INTRODUCTION from Edward Said's ' Orientalism' - Essay Example

The first one centers around the idea that the term ‘Orient’ refers not to the truth of the region, but rather to an idea that has been developed in the minds of Europeans. Although not based on actual truth, this concept is naturally present in the European culture in the form of academic and other social institutions, the established vocabulary, the imagery utilized and the colonial styles. Secondly, ‘the Orient’ has been established as the Other, allowing the Europeans to define themselves as a colonizing country against the inferior culture they had themselves defined.

Finally, building off of the ideas proposed by Michel Foucault, these distinctions made between Orient and Occident as well as the vocabulary, imagery and other sanctioned discussion and instruction regarding it, has confined the Orient, making it impossible for Europeans to consider the Orient without finding it necessary to first actively combat these limitations on thought or action. His main argument in the introduction, however, is to prove that the means by which he goes about proving the above statements are valid and meaningful in this context.

He first sets about 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.”2 Because the concept of Orientalism is such an ingrained concept in the minds of the Western world, Said argues that it is impossible for a Western writer, regardless of genre or intent, to approach the topic from the perspective of an individual without first coming upon the topic as a Westerner.

One of the modern means of interpreting a text involves the process of Deconstruction, a