Orientalism

Seemingly unable to come to terms with the Muslim world, Orientalism is as timely to read today as it was when it was first published in 1978. Edward Said offered a much needed examination of many of the texts that had come to represent the corpus of "Orientalism" in Western Humanities classes. He went back to the late 18th and early 19th century to set the basis for this new field of study that emerged from the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt. What began as an investigation of the monuments of the Near East soon developed into a study of the people, their culture and their religions. The only problem was that these studies treated the "Orientals" like anthropological specimens, never getting beyond general categories and treating Islam like it was some perversion of Christianity, inspired by an anarchist in robes.

Said provided many textual references so you don't have to read the books to get an idea where he is coming from. He charted the long lineage of Orientalism up to the late 20th century through a wide variety of British and French writers. He drew distinctions between the more racist writers and those who had their heart in the right place, even if they couldn't completely get beyond their Western conceits. He paused to analyze such writers as Nerval, Flaubert, Burton, Gibb and Massignon, who penetrated deeper into the Muslim world than other writers. But, here too he pointed out where their analyses failed to give a complete picture and where their egos (particularly that of Burton) got into the way of their observations.

The book may be rough going for those who are looking for sharp, concise analyses of the writers in question. Said chose to look at the way these writers interpreted the "Orient" in a parabolical way that may be frustrating for many readers. He focused mainly on the Near East, specifically the Arab world, showing how these academic studies came to shape the British and French foreign policy in the region. Muslims found their religion objectified to the point of miscomprehension and themselves reduced to a servant class in the minds of British and French colonialists. Said bluntly illustrated how the United States inherited this legacy in the second half of the 20th century, particularly in H.A.R. Gibb, who came to the US after establishing his career as an "Orientalist" in Great Britain. Said noted how many American universities in the late 50's and early 60's perpetuated these Arab stereotypes without much questioning taking place.

Edward Said was a gifted writer who understood the semiology of these texts, and built up an impressive body of work in his lifetime. He examined the situation in Palestine, his birthplace, in detail in The Question of Palestine, and has written numerous publications on the cultural and political conflicts in the region. However, this book is the base text for understanding Said's larger body of work.

Few books in the modern world have acquired the stature of Edward Said's "Orientalism". It has become the de facto authority on the Western perspective of the Middle Eastern and Oriental worlds. Using impeccable scholarship and irrefutable evidence from two centuries' worth of European writing about the East, Edward Said lays down an indisputable case about how Western so-called "objective" and "scientific" study of the East has been corrupted and is far from describing reality. "Orientalism"'s main achievement, however, spreads far beyond the arena of "Oriental Studies" or "Near Eastern Studies" as they are now called. This book demonstrates using an in-depth case study how an entire field of study can be constructed out of self-reinforcing fiction that tends to gather its own inertia and develop its own seemingly self-consistent world. "Orientalism" therefore is a strong warning not only to Orientalists but to all unsuspecting researchers in any subject (even science) who might, deliberately or not, end up constructing their own mythical world. "Orientalism" also analyses the intricate relationships between knowledge and power, demonstrating the fallacy of taking knowledge for granted without analyzing and understanding the power structure that brought this "knowledge" into being.

This is a highly recommended book. It's only weakness is that it can somewhat difficult reading, thanks to its author's genius and total mastery of the English language. I often had to underline difficult words and look them up in a dictionary, and read over some paragraphs again and again in order to grasp the complex ideas, so once I was done with the book my GRE score improved 100 points. Seriously, though, "Orientalism" is a very perceptive and methodical study of an important topic today: the relationship between East and West.

This text makes frequent use of quotes, often in French. These passages are not translated. Since Said makes the citations to argue his points, it is crucial to grasp them. I don't know, for the life of me, why they would not include translations of the French and German quotes (often as long as half a page or more), since this is a mainstream-audience text.

Be trilingual or be prepared to skip large chunks of important source citations.

Also, I would not bother with this text if you don't have a solid footing in world history, and it's use is proportional to previous knowledge one has of orientalism; it is NOT an introductory text.

I put it down after page 100, and I would like to come back to it in a few years after reading more traditional texts on the subject. I remain faithful in its potential, importance, soundness and insight, but I have no faith in its accessibility.

Relations between people of different cultures is a vital part of today's world, not only for culture's sake, but in terms of diplomacy, business, travel, military action, and even just general knowledge. Unlike in previous eras, we are extremely likely to find ourselves living and working with those "others" who used to inhabit unknown spaces "out there". So, intercultural relations can impact on our daily life in new ways that our grandparents never dreamed of. The quality and success of those relationships are going to depend on what we know as individuals about those "others" or on what we know as a society. That is why the process by which we get that knowledge and the actual contents of that knowledge are so important. ORIENTALISM is the work that over the last third of a century has most influenced the way people think and write about that process.

Edward Said concentrated on what is commonly known as "the Middle East", but would be better known as the largely-Muslim countries east of Europe and west of India, or maybe western Asia. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, this part of the world was often called "the Orient". (Though people applied that term to the rest of Asia too.} The method in which he looks at this so-called Orient can be extended to any other. He examines the process by which Euro-Americans sought information about the Orient. They gleaned it from the writings of diplomats, soldiers, administrators, travellers, and businessmen who had stayed for varying lengths of time in the Orient. They got it from the paintings of artists who wished to sell paintings of exotic scenes or from poets and novelists who wished to write of exotic locales. In almost all cases, the presenters of knowledge treated the Orient as homogenous, simple, dangerous, crude, full of exoticism or fanaticism and above all, unchanging. People there were not separate individuals like "us"; they were the undifferentiated "others" with whom we could make contrasts favorable to ourselves. Some Westerners might dream of escape to the exotic world of the Orient, where society would be the reverse of their own. Some presenters of the Orient knew a lot about what they wrote or painted, others had an extremely superficial knowledge. In all cases, Said writes, the information collected and presented was used by governments in the West to control the Orient. Information was power. The people in the Orient had, and needed, no independent existence. They were only shadows brought to life by the Light of Knowledge emanating from the West. They might be guided to proper ways by Western powers, Westerners with power. Orientalism underlay colonialism.

Said examines the vast body of written work---that "Orientalism"---very extensively. He notes that it has had its own paradigms of research, its own learned societies, its own establishment, not to mention university departments labelled "Oriental Studies" in many countries. Through such bodies, the Orient has been labelled, packaged and presented to the world for two hundred years. We can see this process alive and well today. All you have to do is watch Hollywood movies, turn on your TV for the news, or read travel/geographic magazines. All you have to do is listen to current American pronouncements about the same area, regard their lack of trust in its people, their lack of respect. Think about the labels that are put on Palestinians or Shia Muslims. It is not a question of whether you support this particular cause or that. It is a question of how you get your information. Think about it. The world may depend on a radical change in Western thinking, equal to a stop to suicide bombings, teaching of hatred and terrorist plots. When is a man a terrorist and when is he a freedom fighter ? When an international news magazine tells us so ? An information establishment shapes the presentation of that old "Orient" and many other parts of the world. Said took the first mighty step in forcing the West to see its own constructions. For that, and for a detailed, well-argued book, five stars are obligatory.

This book changed my life. If you think you "know" anything about the Middle East and the people there, read this please. It will pull the FOX out of your ass and set your head straight. Then read "On Covering Islam" by Said. He is a Christian, by the way, pointing out what the rest of us here in the West get wrong.

This book has probably shaped the intellectual debate about the Middle East among interested Western experts as late Palestinian scholar Edward Said coined a new term for these non-Arab experts dealing with Arab issues: Orientalists.

Said would stick to this theory throughout his consequent writings and as he used it often to undermine the credibility of some famous Western writers on Middle Eastern issues arguing that no experts could surpass the analytical ability of the natives who are clearly in a better positioned to study and analyze their own culture.

