study is supplemented by literature from the British and French quarters because of their well-documented domination of the trade routes through more than 1000 years of history. America is the exception here having stepped into the ‘Orient’ where the other countries have left off. This limitation of the scope of the study is supported by Ziauddin Sardar in his book, also entitled Orientalism. “It was in its encounter with Islam that the West first developed its vision of the Orient as an unfathomable, exotic and erotic place where mysteries dwell and cruel and barbaric scenes are staged” (Sardar, 1999: 2). The approach Said outlines in studying these works include consideration of the authority with which the author wrote including “strategic location, which is a way of describing the author’s position in a text with regard to the Oriental material he writes about, and strategic formation, which is a way of analyzing the relationship between texts and the way in which groups of texts, even textual genres, acquire mass, density, and referential power among themselves and thereafter in the culture at large” (Said, 1979: 20). The methodology is generally accepted as well-grounded because Said seems to be following in the footsteps of many other authors who had written about this topic. Most Western writers tend to rely upon other Western writers as their sources regarding Oriental concepts. Discussing how the West has managed to maintain control over the East, Emmanuel Sivan indicates authors use “a method that prefers abstract generalities about the East, especially those that are based on texts that represent classic Eastern culture, over direct testimony from contemporary Oriental reality” (Sivan, 1997). To distinguish how these texts establish their authority, Said indicates it is necessary to study the “style, figures of speech, setting, narrative devices, historical and social circumstances, not the correctness of the representation nor its fidelity to some great original” (21) for evidence of the exteriority of the representation. Thus, studying the actual realities of Orientalism provides little or no illumination regarding how the West has managed to create an entire definition for them while studying Western texts is essential to this understanding. Finally, Said argues that his own personal perspective on the topic as an “Oriental” raised and educated in the Western tradition gives him a unique vantage point that cannot easily be duplicated. In making this confession, Said indicates that although the world has been made smaller through the use of electronic devices and easier transportation, the communication of the concept of Orientalism has nevertheless been confined into even more restricted definitions that now couch the term in shades of fear and danger. Because of his unique background, Said is able to view these stereotypes for what they are easier perhaps than the Americans living around him. “There exists here an almost unanimous consensus that politically he [the Oriental] does not exist, and when it is allowed that he does, it is either as a nuisance or as an Oriental. The web of racism, cultural stereotypes, political imperialism, dehumanizing ideology holding in the Arab or the Muslim is very strong indeed, and it is this web which every Palestinian has come to feel as his uniquely punishing destiny” (Said, 1979: 27). This hostile environment has made it impossible for any “Oriental” living in this culture to stand up and claim association with the ‘evil’ Muslim and therefore set the record straight regarding what is and what is not a true Oriental. However, this very position can also be seen as an argument to the negative in terms of supporting Said’s stance because his own “take on it is problematic, too. Almost consistently, he condemns any negative commentary by any Westerner on any aspect of the Orient. Often he seems to imply that the only proper Western posture toward the East is to suspend judgment entirely and bathe everything in sympathy” (Bawer, 2002), a sympathy he cannot distance himself from long enough to take a more objective viewpoint on several of the issues involved any more than the authors he condemns. Getting into the meat of Said’s argument, he illustrates how the Western world has characterized anything ‘Oriental’ to a public that doesn’t have the means to travel and see for themselves. Everything was made to seem backward, simple and non-threatening by placing it in the context of a passive action. For example, the silks and fine fabrics that originated in the East were not due to greater technological skill, but rather were the result of a rare creature accidentally found in that region. Through simple accident of fate, the soft, simple people living in the region simply took advantage of this little bug in order to make delicate clothing in keeping with their delicate way of life. As Said points out, a group of people who must wear soft silks as a means of not chafing their delicate skin is not a threatening people to the Western nations. However, when people actually started traveling to the Orient as travel became more available, it was discovered that there were actually a wide variety of ‘orientals.’ Like those who live in the West, people of the East had vast differences in lifestyles from one region to another that were sometimes similar to the West, sometimes more ‘uncivilized’ and at other times much more advanced. This softening of the Orient, according to Said, was purposefully established within the public discourse as a means of bringing this region under the control of the empire, subduing it by subduing its voices and belittling its achievements. These ideas have since been pursued by many other writers and applied to numerous definitions of ‘other.’ Bruce Bawer (2002) illustrates how the concept of the ‘other’ existed within the general culture as it concerned those who lived within it as well as those who lived without it. He brings the context of the conversation of the ‘other’ or ‘Oriental’ down to the individual level by pointing out how Edward Said’s life as an Oriental living in the Western world reflected the concepts of the other that he’d written about. At the same time, Bawer helps to pull out some important points about this concept from Said’s books and other writings. “Ultimately, Said’s thesis [in Orientalism] amounts to a truism: that people look at the ‘other’ through their own eyes, and tend to judge alien cultures by their own culture’s standards” (Bawer, 2002: 621). Instead of insisting that the concepts brought forward by Said are applicable only to the ‘Oriental’ as ‘other’, Bawer is suggesting that ‘other’ can be applied to any group depending upon the perspective of the viewer. These ‘outside’ cultures do not necessarily have to exist in some geographically distant region, but can instead exist within and between the spaces of the Western world, such as in areas where numerous people of a particular nationality or belief system live – areas populated predominantly by Jews, Africans, Chinese or any other group that can be named as such. The effectiveness of this method to suppress and demonize potentially threatening cultural or societal groups can and has been used as a means of social control, consistently reinforcing a traditionally white Christian male perspective of how the world should work. With a basic understanding of what is meant by the ‘other’, as that which does not fit within the same definition as the self, it remains unclear why this concept of something different should be considered frightening or threatening. This is the subject of Marshall Berman’s (1982) work. In describing the modern human, Berman says “they are moved at once by a will to change – to transform both themselves and their world – and by a terror of disorientation and disintegration, of life falling apart” (Berman, 1982). Through this statement, it is easy to see the conflicting emotions of an individual undergoing change of any kind. This can include the necessity of examining the beliefs and customs one has grown up with. It is perhaps especially because of this necessity that the idea of the other is threatening. No longer can the world be considered stable and hinged on a single, all-pervading truth once one encounters someone with an equally valid but differing viewpoint. Still others have seen the concept of the ‘other’ as a means of finding the self. Anne McClintock (1995) argues in her book that imperialism invented the concept of the other as a necessary means of self-definition. “The invention of race in the urban metropoles … became central not only to the self-definition of the middle class but also to the policing of the ‘dangerous classes’: the working class, the Irish, Jews, prostitutes, feminists, gays and lesbians, criminals, the militant crowd and so on” (5). The ‘other’ was increasingly understood to apply to a wide variety of individuals who had previously been considered merely a part of the crowded self. As the world began to fracture into multi-faceted parts, it was necessary to combat definitions of other with more flattering and concrete definitions of the self. While many in the postmodern society have taken to identifying the other in terms of race, gender and class, McClintock argues that these “are not distinct realms of experience, existing in splendid isolation from each other; nor can they be simply yoked together retrospectively like armatures of Lego. Rather, they come into existence in and through relation to each other – if in contradictory and conflictual ways” (5). In other words, the concept of the other cannot exist without there first being a concept of the self. It is further not something that can be defined in clear-cut, definite structures but is rather a shifting, amorphous thing that only becomes revealed as it interacts and chafes against others’ concepts of self. The other is, therefore, found in anything that differs from the norm as it is understood by the individual at any particular moment in time. In this discussion about current understandings of human expression and the ideas ‘Orientalism’ has brought forward, McClintock (1992) attempts to make the concepts more concrete by describing a particular art exhibit. This particular art exhibit was apparently designed with the specific purpose of graphically illustrating the point, particularly as it relates to the progression of culture through three key stages. Beginning with a singular culture without much contact with others, the exhibit progresses to a colonial culture in which the ‘other’ emerged as a frightening entity that must be constrained and finally to the post-colonial idea of a hybrid culture in which all cultures are attempted to be embraced. McClintock argues that this progression was necessary as increasing understanding of what it means to be other continuously revealed that there is no such thing as a mono-culture; even within the single culture, there were always differing viewpoints, different nuances to belief systems and different means of accomplishing the same sorts of goals. Not only does she make the concept more accessible, she provides examples of how it might be applied to everyday objects and spaces. While many of these later theorists have taken Said’s concepts into entirely new realms of exploration, one area in which Orientalism as Said defines it held full sway until relatively recently was in the dance space, particularly as it pertained to what is commonly referred to as belly dance. The art of belly dancing, or oriental dance as it is more correctly termed, is one that is little understood in the Western nations. For most living