Notes on Edward Said's Orientalism

Peter's notes

Notes

Introduction

p. 6 Don't assume that Orientalism is a myth that can be dispelled by stating or discovering the truth.
p. 20 strategic location & formation.
p. 22 the hollowness of the Orient; its independence from the actual Orient.
p. 24 how can one study other cultures from a nonrepressive and nonmanipulative perspective?
p. 26 standardization of stereotypes through media; games continue this.
p. 27 the importance of lived experience
p. 28 Raymond Williams ("inherent dominative mode")

Ch. 1: The Scope of Orientalism

I. Knowing the Oriental

p. 38 the mythologized idea of the Orient (and the Oriental) is an effective model for dealing with Orientals from both India and Egypt... not because it has any real veracity or because those populations are actually similar, but because their situations with respect to the hegemony of Orientalism are similar, and thus by coercive and oppressive power Orientalism works to make itself work. Of course, this also involves erasure of differences that escape Orientalism's standardizing tendencies, but these differences are rendered irrelevant to imperial administration precisely because they do not fit into the Orientalist model.
- p 39 deviation from the Orientalist model of an Oriental is simply explained as being "unnatural," but of course part of the definition of an Oriental is being deviant and unnatural, and so deviation itself is confirmatory.
p. 41 the classroom as a trap
p. 44 foundational myths of Orientalism constrain it
p. 45 a stronger/weaker or superior/inferior distinction is inherent in any kind of gross division of people or political entities. Division and equality cannot coexist.
p. 45 division polarizes, and polarization breeds conflict and hostility
p. 46 science as an arbiter of the truth of domination
p. 47 how the Orientalist tradition continues in modern thought even though it would be derided were it explicit.
p. 49 "[Westerners are] rational, peaceful, liberal, logical, capable of holding real values, without natural suspicion; [Orientals] are none of these."

II. Imaginative Geography and Its Representations: Orientalizing the Oriental

p. 50 the non-existence of Occidentalism is a key observation
p. 50 (aside) How guilty is "Computer Science" of the same kind of senseless breadth as Orientalism? Size + capacity for subdivision.
p. 50 Is the homogenization actually important to the operation of Orientalism or not? It seems that no matter how specific a field, the same exoticization and warped inferiorizing perspective could be present.
p. 51 quotation without translation of European languages
p. 52 Orientalism as a historically-oriented field conveniently elides the study of actual living people.
p. 52 Another mention of producing knowledge, but is it actually just the production of Orientalism?
p. 53 Lévi-Strauss and "primitive tribes"—The imaginative ordering of reality is not being acknowledged as an authentic kind of knowledge.
p. 54 Negative self-definition against a fictional other.
p. 54 Gaston Bachelard the poetics of space
p. 55 imaginative geographical and historical knowledge
p. 57 key imaginative aspects of the Orient:
- Defeated and distant (vs. the powerful and articulate Europe)
- Insinuates danger
- Undermines rationality with excesses (mysteriously attractive opposites of "normal" values)
- A danger to and/or challenge for the West
p. 57 A legacy of supremacy: Greek -> Roman -> Western/European -> White
p. 58 Marco Polo as definer of the Orient includes the cultural education of Marco Polo as a child, his family's position of wealth within Venetian society which enabled his journey, the circumstances which put him in a cell with a literate and sympathetic cell-mate who found him credible, and which then ensured both of their releases, the cultural system of manuscript production and distribution that created, distorted, and disseminated his story, the existence of an audience that could afford to read and purchase the story and who were interested in it, and the reasons for that story's popularity among that audience.
p. 59 recognition of the novel as repetitious as a defense mechanism: seeing the Orient as repeating (but in a distorted/inferior manner) Europe, but also vacillating between that view and the view of the Orient as frighteningly and/or pleasurably alien and novel.
p. 59 Islam and the fear of it and the Ottoman empire as a cultural trauma for Europe (which continues to this day).
p. 60 "There is nothing especially controversial or reprehensible about such domestications of the exotic; they take place between all cultures, certainly, and between all men." That's an interesting position to take regarding 1970's Orientalism, "...whose subject is not so much the East itself as the East made known, and therefore less fearsome, to the Western reading public." Perhaps a product of Said's position in the academy among these people?
p. 63 Cultural works and imagination as key components of Orientalism.
p. 65 the job of Orientalist works is to confirm, not to challenge, the Orientalism of the audience. Positive reviews (like Galland's) are one mechanism by which unchallenging views are accepted and challenging views are rejected, delegitimized, and silenced.
p. 67 the three-way relationship between the Orientalist, the Oriental, and the Western reader. Perhaps also the fourth party of the Western non-reader.
p. 67 transforming reality into knowledge is fundamental and universal, as are distortions as one culture encounters another; the problem is not these per se, but rather the development of an institution that enshrines and normalizes these distortions, ultimately becoming self-sustaining and amplifying the distortions instead of gradually eroding and eventually discarding them.
p. 68 there's an implication here that the scope error of treating the entire "Orient" as a unit is actually an important part of how Orientalism becomes increasingly distorting. Contrast my note on p. 50 about homogenization.
p. 70 inevitablism as anti-empirical. This is quite relevant to how games portray colonialism. Citing Isaiah Berlin from Historical Inevitability pp. 13–14.
p. 70 The distinction in the effects of the barbarian invasion of Rome (assimilation) and the later Islamic invasion of Eastern and Southern Europe (polarization and withdrawal). Perhaps the establishment of common evangelical religion was a factor here?
p. 72 Orientalism as a paranoia.