The book that was published in 1978 was adopted in the curriculum of some universities in the Middle East while it provoked some Western thinkers who retaliated against Said by discrediting his professorship of Comparative English Literature. According to Said's opponents, if they were unable to understand the oriental culture which they did not belong to, then he could not lecture on English literature since he was an Arab.

The debate over the concept of Orientalism survives Said and is - to this day - under debate.

In this book, Edward said charts the representation of the "Orient" in Western literature. Very Foucauldian-as he mentions in his introduction- in his critique of the discourse of orientalism, Said argues that the West has fashioned its supremacist identity through promulgating a cultural "Orient" that is irreconcilably opposing the western world view. Said dwells on the representation of Islam and the Arabs in western literature, claiming that the western cultural discourse has constructed the Muslim East as a space of tyranny, unreason, and exoticism to justify its 19th century imperialist enterprise in North Africa and the middle East.Said's Orienatalism is a masterpiece fraught with an encyclopedic knowledge,an insightful argumentation, and a staggering political eloquence.

This extremely important book is not easy to read. As Said tackles sensitive issues, he makes sure that every word of his is backed up by ample research, and the result is at times overwhelmingly tedious. Someone I know remarked that the same book could have been written much shorter. I do not agree.
Although Said is not the first to challenge Western views, his work in this book is certainly ground breaking. Such an effort must be elaborate and concise in order to present a finished thesis, one that would be the basis for future developments
I believe Said succeeded in creating a new subject matter - Orientalism as the study of those who study the Orient. He has been misunderstood and rebuked - I heard one professor claiming that Said stood against thourough research of the Orient, for example, but his immense influence cannot be denied.
For those who do not want to stay behind, who wish to learn Said's "new language" which has become widespread - I recommend the sometimes ardous task of reading this book.

Whatever one may chose to believe about Said's methodology, one cannot question his vast erudition concerning Western literature about the Middle East. Said presents a rigorous and thoroughgoing exegesis of Western texts about the "Orient" and covers virtually the entire gamut in European letters, from Nietzsche to Karl Marx, from British colonialsim to American social science. His penetrating criticism of this material constitutes a significant contribution to the canon of literature.
One may argue against the merit of Said's more radical interpretation of these texts, namely, that the concept of the "Orient" is a sweeping generalization that lacks "ontological stability," and must be understood as a discourse of power in Western literature. This is a fascinating and intellectually pregnant thesis, although many may find it recondite and polemical.

Compounded by debauched images like the one on the cover page of Orientalism, the collective Western sub-conscious in regards to Arab-Islamic culture has been undeniably clouded by a style of thought that harbors superiority. One need look no further than our most esteemed news sources. For this, according to Said, we have Orientalism to blame.
It is the contemporary backlash of Orientalist stereotypes turned prejudices that so disturb author Edward Said. In his view, the resulting legacy of fear and estrangement that characterize the socio-political status quo between the West and Arab nations (and Islam as an ethos) cannot be understated. The irony is that despite the fact that information is more accessible than ever, Oriental biases are being perpetuated more than ever, with shameless stereotypes of Islam being used as fodder on film and even mainstream news-media. This is exemplified by our modern coverage of foreign policy in the Middle East throughout the past century. Diplomatic hypocrisies are whitewashed by the media machine with latent, age-old stereotypes that surface when strategic interests are at risk. Following years of partnership (amidst ethnic-cleansing), the US media ?at the behest of the government ?suddenly saturated the public with the caricature of Iraq's Saddam Hussein as the crazed Arab. Though true, this was marketed at convenience (nevermind Halabja), with the inevitable cultural watershed going unquestioned in the long-term, reducing normal Arabs to "rag-heads?of the little value in the mainstream mind. Similarly in Iran, the US government's coup of the first-ever democratically elected government set the table for Khomeini's stringent Islamic regime years later. Anti-American images and rhetoric dominated our media while opposing motivations were never examined. Overnight, Iranians went from being civilized partners to a sworn enemy. As our media/ government would have us believe, it was only a matter of time before the "other?side lapsed into it's degenerate nature. Though rarely put so bluntly, this is what it is.
Because Orientalism is rooted in canonical history, literature, and art, its treatment is necessarily as exhaustive as the subject is vast. To more effectively address this breadth, Said makes three major claims in Orientalism upon which he builds his case against: that though purporting to be objective, Orientalism served political ends; that Orientalism helped define Europe's self-image; and finally, that Orientalism has produced a distorted and thus false description of Arabs and Islamic culture. In reading the text, one cannot help but appreciate the acute machinations of the author's mind at work, wielding insight that is both incisive and original. Often times, however, the language employed can be painfully esoteric, to the point that one is naturally inclined to grow weary, if not skeptical, of the substance behind the style. It is fair to say that if one read this book casually (though hard to imagine) without a critical mindset, the sheer pretension of the text might compel the reader to accept Said's theories wholesale. And yet while Said's conclusions and scope are revolutionary in themselves, and much of his argument plainly convincing, the case for Orientalism is not without flaws.
Although Said divides his argument three ways, the task of encompassing such a broad concept in a small volume is daunting. Many pieces of knowledge elemental to the development of his arguments are presupposed along the way i.e. historical figures, events, dates implying political context etc., etc. Though the book is supposed to be confined to the colonial era, Said strays as far as Greek history to explain antecedents of Orientalist philosophy, all the while dropping names like Flaubert and Dante as though they were next-door-neighbors. If one is not an exceptionally diversified historian, this makes for a rather fragmented understanding of the case. The need to investigate references on the side is almost certain, at the expense of Said's momentum.
Looking at the heart of his case, Said's assumptions of causality are largely insufficient. Early on he contends that "colonial rule was justified by Orientalism? a statement that is postured as fact though he fails to adequately support it with coherent evidence. A stronger case could be made for trade and military causes as being the main catalyst of the West's (primarily France & England) imperial agenda in the Middle East. Michel Foucault's theorem that knowledge always generates power is treated at length to bolster this claim. Nonetheless, ultimately one can only conclude that Orientalism gave the West a better grasp of Oriental culture accompanied by an unspoken sentiment of eminence, as colonial motivations and objectives are left unexplained. This pre-empts the question as to whether culture and politics are moderately interrelated, or one and the same. Said makes mention of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness in a hollow attempt at illustration, arguing that "reading (the book) was a part of the European effort to hold on to, think about, plan for Africa? In effect he makes a presumption that can in no way be upheld or refuted by historical evidence and is thus weightless. Liberal assertions of this quality appear intermittently as the book progresses, at once logical and confounding to a student of history used to endorsing hard evidence rather than a good reputation.
Indeed Said may have very well bit of more than he could chew. But to his credit, he made a bold case for himself in an area that most scholars would dare not approach. Methodological shortcomings aside ?specifically his assumptions of causality in history - Said's arguments in Orientalism spawned an intense intellectual debate spanning many fields of scholarship that has yet to lose any steam. He makes it clear that as humans we are apt to project, but must first attempt to search ourselves according to our varying identities. More importantly, Said articulates the plight of many disenfranchised people in a manner that demands attention and respect. So while the flesh of his case against Orientalism may be spoilt in some respects, the bones are in tact.

