Edward Said on Orientalism

Edward Said On Orientalism

"Orientalism" is a book written by Palestinian born scholar Edward Said that deals with the topic of the way the West views the middle east conjures, imagines and distorts the reality of what the real middle east actually is. Professor Said also taught Columbia University when the book came out in 1978 and his book went on to influence the teaching of the Middle East in other colleges across the United States. Moreover the book has had an impact on other disciplines as well such as English, History, Anthropology, Political Science and Cultural Studies. The book Orientalism tries to address the question why when we view the Middle East, we have a preconceived notion of the kind of people that live there, what they believe and how they act despite in some cases never having been there. Professor Said began the book due to two reasons. The first, was the 1973 Arab-Israel War which prior to the war Arabs were seen as cowards but the war showed otherwise then the Egyptian Army crossed the Suez Canal and demonstrated that in fact they could fight. The second reason was personal for Professor Said. It was the conflict between his experience as an Arab and the representation he saw depicted in Art of who Arabs were. One example he gave was the work of a french Poet, Gerard de Nerval whose work depicted the Orient as the same despite the deferences between India, Syria and Egypt. That unlike the civilizations of the West which over time showed development, the Orient on the other hand did not develop but stayed the same timeless.

Professor Said in the book also does an analysis between Orientalism and imperialism and the question of how when the Empires of the British and French had an impact on the East. In the case of Napoleon, Professor Said narrated that he brought with his him an army of soldiers to include scientist, botanists, architects and historians whose job unlike that of the spaniard whose main conquest was to loot, was to record what they found. They then created colonies as did the British in India. In the case of American Orientalism, Professor Said is of the