Transcript ORIENTALISM, OCCIDENTALISM AND AREA STUDIES

Yong Haeju #I 29012
Lee Jinse #I 33010
Lee Hoggie #I 34009

About Edward Said /“ORIENTALISM” 1978 / From Orientalism to
Area studies

Orientalist Past and the Future of Middle East Studies / The West and
the Rest: Discourse and Power

Occidentalism / Beyond Occidentalism

1935~2003. 9. 24

Studied in Victoria University,
Cairo, Egypt

In 1950, Ph.D.
in Harvard University.
 The
distinction between pure and political
knowledge
 The
methodological question
 The
personal dimension

Area studies need to be understood in its relation to Orientalism
in terms of its being the heir to this academic discipline.
-
Sociology
Economics
Political science
Idiographic history
Anthropology
Orientalism
-

Orientalism and Area studies must be taken into consideration is
the novel forms that this heritage takes under the geopolitics of
the post-World War II era.

Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and
having authority over the Orient.

Orientalism is one of the haapiest and most durable marriages of
power and knowledge housed under the unequal relationship
between the West and the East, one stemming from the structure
of the capitalist World-system.

Area studies and Orientalism will be the distinctive and
disruptive places that these two disciplines hold within the
organization of the social sciences.

Oriental societies do not exist anymore, and no more Oriental
congresses convene.

What was the result of all these efforts: surveys, policy
recommendations, governmental decisions, foundation
support?

Does Orientalism still correctly define the society of
Asia?

How should we develop or use “Area studies”
properly?

Martin Kramer presents a critique of Middle Eastern Studies.
Time for Middle East specialists to put their house in order and
drop fashionable theories - a legacy of Edward Said’s Orientalism.

Kramer thinks in favor of straightforward policy-relevant work by
adopting approaches that would explain and predict changes in the
Middle East.

He said this could be remedied by going back to their roots in Oriental
Studies to restore some continuity with great tradition.

He also maintains that the last thing Middle Eastern studies have
sought to do has been to serve American foreign policy or private
initiative.

Orientalism is a great tradition which was discredited by Said writings
in 1978. Said is critical of the Orientalist tradition because he
considers it a ‘supremacist ideology of difference, articulated in the
West to justify its dominion over East’.

Said understands Orientalism as a style of thought based upon an
ontological and epistemological distinction made between the Orient
and the Occident.

In Kramer’s view, it was during this period that Middle East studies
ceased to be relevant to U.S. interests. This was mainly because they
alienated policy makers by producing work critical of U.S. policies.

American Orientalism is defined as a tendency to underestimate the
peoples of the region and to overestimate America’s ability to make a
bad situation better.

U.S. governments were victims of the Orientalist outlook that not
only limited how they were able to think about the Middle East but
also established a hierarchical distinction between the Middle East and
the West, thereby resulting in an underestimation of Middle Eastern
actors and overestimation of what the U.S. was capable of.
Martin Kramer
Edward Said




Kramer argues that Middle East studies have failed its major funder,
U.S. government and that the remedy would be found by going back to
its roots in Oriental studies to re-establish links between Middle East
scholarship and policy making.
Thanks to the Middle East centers based in U.S. universities, an
American prevalence exists in Middle East studies.
This phenomenon of the indigenization of Middle East studies in the
USA could be viewed as a sign of success for Middle East studies.
Area studies centers have been highly influential.
Such a development would have been unfathomable within the limits
imposed by the Oriental studies tradition that rested on the
Orient/Occident divide and did not allow the Middle East to represent
itself.

“The West" is no longer only in Europe, and not all of Europe is in
"the West."

The Eastern Europe doesn't belong properly to "the West"; whereas the
United States, which is not geographically in Europe, definitely does.

These days, technologically speaking, Japan is "western," though on
our mental map it is about as far "East" as you can get.

By "western" we mean the type of society : a society that is developed,
industrialized, urbanized, capitalist, secular, and modern.

The meaning of this term is therefore virtually identical to that of the
word "modern."

The concept or idea of "the West" can be seen to function in the
following ways:
1.
It allows us to characterize and classify societies into different
categories – e.g. "western," "non-western."
It is an image, or set of images. It condenses a number of different
characteristics into one picture. It functions as part of a language, a
"system of representation.” e.g.) "western" = urban = developed; or
"non-western" = non-industrial = rural = agricultural = underdeveloped.
It provides criteria of evaluation against which other societies are
ranked and around which powerful positive and negative feelings
cluster. e.g.) "the West" = developed = good = desirable; or the "nonWest" = under-developed = bad = undesirable. In short, it functions as
an ideology.
2.
3.

The very term "the West," makes the West appear unified and
homogeneous. But the West has always contained many internal
differences.

The same necessary simplification is true to "the Rest." This term also
covers enormous historical, cultural, and economic distinctions - for
example, between the Middle East, the Far East, Africa, Latin America,
indigenous North America, and Australasia.

It can equally encompass the simple societies of some North American
Indians and the developed civilizations of China, Egypt, or Islam.

In short, the discourse, as a "system of representation," represents the
world as divided according to a simple dichotomy - the West/the Rest.

Gradually, despite their many internal differences, the countries of
Western Europe began to conceive of themselves as part of a single
family or civilization - "the West.“

But in the Age of Exploration and Conquest, Europe began to define
itself in relation to a new idea - the existence of many new "worlds,"
profoundly different from itself.

The two processes - growing internal cohesion and the conflicts and
contrasts with external worlds - reinforced each other, helping to forge
that new sense of identity that we call "the West.“

Discourses are ways of talking, thinking, or representing a particular subject
or topic. They produce meaningful knowledge about that subject. This
knowledge influences social practices, and so has real consequences and
effects. Discourses always operate in relation to power.

