Questions to Accompany the Introduction to Orientalism



Questions to Accompany the Introduction to Orientalism

Part I: General questions on Orientalism

1. Why is it important to Said that we assume the Orient is not just “an inert fact of nature” (p. 4)? What could Said mean when he says that the Orient “was almost a European invention” (p. 1)?

2. On page 2 Said begins an extended definition of “Orientalism” that runs through the middle of page 3. What are his three main “meanings” of the term?

3. Why does Said say, “To believe that the Orient was created--or, as I call it, ‘Orientalized’--and to believe that such things happen simply as a necessity of the imagination, is to be disingenuous” (p. 5)? Do you agree? How is power related to Orientalism?

4. Said relies heavily on Foucault’s concept of a discourse. What is a discourse? (see below for help in understanding this term and the importance of this question)

5. What are Gramsci’s two forms of society, and what is the difference between them (p. 6)?

6. What is “the distinction between pure and political knowledge” (p. 9-14)? What does Said have to say about that distinction?

7. Since Said’s book made its mark, the term “Occidentalism” has been introduced to refer to the same phenomenon moving in the opposite direction (East to West). Said says (p. 1) that for Europe the Orient has been among the “deepest and most recurring images of the Other” (p. 1)? What does “Other” mean when used in this way? Does Occidentalism create an equivalent Otherness for peoples who do not live in the Occident? In other words, are these phenomena (Orientalism, Occidentalism) equivalent? If not, what’s the difference? If they are, what’s the big deal?

Part II: Detailed questions and discussion on the concept of discourse

What is a Discourse?

A central concept in Said’s work is what Foucault and others have called a “discourse.” If we look in a dictionary we’ll find several definitions for “discourse,” but none of these come very close to what Foucault and Said have in mind, and so we have a difficulty. Yet Said says on page 3 that “without examining Orientalism as a discourse” we “cannot possibly understand” what he is talking about. Those are strong words, and fair warning. We’ll have to get clear about the concept of a discourse, then, or risk badly misunderstanding what Said is saying.

 

Foucault’s own writing on the subject in the books Said mentions, The Archaeology of Knowledge and Discipline and Punish, is famously difficult, but fortunately Said himself, particularly in this introduction to Orientalism and beginning in this first section, is fairly clear about what he means by the term. Let’s have a look at several things he says, and try to “read between the lines,” so to speak:

a. The discourse of Orientalism is related in some way to an “enormously systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manage—and even produce—the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively” (p. 3).

8. This “discourse” must be an awfully powerful thing then, right? Maybe it’s easy to understand how particular kinds of academic practices, styles of thought, and related powerful institutions could help manage a particular other place, but how could they produce the other place? Said says that this discourse, this “enormously systematic discipline,” produced the Orient. What could this possibly mean?

b. The discourse of Orientalism was so “authoritative,” Said says further (p. 3), that “no one writing, thinking, or acting on the Orient could do so without taking account of the limitations on thought and action imposed by Orientalism” (italics mine).

9. Again, those are strong words. Look at that “no one . . . could.” Said says that it was and is impossible to write about or to think about the Orient without “taking account” of the discourse. What could this mean? And look at the words I have italicized. A discourse, or at least this discourse, limits both thought and action. It must be a powerful thing indeed to limit the thoughts and actions of anyone in any way connected with it, don’t you think? What do you suppose Said means when he says that a discourse can limit thought and action? What kind of a thing must it be to do that?

c. “In brief, because of [the discourse of] Orientalism the Orient was not (and is not) a free subject of thought or action” (p. 3).

 

10. There’s that idea of limitation and impossibility again, except put in even stronger terms. A discourse, Said says, makes some subjects, the Orient in this case, impossible to think about or to act about freely. Discourse, in other words, stops free thought and free action. The thoughts and actions of all people connected with the discourse are not free, are determined by the discourse. What can this mean? How can a discourse limit the ways we think and act, or even make it completely impossible for us to think and act in certain ways?

d. This discourse is a “whole network of interests” that are “inevitably brought to bear on (and . . . always involved in) any occasion” in which the subject of the discourse, in this case the Orient, is in question (p. 3, emphasis added).

 

11. “Inevitably,” again, has to do with cause and effect and limitation. The discourse is a network of thoughts, texts, ideas, concepts, representations, imaginings and institutions (notice the similarity of “network” to the “enormously systematic discipline” of the quote above) that always, in all cases, for every person in every situation, makes it impossible to think or act in certain ways. How can this be?

 

12. Said writes on page 4 of a “complex array of ‘Oriental’ ideas,” and mentions specifically “Oriental despotism,” “Oriental splendor,” Oriental “cruelty,” and Oriental “sensuality.” What is he talking about? Of what are these examples? How are they related to the discourse of Orientalism?

 

13. What does Said mean when he writes that “Eastern sects, philosophies, and wisdoms” have been “domesticated for local European use” (p. 4)? How can the religions, philosophies, and wisdoms of one group of people be “domesticated” for another group of people? What does “domesticated” mean in such a sentence? What do you suppose this has to do with the concept of a discourse?

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