Public opinion has gone in and out like the tides on Said's book since I first read it some six odd years ago. It has been said that the primal characteristic of a truly enlightened mind is its ability to entertain two seemingly contradictory ideas at the same time; in that context I find it odd that people can be so proud of their total discrediting of Said's work in favor of the preeminent and (seemingly) diametrically opposed Bernard Lewis. It is obvious to me that both men have something provocative to teach us about Europe and America's relationship with the Middle East (as it has been over the centuries and is reflected in culture and scholarship), and both need to be heard in that context.
It is not often that a brilliantly, exhaustively researched book on an alternatingly controversial and trivialized subject can engender an emotional response of the magnitude with which this work does--which usually means that it is worth reading. In documenting the psychological architecture of the western mind and its perspective on the East--or the "Orient"--he deconstructs it. The idea that it exists deconstructs it by nature; before reading this book you will swear that most of what we know of the Arabian East is the absolute truth, without even being aware that it's been either romanticized into impotence or isn't much of anything complimentary, let alone influential.
I rate ORIENTALISM, for its effect on our psyche as Americans alone (regardless of race or assumed political leanings), as one of the most important books written in the last decades of the 20th century. The world looks the way it does not because of natural law, like the reasons why the Sahara has become a desert--or at least not by the natural laws we have imagined. Edward Said, regardless of the possibility of biases coming through his scholarship, regardless of the political realities he left out of his thesis, shows this in remarkable fashion to people--like myself--who never considered this fact's existence (let alone its influence on my perceptions of the Middle East in all their forms).
Be mature enough to accept that it is not the only educated opinion or set of facts about our complex world, and this book will be a great read and teach a great deal. I would suggest triangulating ORIENTALISM with Karen Armstrong's HOLY WAR and Moseddeq Ahmed's WAR ON FREEDOM, for a truly eye-opening experience of the Western psyche regarding the East.

Said's book starts with the indisputable premise that the West's view of "the Orient" was distorted due to the West's own preconceptions and needs. This is one of the basic hazards of perception. But rather than a dispassionate analysis of this phenomenon, Said's book alternates between indignant screed and irrelevant windiness. The analysis is really poor - shockingly poor - and I don't think I got anything out of the book once I was past its main idea. Looking at the other reviewers, I'm not sure they did either. There is not one impressive insight about any of the texts Said analyzes - from Balfour to Flaubert to Kipling to Dante, they all become cookie-cutter "Orientalists." Even Homer and George Eliot get tarred with the same brush as Burton and T.E. Lawrence. I think I learned about neither Europe nor the Orient. I'd suggest looking at a page or two before purchasing. I doubt you'll be impressed. In certain ways, this is probably why the book is famous: Said created a field but left it to others to actually explore its riches.

For all of Said's erudition and intelligence, Orientalism -- fraught as it is with redundancies and obscure writing -- is a maddening read. Said has been taken to task by specialist reviewers (historians in particular) for playing fast and loose with the sources he employs. Orientalism is a very angry text. As a humanist, a human being, and a student of history, I can only concede the legitimacy of Said's anger and sympathize with the man. Sympathies aside, however, as a critical reader I am dismayed by the lack of rigor in Orientalism, the absolutism of its major thesis (that all 'western' students of the Middle/Near East are imperialists or abettors of imperialism...), and the failure of its author to recognize the ways in which his own deep biases guide his analysis. In writing these remarks, I should note that upon finishing Orientalism I read several excellent critical reviews. A few of these reviews were accompanied by responses from Said; these were typically short on substance, long on ad hominem, giving credence to my impression that Orientalism is, above all, a political and ideological screed. Though Orientalism must be credited with opening an important dialogue, in the academy and beyond, and for fostering a certain kind of consciousness raising, it must be faulted for its faults as well. It is a shoddy piece of scholarship.

...Edward Said writes an important piece, revealing several important aspects of western thought. He proves that, even today, racism plays a dominant role in Westerner's perceptions and treatment of others. Said utilizes numerous literary, scholarly, and policy works to deconstruct Orientalism. These pieces aid comprehension and help to illustrate his complex issues. In addition, he exposes a logical and thought provoking argument that appeals to students and scholars in modern Middle Eastern Studies and a variety of other disciplines.

Whenever I listen to the 'mental slavery' line in Bob Marley's Redemption song, the cultural aspect of imperialism as exposed in 'Orientalism' is what first comes to mind.

Fanon's 'Wretched of the Earth' was the ultimate testament of Third World armed liberation, but 'Orientalism' was Palestinian American Prof., Edward Said's first of many testaments of intellectual decolonization.

Said, gives an insight of imperialism as portrayed in 18th and 19th century literature from England, France, and other European powers that had started to expand their domains through countries in the Islamic world, such as Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, which signaled the start of a period where the studies about the Orient gained center stage in literary and history realms. This expansion compelled a plethora of self-declared cultural experts, or 'orientalists,' to study the exotic lands that their empires were conquering. The orientalists, Said argues, would deliberately or unintentionally rationalize these conquests of foreign lands through their literary work by perpetuating the myth that the natives needed to be liberated and civilized by the well-intentioned European, who in times were portrayed as making this benevolent sacrifice for the good of the natives, even if it was by force.

One thing is certain of any empire or great power in history: their massacres, genocides, ethnic cleansings, resource exploitation and war of conquests have all been done under a banner of benevolence, if not in the name of God. This is the conclusion Said arrives at attempts in his 400-page masterpiece, in which he goes into lenght to explain the cultural fraud that was, and still is, often cited by World powers to justify their most loathed policies in Third World countries.

The late Edward Said's "Orientalism" influenced an entire generation of Arab and Muslim scholars, not to mention Middle Eastern Studies departments in universities throughout the West, to believe that the Islamic world was from the start a passive victim of the West. Whenever you hear or read about Western abuses to the "Other" or justifications of violence directed at Westerners, Said's text is often the reason why.

For that reason, "Orientalism" is a work whose influence cannot be overstated.

That being said, the historical errors in the text are legion, and apparent to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of history.

According to Said:

-the eastern Mediterranean was controlled, not by the Ottomans, but by England and France in the 1600s
-Egypt was annexed by England
-the first Muslims conquered Turkey before taking North Africa, when it was the Seljuk Turks in the 11th century who took Anatolia
-Pakistan was a British colony separate from India, and not created upon the British withdrawal from India
-Portugal dominated the Far East until the 19th century, when Portuguese power diminished there in the 17th century

Among others.

And so I give it 3 stars. For all it's errors it should merit just 1 star, but to this day it remains a highly influential text. So like that old forgery the "Donation of Constantine," its importance comes not from actual fact, but from its wide acceptance.

Edward Said, the celebrated scholar and stone thrower,(1) treats us to a generous helping of deconstructionism, nominalism and solipsism in his review of roughly 250 years of Western systematic misunderstanding of the East. Along the way he provides a fresh perspective to the prejudices and premises by Western scholars, an invaluable service. Having said that, however, his analysis is too contradictory.

Said's essential argument is as follows: humans categorize things into "binaries": us-them, west-east, familiar-unfamiliar. This ultimately causes a distortion of reality. Then through the written mode of communication, they distort reality further. According to Said, this creates, in the Occidental-Oriental context, an analytical mode that both causes and reinforces Western underlying desires for feelings of power and sense of superiority over peoples of the East.

Much of what Said has to say is very interesting and thought-provoking. It is worth the time to read and ponder, and has applications far beyond area studies. There is also much in the book that is accurate, at least as far as it describes psychological and philological phenomena. However, the book suffers from at least three serious structural and intellectual defects, described below.

FIRST, Said's analytical approach contradicts itself. One of his principal arguments is that when a person writes her or his experiences, opinions or conclusions, the act of writing, then reading by another, causes an uncorrectable distortion of reality (pp 21, 92-93). But if that's true, then the same can be said of Said's book itself: just in being written, and read by us, it causes an irreparable distortion of reality. Therefore, the book is, by its own terms, untrustworthy in whatever information it attempts to convey. Said inadvertently creates a version of the Epimenides Paradox.

Related to this point is the problem of the book's self-defeating solipsistic subtext. As Major Stephen C. Coughlin points out: "if Said's line of reasoning [were] extended along general lines, two points would emerge: first, that no culture could ever explain another; and, second, if Said held true to his own syllogism -- that members of one culture cannot explain another's -- there would be no basis for his writing Orientalism for the purpose of explaining to the West its own `intellectual genealogy ... in a way that has not been done'" (p 24).