in the West, belly dancing is recognized as having a distinctly seductive quality. It is dimly associated with the idea of scantily clad women in sequined brassieres and flimsy loose pants made of little more than layers of veils. In the collective mind’s eye, Westerners tend to view these dancers as lithe, young, nubile women performing meekly at the command of their master for the express purpose of sexual stimulation. These are images perhaps put in place by the lavish English paintings of harems created by artists who had only sketchy details of harem life created during the Victorian period (Ecsedy, 2005). The purpose of the dance was assumed to have been a means of presenting the master with a healthy choice of flexible and desirable women with whom he might spend the rest of the evening, or just the next hour. In addition, much of oriental dance is focused on the physicality of the female body as it is linked with the powers of creation and, therefore, the divine. “Oriental dance is uniquely designed for the female body, with an emphasis on abdominal muscles, hip moves, and chest moves. It is firm and earthy, with bare feet connected to the ground. It is a dance characterized by smooth, flowing, complex, and sensual movements of the torso, alternated with shaking and shimmy type moves. Eastern dances are considered to be different because they are ‘muscle dances’, as opposed to the European ‘step’ dances” (Harding, 1993). This difference in approach, from muscle dances of the east to step dances of the west, led to many of the early misunderstandings. Early reports of oriental dancers to reach European ears described “carnal female temptations” that revealed “unbounded sexuality” behind the veils of the otherwise modest women (Said, 1979: 187). This lack of knowledge regarding the history and meaning of the dance coupled with the strict European morality of the time led to many misconceptions regarding the purpose for the dance. “Unfortunately, the repressive moral climate, insularity, and imperialism exemplified by the Victorian age made the West ill-equipped for appreciating the art and culture of non-Western civilization. The Orient was pictured as a paradise where sensuality and abandonment were the norm. The tourist abroad as well as the seeker of titillation at home eagerly accepted the distorted view of the Oriental woman as odalisque, a passive sexual plaything. The woman’s dance was quickly turned into a spectacle for gawking” (Karolinka, 2003). As a result of this misconception, individuals from all of the western nations seemed to have an immediate and lasting reaction to the concept of oriental dance. Those who held fast to the morality of their Christian roots misunderstood the dance as overly sensual, sinfully suggestive and ethically obscene. They were immediately against anything that was so blatantly materialistic that it would place gold coins on the body of a nubile young woman and allow her to swivel her hips in such titillating abandonment. Obviously, she could be nothing more than a simple toy for men; there could be no deeper meaning involved. At the same time, those who had few morals and plenty of interest in making money quickly saw the possibilities of exploitation. “The dance’s moves were taken over and vulgarized, as strippers, prostitutes and burlesque showgirls pedaled de-humanized sexuality” (Karolinka, 2003). Only in recent years, with the increased attention on the damage of Orientalism and the new post-Oriental approach being adopted is the traditional venerated women’s dance of the East being rethought. While it is still a dramatic pull for the strip clubs and other establishments promising sexual stimulation, there is a new understanding that it has a much deeper and older tradition within its originating cultural context. Perhaps still because of the changes wrought upon it by western misunderstandings and the effects of Orientalism, oriental dance has lost some of its popularity in its traditional birthplaces. In places such as Egypt, oriental dance has become difficult to perform if one is to escape some of the violence that has erupted in areas of the Middle East in recent decades (Shira, 2007). However, it is difficult to assess the degree to which dance is still practiced within the home and among the women, safely indoors and away from the intruding eyes of men. As the West begins to recognize some of the mistakes of the past and attempts to bring about correction and understanding in some of these areas, it is hoped that a more traditional understanding of the deep spiritual and cultural foundations of the dance might be found and preserved. Works Cited Bawer, Bruce. “Edward W. Said, Intellectual.” The Hudson Review. Vol. 5, N. 4, (Winter, 2002): 620-634. Berman, Marshall. All That is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity. New York: Penguin Books, 1982. Chandler, Daniel. The Act of Writing. Aberystwyth, University of Wales, 1995. Ecsedy, Mary C. “A Brief History of Belly Dancing.” Desert Veils. (2005). August 10, 2008 Harding, Karol Henderson. “The World’s Oldest Dance.” Creative Anachronism. Vol. 70, 1993. Karolinka. “Some General Information on Middle Eastern Dance.” Sahnobar. Gainesville, FL. (2003). August 10, 2008 McClintock, Anne. “The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term “Post-Colonialism.” Social Text. N. 31/32, Third World and Post-Colonial Issues, (1992), pp. 84-98 McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context. New York and London: Routledge, 1995. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Sardar, Ziauddin. Orientalism. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1999. Shira. “Styles of Belly Dance in the United States, Part 1.” Shira.net. (2007). August 10, 2008 Sivan, Emmanuel. “Orientalism Polemics.” Alpaum. Vol. 14, (1997). Read More