Europe brought its own cultural categories, languages, images, and
ideas to the New World in order to describe and represent it. It tried to
fit the New World into existing conceptual frameworks, classifying it
according to its own norms, and absorbing it into western traditions of
representation

The discourse of "the West and the Rest" could not be innocent
because it did not represent an encounter between equals.






A major object of the process of idealization was Nature itself.
Sexuality was a powerful element in the fantasy which the West
constructed.
Said says that "the essence of Orientalism is the ineradicable
distinction between Western superiority and Oriental inferiority.
“Europeans were immediately struck by what they interpreted as the
absence of government and civil society - the basis of all "civilization"
- among peoples of the New World.
Living close to Nature meant that they were “uncivilized”.
The extent of any cannibalism was considerably exaggerated.

1) idealization; 2) the projection of fantasies of desire and degradation;
3) the failure to recognize and respect difference; 4) the tendency to
impose European categories and norms, to see difference through the
modes of perception and representation of the West.

These strategies were all underpinned by the process known as
stereotyping.

The stereotype is split into two halves - its "good" and "bad" sides; this
is "splitting" or dualism.

The world is first divided, symbolically, into good-bad, us-them,
attractive-disgusting, civilized-uncivilized, the West-the Rest. All the
other, many differences between and within these two halves are
collapsed, simplified.


The philosopher John Locke claimed that the New World provided a
prism through which one could see "a pattern of the first ages in Asia
and Europe" - the origins from which Europe had developed.
"In the beginning," Locke said, "all the World was America". He
meant by this that the world (i.e. the West) had evolved from a stage
very much like that discovered in America - undeveloped, and
uncivilized.

It produced the idea that the history of "mankind" occurred along a
single continuum, divided into a series of stages. A different mode of
subsistence, these stages being defined as hunting, pasturage,
agriculture and commerce.

Without ‘the Rest’, ‘the West’ would not have been able to recognize
and represent itself as the summit of human history.
Karl Heinrich Marx
Max Weber

It is unfair to characterize both the West and the Rest in a simple dichotomy
because of internal differences within.
 I concur with Edward Said’s view that Orientalism is the distinction based on
Western superiority and Oriental inferiority.
 Going back to Orientalist roots and restoring the links between scholarship
and policy-relevant work is not the proper way in area studies.
 Study into a specific area should be based on the scientific approaches and
disciplinary-oriented ways in conjunction with particular studies into the
country to expect and predict changes in the region more accurately.

Orientalist outlook not only limited how the U.S. was able to think of the Middle
East but also established a hierarchical distinction between the Middle East and the
West, thereby resulting in an underestimation of Middle Eastern actors and
overestimation of what the U.S. was capable of.

Scholars should go beyond the distinction between Orient and Occident and reflect
the Middle Eastern perspectives to produce more accurate and relevant knowledge
that would enable specialists to predict the changes in the region.
“OCCIDENTALISM: THE WORLD
TURNED UPSIDE DOWN”

Orientalism
 Attracts the most attention

Ethno-orientalism
 Essentialist renderings of an alien societies by the member s of
those societies themselves

Ethno-occidentalism
 Essentialist renderings of the West by members of alien societie

Occidentalism
 The essentialistic rendering of the West by Westerners.
Gifts
Commodities
Gift and commodity relations means that each is shaped by
the other
Occidentalism makes sense only when it is juxtaposed
with its matching Orientalism, the essentialized society of
the gift, the West is the society of the commodity – these
two essentializations defining and justifying each other
dialectically.

Essentialism is a view that, for any specific kind of entity,
there are a set of characteristics all of which any entity of
that kind must have.

Antiessentialism is Seeking to reduce or eliminate
Orientalist tendencies, the critics have urged
anthropologists to look at societies in less stereotyped
ways or to adopt new textual or representational devices
for portraying them
“BEYOND OCCIDENTALISM:
TOWARD NONIMPERIAL
GEOHISTORICAL CATEGORIES”

Maps
 A medium for representing the world as well as for
problematizing its representation.

The West and the East
The West: the occident, the center, the first world
: often identified with Europe, the States,
us, we, the modern Self
 The East: the orient, the periphery, the third world
: underdeveloped, the other


The Dissolution of the Other by the Self
 In this modality, Western and non-Western cultures are
opposed to each other as radically different entities and
their opposition is resolved by absorbing non-Western
people into an expanding and victorious West

The Incorporation of the Other into the Self


In this second modality of Occidentalism, a critical
focus on Western development unwittingly obscures the
role of non-Western people in the making of the
modern world, subtly reiterating the distinction between
Other and Self that underwrites Europe’s imperial
expansion.
The Destabilization of Self by Other
 In this form, non-Western people are presented as a
privileged source of knowledge of the West.
 the depiction of radical Otherness is used to unsettle
Western culture.

The examination of Western representations of Otherness
can be encompassed within an interrogation of why
Otherness has become such a peculiarly modern concern
from the perspective of a critique of Occidentalism.

The map of modernity is being redrawn by global changes
in culture, aesthetics, and exchange that are commonly
associated with the emergence of post-modernity.

The interaction between geography and history involves
an exchange between past and present and present and
future.

If Orientalism was the creation of the center, then Occidentalism is
the creation of the periphery. It means that Orientalism was created
by the “great states” of the West in order to achieve their
objectives; whereas Occidentalism is created by an oriental élite
working and living in the West and became lured by its principles
and values. So, Occidentalism depends on Empiricism that is to
say experience because they live and work in the place of study;
whereas Orientalism calls for Rationalism that is shaping the
values and beliefs of others to their reason.