SECOND, Said concentrates on West-East relationship when in fact he admits he is describing a universal phenomenon. He argues that humans by their nature classify people into binaries and prefer their culture to others' (p 54). It's obvious that sound self-preservation reasons exists for these universal human characteristics, which, although somewhat intellectually imperfect and logically flawed, allow for rapid decision-making in periods of extreme stress. In other words, the West's view of the East, in its anthropological underpinnings, is no different than the East's view of the West, or the South's view of the North, etc. Since that's the case, how does Said arrive at the conclusion that the West is somehow morally culpable for having "created" Orientalism?

THIRD, Said presents no alternative analytical mode to the one he criticizes, although he does briefly discuss the usefulness of non-area studies disciplines vis à vis the East in the final pages of the book (pp 326-328). By inference, Said seems to endorse a requirement of total, uncritical cultural submersion for every area studies student. If that's the case, then frankly such an approach is impractical for all but the narrowest of area studies, and such a mode of learning (i) would be available only to people with a considerable amount of wealth and leisure time, which is a class of people whose general background would itself distort their understanding of another culture and (ii) suffers from the "Observer Effect" problem of an outsider's mere presence changing the behavior of the subject studied.

The book also contains the usual left-wing politics, hasty generalizations, word-twisting and distortions that one has come to expect of these types of books. Here are a few of many.

* ANTI-AMERICANISM. "[T]he American Oriental position since World War II has fit...in the places excavated by the two earlier European powers" (p 17). Oh please. The Suez Crisis? The U.S. intervened *against* the British and French in *favor* of Egypt? How about Kosovo? Since WW II the U.S. has been the world's leading anti-imperialist and has freed hundreds of millions of people from imperial rule, from Eastern Europe to the former Soviet Republics to Grenada to the Philippines.

* TOO NARROW A FOCUS for the purported subject matter. Said mainly limits his study to Arab-influenced nations and Islam (pp 16-17; last thirty or forty pages). That's just a fraction of the population and geography of the geopolitical concept known as the Orient. Wouldn't it have made more sense to call the book "Arabicism" or "Islamicism" instead of Orientalism?

* CLICHÉS SUBSTITUTING FOR APHORISMS SUBSTITUTING OR FACTS, e.g., "The Orientalist can imitate the Orient without the opposite being true" (p 160), "Western confidence that descriptions of general, collective phenomena were possible..." (p 176). This is particularly annoying because Said throughout his book correctly takes dozens of scholars to task for employing clichés in the place of analysis.

* VICTIMOLOGY. At times Said's book descends to pure liberationist ideology and whining: "The web of racism, cultural stereotypes, political imperialism, dehumanizing ideology holding in the Arab or the Muslim" (p 27). This from a scholar? Said admits his emotional connection to the subject matter (p 27), but is not enough of a scholar to purge his emotions from the text. He even claims that what he writes is not "political" (p 8) and that current scholarship is "pure" (p 13). I guess the question would be: Pure what?

* IGNORING INCONVENIENT FACTS. Said consistently criticizes Western scholars and politicians for their belief that the Arab East is anti-scientific and illiberal. He doesn't bother to deal with the obvious, which is that historically at least, that's the truth. When the sacred texts of the region's principal religion discourage or outright forbid scientific inquiry(2) and the principal religion teaches that everything necessary for the human condition was revealed as of 632 C.E., that would seem to put a damper on scientific inquiry, I think you'd agree. As for illiberality, when the West starts executing people for being homosexual (Sûrah 7:80-81), crucifying and lopping off criminals' hands and feet (Sûrah 5:33), killing or subjugating anyone who doesn't convert to the principal religion (Sûrah 9:29) and mandating the beating of intractable wives (Sûrah 4:34), well then maybe some sort of rough cultural moral equivalency between the two regions can be reached. Until then...

* * *

(1) Aaron Matz, "Stone Thrower and Scholar: Edward Said's Ferocious Unity," The New York Observer, September 10, 2000.

(2) Al-Misri, "Sacred Knowledge," a7.0: "Subjects that are not Sacred Knowledge," at a7.2: Unlawful knowledge includes: (2) philosophy;...(5) the sciences of the materialists."

In this post 9.11 world where ever-increasing importance

is being attached to keywords such as `Islamic

fundamentalism,' `Jihad,' and `Clash of civilizations,'

Edward Said's monumental publication serves as a reminder to

both agitated policymakers and the alarmed public that such

perceptions of the `Islam threat' are, in fact, nothing new.

Said's exposé persistently delineates how the West has created

an erroneous, heavily biased systematic knowledge of the Orient

for political, economical and social purposes. The Orient

- which, in the book, is mainly represented through the Arab

world - has been defined as the antithesis of everything

European (or Western). Thus, the Orient loses its intrinsic,

self-determined value and becomes a counterfeit identity that

only accentuates the genuineness of the Occidental.

Overly exaggerated and false perceptions of the Orient are

promulgated, to be embedded in the works of philologists,

poets, government officials, anthropologists, and so on,

all who compose - be it voluntarily or involuntarily,

consciously or subconsciously, intentionally or

unintentionally - the vast body of `Orientalists'.

Although Said may not have expected the controversy bred and

spread through his book to have such far-reaching implications

as they have now, his claims are pertinent to why and how

current international, US-led foreign policy objectives have

become centered on the two-fold strategy of a) countering

terrorism (i.e. countering the `Islam threat') and

b) proliferating Western ideals of freedom and democracy.

The striking similarities between European point of view

toward the Orient during 17c-early 20c and American attitudes

in the post Cold War world validate the subsisting tradition

of Orientalism.

While the author has devoted much time and attention to

deconstruct the Western creation of the Orient, not much

work has been done on the contrary - the author himself

acknowledges this in the latter parts of the text.

Yet after patiently going through the details, the reader

may ask, and justifiably so, "What, then, is the correct or

recommendable approach to understanding the Orient?"

In other words, after deconstructing the `false' Orient,

how are we to reconstruct the `true' Orient? Should such

reconstruction be the responsibility of penitent Western

scholars, or self-determined Oriental scholars?

This also leads to other important questions that have been

neglected in Said's work (perhaps because it was not within

the mandate of this particular volume), which is - what are

Oriental perceptions of the Occidental, and Oriental

perceptions of the Oriental? If, as the author claims,

perceptions on different cultural realms are defined through

a relationship of power, domination and hegemony, does the

Orientals' conception of the West conform to such an assertion?

How do Orientals define themselves, and how do other

cultures `less powerful' than the Oriental perceive the Orient?

Are all such perceptions necessarily under the dominating

influence of "Orientalism"? To ask and answer such questions

would be the critical next step to enhancing the persuasive

power of Said's argument.

Theory is usually incredibly dense and boring, but Said present his complex arguments in an interesting and relatively easy to understand format. I've checked this book out from the library so many times for so many papers I can't believe I just got around to buying my own copy. Honestly, I could not have gotten through graduate school without this book. Thank you Edward Said!

This book is verbose and repetitive.The only idea, endlessly repeated, is that "Orientalists" have taken their fantasm about Middle East people and cultures for realities. All unnumerable people who have travelled, made business or have had love affairs in these countries, have studied their literature or have tried to administer them, have been totally wrong. Saïd repeats again and again that they have stuck to a false vision of "Orient", coined once for all by writers as Chateaubriand, Renan or Flaubert. In this vision, Orient is characterized by despotism,fatalism and sensuality. Of course, Saïd never says that Oriental countries are profoundly democratic, that their people are enthusiastic innovators and that young men feel a total indifference about sex. But the naïve reader may jump to such conclusions.
Against those who deplore the present state of Middle East economies and of the oriental intellectual life, Saïd opposes the so frequent reference to such up-to-date personalities as Avicenna, Averroès and Haroun-al-Rachid.

Edward Said here unjustly attacks all scholars who criticize the Moslem and Arab worlds, taking special pain to berate historian Bernard Lewis, as he did in the October, 1976 New York Times Book Review piece that became this book. (Lewis does deserve criticism, but not for the absurd reasons Said gives: If anything, Lewis goes far too easy on the long historical records of both jihad and Islamic Antisemitism.)

Said argues --- incorrectly, and without academic credentials in Middle Eastern studies --- that Western Middle Eastern scholars represent "an unbroken tradition in European thought of profound hostility, even hatred, toward Islam." But according to Daniel Pipes, Said's term stuck. "Neo-orientalist" is now the worst possible insult one can hurl at any Middle Eastern scholar.

As Martin Kramer and Jacob Lassner show in The Jewish Discovery of Islam, however, it was a German-Jewish school that raised the study of Islam to an art and introduced it to the West. Far from promoting enmity for Islam, Western scholars --- including Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81), Ignaz Goldziher (1850-1921), and Muhammad Asad, né Leopold Weiss of Lvov and Vienna (1900-92) --- created considerable tolerance for it. Hate? Asad even converted, advised the Saudi king, served as Pakistan's United Nations ambassador and translated the Qur'an into English.

The German-Jewish school's empathy for Islam prevails even today. But Said writes only of what Pipes calls the defunct "Christian" approach, which saw in Islam a rival and inferior --- and which scholars long ago repudiated.

Worse, Said fails to criticize historical or current Arab or Muslim tyranny that wiped out entire cultures, languages and faiths within the Christian nations of North Africa, from Syria to Egypt, all but eliminated Turkish Armenians in 1917, and even now plagues Egypt's Coptic Christians, Algeria and Morocco's Berbers, Lebanese Christians and Iraqi Kurds, women and Hindus in Taliban Afghanistan, Christians in Indonesia--much less Southern Sudan's Black Christians, the ongoing targets of an Arab government program of enslavement and genocide. Said decries the "evil" West, while remaining strangely silent about Arab and Muslim atrocities. These intentional omissions --- and Said's complete dishonesty regarding the numerous other gifts the West gave the world --- are covered in detail in Ibn Warraq's recent Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism. Proof abounds that Said knowingly distorted the truth.

This book constitutes the ultimate in intellectual dishonesty.

---Alyssa A. Lappen

Like most anthropologists educated after the 1990's, I came up with the non-anthropological works of folks like Said, Foucault,Gramsci,etc... I have no problem with the holistic use of blending of the sciences and the humanities, but it was the uncritical incorporation of works like Orientalism that almost destroyed my discipline, and still threaten it today. Works like that also help to introduce a double-speak kind of language that adds unnecessary words to obscure meaning, rather than clarify. Like a cold-reading psychic, it just throws out words that are so generalist that they could apply to anything and anyone, and say very little concrete. I see the phenomenon of not questioning a thesis, because it tells us what we want to hear, and therefore not looking into the sources that it is built upon. For example, from the book:

"Thus out of the Napoleonic expedition there issued a whole series of textual children, from Chateaubriand's Itinéraire to Lamartine's Voyage en Orient to Flaubert's Salammbô, and in the same tradition, Lane's Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians and Richard Burton's Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to al-Madinah
and Meccah. What binds them together is not only their common background in Oriental legend and experience but also their learned reliance on the Orient as a kind of womb out of which they were brought forth. If paradoxically these creations turned out to be highly stylized simulacra, elaborately wrought imitations
of what a live Orient might be thought to look like, that by no means detracts from the strength of their imaginative conception or from the strength of European mastery of the Orient, whose prototypes respectively were Cagliostro, the great European impersonator of the Orient, and Napoleon, its first modern conqueror."

Ibn Warraq deconstructs this:

"What does Said mean by "out of the Napoleonic expedition there issued a whole series of textual children" except that these five very varied works were written after 1798? The pretentious language of textual children
issuing from the Napeolonic expedition covers up this crushingly obvious fact. Perhaps there is a profound thesis hidden in the jargon, that these works were somehow influenced by the Napoleonic expedition, inspired by it, and could not have been written without it. But no such thesis is offered. This arbitrary group consists of three Frenchmen, two Englishmen, one work of romantic historical fiction, three travel books, one detailed study of modern Egyptians. What on earth do they have in common? Said tells us that what binds them together
is "their common background in Oriental legend and experience but also their learned reliance on the Orient as a kind of womb out of which they were brought forth ". What is the background of Oriental legend that inspired
Burton or Lane? Was Flaubert's vivid imagination stimulated by "Oriental legend", and was this the same legendary material that inspired Burton, Lane and Lamartine?"

Now, I'm no fan of Ibn Warraq's equally troubling selective use of facts to make the "West" into a hero, just as Said attempts to make it into a destroyer. However, his facts are correct here.

I used to be a huge fan of Said, until I did just that. I wasn't until I actually started to do real-world field work that I found a disconnect between the simplistic and convenient paradigms of academia and day-to-day social phenomena. I gave the book 3 stars, because it gives a good explanation of Foucault's gaze, and Gramasci's hegemony thesis, but it then goes on to cherry pick historical people and facts, ignores others, and takes most of them out of context in order to present an argument that makes the same mistakes Said argues against. Rather than to fight against phenomena like Orientalism, he simply attempts to reverse it to produce an Occidentalism that seeks a new boogieman. On an academic level, the book doesn't pass scrutiny if you actually look into the facts, and on a political level it only seeks to produce a victim mentality which diminishes the agency of a huge socio-cultural group to refashion them into pawns, rather than active agents of history. If you've read or are reading this book, then you're probably at a University or have been to one. My advice is to visit their modern Oriental department, the Middle Eastern Studies department, and ask someone there about the book. They will be happy to point out all the historical fallacies in it. You'll find that there are more fallacies than facts. [...]

I could not stop reading this book. It is difficult at times given that it's serious criticism and I thought I had given up criticism when I left academia behind, but for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of why the US is in Iraq, why there are so many autocratic regimes in the Middle East, why the West cannot find real solutions for the plague that is terrorism, and why there is terrorism in the first place...this books is a good place to start. Said lays the ground work of colonialism and its repercussions.

Orientalism is the classic work of one of the greatest minds of our times. I am, however, disappointed that the store posted Al Kruse's "review" in which he claims to have met Said and that Said confessed to Kruse that he was a total fraud. How convenient since Mr. Said recently died that these wild claims cannot be substantiated or refuted. I too met Mr. Said and I have the photos to prove it. In my conversation with him Said spoke passionately and intelligently about western perceptions of the Arab world. I suggest readers delve into Said's older works and move up to his more recent writings including his autobiography, Out of Place, so that they can experience the works of one of the most remarkable people of our times.

It certainly is a worthwhile read and will help many delve into concepts they may not have previously considered. That being said, the lens through which the West view(s)(ed) the Orient is quite similar to how those of the Orient (who are predominantly Muslim) with their concept of Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb view the world. To state that it is primarily the West that suffers from this form of myopia is weak.

Edwards Said's book, Orientalism, is both a study on the origins, repercussions, and general history of the concept of "Orientalism" as well as an example of cultural history in action, and in many ways it is also evidence of how cultural history can go drastically wrong. The text itself investigates how Orientalism, or what Said also describes as "the distinction between Western superiority and Oriental inferiority," (42) expanded and proliferated in the years of Western expansion; namely, the 19th Century. Although it had existed before, Said argues that "Orientalism" was made concrete by scientists, explorers, and scholars and is mostly the result of these people quantifying and qualifying and making "rational" a concept they could not understand. Edward Said says that the original notion of the dividing line between East and West "is more than anything else imaginative." (55) Once Orientalism was conceptualized from this imagined line, Said argues, it offered a set of rules, descriptions and modes of behavior that generalized a wildly diverse population and made it easily attainable and exploitable by the West. Orientalism was also invented as a way for Europeans to reconcile their fear of the Near East and Islam, which is the topic most covered by Said and was a great influence on Orientalism because of its sheer magnitude and power. While Orientalism was originally conceived out of imagined misconceptions and a largely created body of evidence as realized in Barthelemy d'Herbelot's Bibliotheque Orientale (originally published in 1697), it was perpetuated in later "projects" best exemplified in Napoleon's accounts of travel through Egypt in Description de l'Egypte. From this point on, Orientalism had a "scope" and was available for future Orientalists to further generalize the Orient for scientific, literary, and imperialist purposes. Edward Said also argues that Orientalism benefited "professional scholars" and academic institutions because now an entire business based on the idea of Western superiority was created to help serve the above-mentioned scientists, anthropologists, and political thinkers. The modern Orientalist, Said argues, was "in his view, a hero rescuing the Orient from the obscurity, alienation, and strangeness which he himself had properly distinguished." (121) Orientalism not only flourished, but new assumptions made on the old ones only served to perpetuate further the untrue notions on which Orientalism was founded. After Said describes the endeavors of various Orientalists including Chateaubriand, Larmartine, and finally, Richard Burton, the reader is given exhaustive evidence of how Orientalism grew into what it is today; more Orientalism. Orientalism now, Said says, is only the same idea of generalizing and, in a sense, primitivizing the "other" through modern-day "area-studies." Because these area studies are from a long and established tradition of Orientalism, they are only an extension of, not reaction to, all the misconceptions encapsulated in Orientalism. Although Edward Said's Orientalism is an illuminating history of an idea (Orientalism) and how it was created, propagated, and continues to exist, his volume is nonetheless redundant and hostile in tone that made me immediately dislike it and put me on the defensive. In no instance did I find Said to be self--critical; his arguments were set forth like dogma. His extensive endeavors to list the faults generated by "Orientalism" are in some cases based on false assumptions. That is, there have been nations of Islamic people (i.e., the Ottoman Empire) who for over 500 years systematically enslaved and ruled over parts of Eastern Europe. These kinds of reverse atrocities are virtually ignored, probably because Said is only really documenting the past two centuries. In addition, I found very little in the area of proposals or alternatives to the way of conceptualizing the "Orient" other than what Said criticizes in his 300-plus-page book. I understand that Said's mission was "to describe a particular system of ideas, not by any means to displace the system with a new one" (325) but in my opinion a history of a subject should allow the reader to conceive of and interpret ideas for a new system and because Said fervently rejected to do so, so did I. In my opinion, Orientalism is also an example of where cultural history can become so subjective that unless the reader accepts the book without question, it serves little purpose other than as an outlet for anger on the part of the author and as testament to how tenuous a historian's job is when he or she lets a particular view so obviously overpowering the content of the text.

Drawing upon the work of Michel Foucault, Edward Said claims that Western ideas of the `Orient' are not based upon objective facts but are created through academic and cultural `discourses' which serve to promote Western imperialism - often despite `liberal' intentions.

This mythical `East' is the antithesis of the West, a negative or inversion of the 'Occident' which is used to define *both* in binary opposition to each other, and to facilitate the political and domination of the East.

However in order to demonstrate the existence of this `Orientalism' Said falls back on an equally stereotypical and monolithic `West' which he constructs entirely from the carefully selected writings of a handful of 19th Century middle-class, white, male English and French authors.

This tactic not only ignores or misrepresents a large body of Western authors sympathetic to the East and sensitive to differences within it, but also glosses over Western heterogenities of class, race, sex, religion and generation in order to manufacture a homogenous `Occident' devoid of differences.

Said is as guilty of *Occidentalism* as those he criticises are of *Orientalism*.

Said fails to provide any evidence that the `West' defines itself in binary opposition to a mythical `East' that Western scholars have created for just this purpose; he simply *manufactures* the kind of `West' necessary to explain the myths about the `East' that he himself has constructed from a very limited number of Western sources.

He has created his own mythical `East' *and* `West' from a small number of literary texts which he then projects onto others and thinks he has *discovered* rather than *invented*.

The relationship between Middle East Arabs and Western Europeans during the last one-thousand years more or less recognized each other as existing on opposite ends of the Earth. Since the Crusades there had been little contact between Arabs and Europeans. Several factors have changed that relationship since the beginning of the 19th century. European colonialism, the West’s growing dependence on oil, the creation of the State of Israel and a lopsided technological advantage all contributed to an imbalance resulting in a superior West and an inferior Arab world. Because of these issues a friction has developed.

Edward Said, an Arab by birth, educated in the West realized this imbalance with the total defeat of Arab forces during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Subsequently, he began to think about his roots and the reasons why the West believes itself to be so superior to the Arab states in the Levant and North Africa. His seminal work concerning this issue, "Orientalism," outlined one of the major causes for this inequity, the acceptance in the West of a scholarly approach to certain Western academic criticisms of Arab culture and history which Said argues have contributed to the “intellectual authority” of the West over the East. .

Before getting into his arguments Said first defines for the reader what is “Orientalism.” This is rather curious as the intended audience is clearly meant for academia which is already familiar with the term. Perhaps his definition is there more for himself rather than the reader. Said has trouble relating the word "Orientalism" to his area of focus, namely the Arab Middle East since the term has for so long been more associated with the Eastern side of Asia and the Island of Japan in America and really representing little more than India for Europeans. But Said is determined to redefine the word to fit an all-encompassing Asiatic continent including the Middle East. He constantly stumbles over arguing this new definition.

<<<<<<<<<<In the Orient, from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean to Indochina and Malaya, their (England and France) colonial possessions lapped, often were fought over. But it was in the Near Orient, the lands of the Arab Near East, where Islam was supposed to define the cultural and racial characteristics… >>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Here Said struggles to redefine the word trying to match up the various names of the area where he focuses his arguments, “New Orient,“ “Arab Near East,” or Middle East, and in a wider dimension, the world of “Islam.” This confusing redefinition requires Said to spend a good deal of time in the beginning of the book convincing his audience that the term is valid.

To paraphrase briefly “…Orientalism (is) a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in European Western experience” (1). Three definitions of Orientalism coming from three different directions meeting in the same place, having to do with teaching, use in literature, and the collision of the academic with the imaginative combines to form a romantic vision of the Western Islamic world to European culture. This, Said finds abhorrent for it leads to unrealistic, stereotypical, and prejudicial judgments about the Arab world.

Said argues that the West’s view of the Middle East has taken some wrong forms, or wrong turns throughout history. Beginning sometime around the middle of the eighteenth century certain Western observations have not been fair in Said’s view. The legitimization of these forms led to Western belief that they were indeed superior to Arabs and Arab culture.

Said presents his case through the use of examples that included literary as well as historical scholars. Since his thesis involves the “deepest and most recurring images of the Other,” (1) literature beginning around 1800 is used as a proof along with standard historical works.

<<<<<<<<<<Thus a very large mass of writers, among whom are poets, novelists, philosophers, political theorists, economists, and imperial administrators, have accepted the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Orient, its people customs,” and destiny, and so on. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

This quote indicates two important aspects of this book. One, although Said’s work is intended for scholars, it is not a standard researched work. He uses examples from many literary forms and disciplines not usually associated in historical research to make his point. And, two, the book is hopelessly long winded. There are unfortunately many sections of this book like the one above, endlessly laboring to make a point. With this particular argumentative style Said runs the risk of losing support for even the most well founded evidence because readers are inundated in long, and sometimes boring drawn out examples.

However, Said makes no apologies for the methodological format he takes to argue his thesis. Dr. Said is very pleased with the results Orientalism’s influence has had in the field (350-351). For Orientalism made a huge impact in the study of history, so much so, it not only caused “Orientalist” historians to take pause of the discipline, but world historiography was affected as well. Among academics Orientalism is known as a landmark work. Since its first publication in 1978 historians now look differently at how they approach all forms of world history.

Although the Orientalist discipline is well instituted among scholars from every European country, including Russia, Said seems to take particular pleasure in singling out the British and their colonial interests in the Middle East. The French who were at least as complicit in the “ruthlessness” of colonialism seem to get a pass from Said. It is interesting to note that the French colonial involvements are not even mentioned in the book until page forty-one, after Said had spent the previous twenty or thirty pages condemning British policy during their tenure in the Middle East, especially Egypt.

Said’s focus on Britain is mainly on the writings and speeches of two men, Arthur James Balfour and Lord Evelyn Baring Cromer. It is from them that he begins to derive the idea that Western thinking is fixated on “Otherness” and consequently developed a superior outlook toward the people and culture of the Middle East.

<<<<<<<<<<<<That Balfour and Cromer, as we shall soon see, could strip humanity down to such ruthless cultural and a racial essence was not at all an indication of their particular viciousness. (p. 26).>>>>>>>>>>>>.

He cites several British observations at the turn of the twentieth century to substantiate this view.

<<<<<<<<<<<Balfour nowhere denies British superiority and Egyptian inferiority; he takes them for granted as he describes the consequences of such knowledge (p. 32).>>>>>>>>>>>>

And, Said finds Balfour’s Oriental philosophy reprehensively condescending and a bit dishonest.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<Balfour produces no evidence that Egyptians and ‘the races with whom we deal’ appreciate or even understand the good that is being done them by colonial occupation. It does not occur to Balfour, however, to let the Egyptian speak for himself, since presumably any Egyptian who would speak out is more likely to be ‘the agitator [who] wishes to raise difficulties than the good native who overlooks the difficulties of foreign domination (33).>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Said fails to prove his thesis because he leaves out several elements that need to be taken into consideration when making the kinds of accusative assessments he does in this book. For example, the Balfour quote on page 33 when Lord Balfour expresses dismay at the Egyptians who do not realize the good that can come out of British tutelage. Of course today we know that all colonial peoples did not want to be subjected to foreign rule. Colonialism has been a dismal failure because western thinking never took into account the beliefs or feelings of Said’s “Other.” But, Said fails to consider that 19th century Europe could not think any other way at that time. Colonialism’s principles, especially before World War I was guided on trade offs. The home country would extract valuable resources and the indigenous people would benefit from Western medicine, art, music, food, industry, and a host of other forms of technology and culture. The nineteenth century was replete with racial theories of trying to understand the different peoples of the world. When one looks at history it is impossible to imagine it happening any other way. Humanity had to start somewhere to get where we are today. Jared Diamond, William McNeill, Avraham Sela, and others have expressed these ideas most formidably in the last decade of the twentieth century. Even in his “Afterword,” published in 1994, Said refuses to acknowledge this natural sequence of events.

Early on Said spoke of an “unfairness” that needed to be addressed in the history of Orientalism. The “unfairness” is not British doctrine concerning the Middle East. The “unfairness” lies in Said’s refusal to accept history. He stubbornly used late twentieth century morality to judge essentially 19th century British policy. It does not serve his thesis well if he does not address the possibility that the British (or any other country’s) colonial actions until at least 1914 were believed to be part of a natural course of history, destined and justified by God in their deeds even if we now accept that they were not.

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Any book that raises as much controversy as this one does is worth reading on that account alone. Because of that and because the book requires some intelligence to understand, I rated it with 5 stars. It's simply good reading - excellent. The ideas, however, are simply untenable. As with so much that is modern or post-modern (or whatever), Dr. Said's theories simply fly in the face of the evidence. He is the true representative of Arabism in the modern world because it too simply refuses to face the facts.
1. The fact is, had it not been for western orientalist scholarship, Arabic literature would be nearly totally unknown, even to the Arabs themselves. All significant work done in this field has been done by westerners within the last 200 years.....all of it. The occassional brilliance of a Taha Hussein who dared to question, for example, the legitimacy of pre-Islamic poetry was savagely crushed....instantly... by his own people and caused major political and social upheavals in the Arab world. (Were a scholar in the west to question the legitimacy of Beowulf, he would cause gaffaws and then be ignored, period). It's as if all of English literature were completely unknown to residents of the British Isles and that all research on Milton, Shakespeare etc. had been carried out in Beirut or Cairo. That's what has been happening with Arabic literature. Books by controversial authors are routinely "barred" from public viewings such as at the annual NEW BOOKS EXHIBITION in Cairo. This happened again just a couple of months ago according to my sources in Cairo. Modern Arabic literature, like much of Arabic life, is characterized by almost a childlike, immature and superficial quality. It just cannot face reality.
2. It's as if the Arab people have been in a state of catatonia following the fall of Baghdad in the 13th century. For the last 700 years, they have just stood by like sheep contemplating I don't know what. It's almost embarassing to realize this. But this is what did happen. And it has been the "west" that has brought them out of their slumber.
3. The fact is, Arabism and Arab culture are dying institutions. In fact, they really has been dead for centuries. Most young people in the Arab world know this. They won't admit it to you, but they know it. That's why tens of millions of them try to emmigrate to the west.....anywhere, by any means. They realize that their civilization is no longer viable or relevant to the modern world. It simply doesn't work. The tragedy of the Middle East today is not the Palestine "question" which is really a side-show in the larger scheme of things. It's the utter and complete rejection by Arab youth of their traditions and heritage. It is the final blow. The mindlessness that characterizes so much of Arab life today, the rantings of their political leaders, the insipid mimicry of modern Arabic literature (which desperately tries to imitate the west), the hatred towards the west in general, the accusations and threats, are all the pathetic howls of rage, fear and disbelief of a drowning man. Dr. Said sums all this up most vividly in ORIENTALISM. Even he doesn't realize that that's what he's doing. But that *IS* what he's doing.
4. The Arab world and Arab civilization have made no contribution whatsoever to the betterment of the modern world in any sphere of life. This is a reality which it must face. If it doesn't, it will remain a curious, laughable and marginalized society not taken seriously by anyone. It has nearly reached the point of no return. Someone better do something fast.
5. Too bad I only have 1000 words to vent my spleen here. But so be it. Dr. Said remains one of my heroes for his watershed book ORIENTALISM, his superb command of the English language and his intellectualism. But I totally and utterly disagree with his findings and his characterization of the west.
Tom Pembroke
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I found the book to be intensely partisan. Subtle and not so subtle deprecations aimed at the West while the Islamic world gets a pass (in the few times something negative comes up). Mr. Saiid has an agenda, and I hate those kinds of books. I gave it 2 stars as opposed to 1 as it DOES provide an insight into the minds of Islamic apologists. Save your money and buy a book from Bernard Lewis' extensive body of work.

I read this book knowing very little about Orientalism as an academic field. I thought the book was very much needed to expose the views the West has held and does hold about the Middle East. I really recommend this book for people who like hot topics and controversy.

Orientalism is an easy to understand book by Edward Said, a must read for anyone interested in the current conflicts between East and West. How the creation of the "Orient" is a necessity to justify the West's aggression since the Middle Age's. His analysis is of the Near East, but is applicable to all non Western cultures.

 I will not waste time summarizing Edward Said's "Orientalism" here, since I am sure the reader can find this in other reviews at this site. Therefore, let us dive right in and consider the quality of the work.

Alas, anger seethes from every paragraph of this work. On the face of it, who can blame him, an expatriate Palestinian. However, his righteous anger very quickly becomes a liability instead of an asset as he sinks into ad hominem attacks on those with whom he disagrees, in particular the poor Bernard

Lewis. This unseemly and useless display is cloaked in a prodigious erudition.

However, after one wades through the erudition, one finds sophistry and McLuhanism. (Marshall McLuhan presented a novel, germane, and essentially true picture of television's real impact, but over-killed his thesis with a barrage of examples that went beyond convincing to the threshold of caricature.)

Said's anger is well and truly founded, but it becomes self-destructive in its absoluteness. In an ironic turn he becomes just another fundamentalist, this time in service of the truth. But his absolutist,fundamentalist views are inevitably and intrinsically flawed. Thus, like McLuhan, we get the message

while we reject the body of the communication.

Accordingly, after reading "Orientalism" one is left with a sense of disappointment; one wants to thank him for the alert, yet one also wishes he had focused more on the specific transgressions of the alleged Orientalists. One is happy to be reminded of the high dynamic spatial and temporal aspects of, dare I use the word, culture, but one shrinks at his unholy abhorrence of categories - like culture, and Islam, and the Orient. In my opinion, Said's "Orientalism" is a good and useful idea nearly destroyed by the author's anger and erudition.

Approach at your peril, but if the matter interests you, see his blissfully shorter, though equally flawed,"Clash of Ignorance" which appeared in "The Nation" in October, 2001.

I can see why people are buying this now, following Said's sad and premature death, but the extreme way in which he used to put things (I remember he almost converted an audience I was in to support Israel by the time he had finished) is sad proof that he did not do the Palestinian cause in which he believed any good. (And I speak as one with many Palestinian friends and who is very much in favour of the pro-peace Palestinian cause). Saying that Jane Austen in Mansfield Park is an orientalist is complete rubbish! So read this book, but do so with your mind open. Christopher Catherwood, author of CHRISTIANS, MUSLIMS AND ISLAMIC RAGE (Zondervan, 2003)

This work should be required reading for all university students,especially at the graduate level. Said has provided a comprehesive, factual, and thought-provoking work. He is missed in the scholarly arena, yet his works are immortal!

Orientalism has undoubtedly provided Middle Eastern Studies with a new paradigm-as Edward Said had intended. The book begins innocuously, giving little indication of the stridency and moralizing to come. Said proposed that Orientalism he was about to "sketch" was simply "a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistomilogical distinction between the Orient and the Occident" (p. 2). He then brought attention to his fears that "distortion and inaccuracy" might thwart his account but consoled himself by the thought of the additional volumes that might be written by "scholars and critics" (p.24). And indeed this book launched a study of Orientalism Said at first defined as "principal methodological devices for studying authority here are what can be called strategic location, which is a way of describing the author's text in relation 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... acquire mass, density, and referential power among themselves... I use the notion of strategy simply to identify the problem every writer on the Orient has faced ... Everyone who writes about the Orient must locate himself vis a vis the Orient." (p.20)
This then was "Orientalism" and it defines the limits of Middle Eastern studies to the present day. Yet it is more than a new method for addressing old problems. It created a whole new set of questions for Middle Eastern Studies and vigorously excluded others. By strategic formation, Said referred to a way of viewing any text, artifact, or allusion, or even imaginative allusion (see his discussion on Jane Austen for example) to the Orient. These were a priori objects contaminated by Orientalism. Said thus has no interest in "proving" Orientalism; he simply assumed it.
But again and again we get back to the question of what exactly is "Orientalism" for Said defined it in two mutually excluding ways. On the one hand, he describes the object of his inquiries as "an almost unconscious (and certainly untouchable) positivity", a kind of opaque object that gave his study focus. And for this reason, one couldn't simply reduce the subject to a "western imperialist plot... a structure of lies or of myths which were the truth be told, would simply blow away" (p. 6). And yet, on the other hand he trivializes the very claims he made by declaring that every European in saying anything about the Orient was "racist, an imperialist and almost totally ethnocentric" (p.204). This is then a kind of "Just Say `No' to Orientalism" message---and yet, if this is the case why not simply declare the whole field off limits? Why enunciate such a detailed paradigm for Middle Eastern studies?
What is "Orientalism"?
Said never provides us with an answer. Yet it is the new paradigm for Middle Eastern studies in our universities.

Dr. Said missed the track completely with this supposed historical analysis that is neither historical nor good analysis. While I won't write pages of critique, here are just a few examples of poor work to make points not supported by fact (nor faith).

1. The British and French controlled the eastern Mediterranean at the end of the 17th century. False - the Ottomans controlled that area; French and British merchants needed permission to trade. None of the lands of the Eastern Med. were ever colonies. At most they were protectorates in which the real rulers were the local people. (Even true up to the pre-WW II phase.) This is common history for anyone who tried to look at such.

2. Muslim armies conquered Turkey before over-running northern Africa. False - The Arab armies did not "take" Turkey; they went straight to North Africa. The so cited areas remained Christian (Eastern Orthodox) until overrun by the Seljuck Turks in the 11 th century. Same comment as last sentence in #1, above.

3. Westerners get our history wrong. Only we muslims can interpret our religion correctly (paraphrase). I'm sorry, but there is a long history of intellectuals of all religions studying each other. Just because many do not accept that the Koran is god-given (faith) as opposed to man written (fact) does not make non-moslems wrong (some muslims believe it is a man-written document).

What other religion on this earth makes such a claim of perfectness and superiority untouchable by anyone? Why, muslims themselves argue about what the Koran means (unless he is Wahabbi - then of course there is no argument). Fanaticism and fact twisting in the name of religion is a vice.....

Lets get the argument strait here: the Western scholars tried to understand Islam through tradition techniques like fact finding and cultural analysis and for Mr. Said this is not good enough and in fact racist. So basically this book claims that to understand and even critique is racist. The main theme is 'how dare the west critique'. Well isn't Mr. Said critiquing, maybe this book should realize its utter hypocrisy to say 'how dare you critique us' on the one hand while then critiquing the west on the other. according to this volume the great flaw in the west is that it dared to try to understand the east, well maybe it would be better if we just remained ignorant of it.

This book, like Culture and Imperialism, is essentially about Western prejudice against Islam. Said condemns intellectuals in the West who in his eyes are "agents of exploitation". Yet Said himself is an agent of racism: Arab Racism.

A Pan Arabist, he always supported Arab unity and "Islam" at the expense of non-Arab and non-Moslem peoples. Said directs and manipulates the Western taste for self criticim, and all that does is deflect the world's attention from Arab and Moslem attrocities committed against Christians, Kurds, Jews, Israelis, Coptic Christians, non-Arab Sudanese, etc.

Thus, reading Said, you would never realize that Sadam Hussein's poisoning of the Kurds has never been condemned by one Arab intellectual or leader. This is because a racist prevalent attitude in the Arab mind is that the entire Middle East should be Arab. This also explains the attitude towards Israel, a country that is predominantly non-Moslem and speaks a Middle Eastern language other than Arabic.

The pity is that Said himself is a Christian, yet he never spoke on behalf of Coptic Christians in Egypt, or the right of Christians to practice their faith in Saudi Arabia and probably other places in the Arab World. He is facilitating the overall aim of PanArab Nationalists by distracting the West from what is happening in the Arab world.

For a better understanding of relations between the West and Islam, I recommend books by Bernard Lewis, such as "The Moslem Discovery of Europe" and the "Jews of Islam". I also recommend books by the Egyptian scholar and Jewish refugee Yael Bat Yeor, such as "The Dhimmi".

The old stone thrower is at it again, expounding his one-sided, biased view of history. Said made a career of being a highly-visible defender of the Palestinians; was even a member of the PLO executive council. Too bad he was silent about Yasir Arafat's theft of hundreds of millions of dollars earmarked for the Palestinians. He would rather blame the Jews for the Palestinians misfortunes, which they were the SOLE author of. What hypocrisy!

It is interesting, as a brazilian, to realize Said's resentment resembles one of a similar kind which portraits Latin America as the victim of American Imperialism. Latin american intellectuals share the same hate, anger and paranoia towards US.
This may be why to this day brazilian academics force this appaling book down their students throats.
You dont need to be a clinical psychologist to figure this one out: a scape goat is a helpful tool to cope with one's own stupid decisions in life.

Edward Said, created a proble and made a career of the Israel Palestine Conflict, and conviently died before he could also resolve the death and destruction he brought to the Arab Palestinians. He was a one man destruction derby under the guise of poetry, linguistics and hate and he helped stir up anti Israel and anti Jewish hatred on every University he spoke at. Hopefully, this "vintage" book will become no longer relevant, ans disappear.