III. Projects

p. 73 The reversal here wherein the Oriental is portrayed as a monster advancing when in fact at many times it has been the victim of Europe, and the function Orientalism has in creating that reversal, maps quite nicely onto Lavelle's Opera Omnia.
p. 73 Islam as uniquely demonized because it was uniquely resistant to European cultural and economic domination.
p. 76 sympathy with Islam -> expelled from Cambridge. A history of selective academic freedom.
p. 77 contrasting results from different attitudes upon travel to India to study it (and of course, a mention of the many who never saw that as necessary).
p. 79 the impulse to reach into the Orientalism-distorted past of the Orient to figure out how to ameliorate the present.
p. 80 Orientalism as instigator and guide to colonialist invasion of the Orient; Orientalism siding with Europe against the Orient when they were opposed (but of course, the Orient never actually opposed Europe, it was only actual present-tense people who did that, and they were not the Orient).
p. 81 Orientalism sizing up the Orient for potential invasion before such was even a real political prospect.
p. 82 contrast between Napoleon's approach to Egypt and Spain's approach to the natives in the Americas.
p. 82 a tactical and condescending appeal to local traditions/religion.
p. 84 simultaneous military and ideological invasion/colonization.
p. 84 direct naturalization of the conquest of Egypt.
p. 84 Egypt's comprehensibility to the Greeks and Romans led to comprehensibility to Europe, and combined with physical accessibility, helped produce Egypt's prominence in historical perspectives even today. How many other countries have equally fascinating but less accessible-to-Europe histories?
p. 86 good list of colonialist attitudes and activities.
p. 87 why do we have so many Egyptian museum exhibitions and textbook chapters? The Napoleonic ambition is probably somewhat to blame.
p. 87 Napoleon's military failure was irrelevant to the Orientalist conception of a dominant Europe and dominated Orient.
p. 89 "bringing together" civilizations or "the West and the East" via the Suez Canal.
p. 92 to overcome distance & silence, first know, then invade/possess, then recreate.
p. 92 transformation of Orient from "the other" to "the subject," still foreign but no longer mysterious.

IV. Crisis

p. 93 the textual attitude (see big point #1 on humanistic epistemology).
- Two factors: confronting the unfamiliar, and successful description/recommendations reinforcing and propagating themselves.
p. 94 the authority of "academics, institutions, and governments." How does science more generally function?
p. 94 Foucault's idea of a discourse.
p. 96 the transition from a scholarly & popular discipline to an institution of actual colonialist action.
p. 96 reflections on the implication of the transformation of Orientalism for modern disciplines. The scholarly (inevitably?) becomes a political tool.
p. 97 essentialism -> racism.
p. 99 more direct mention of racism here than at other places.
p. 99 significance of travel narratives and fiction within Orientalism.
p. 100 an "interest" must first be postulated, then implanted, developed, and finally defended. Cultural/religious and economic interests were intertwined.
p. 101 a contrast between 19th and 20th century disappointment at the real orient, and (at least my perception) of contemporary reverence of or fascination with both Europe and the Orient as travel destinations.
p. 101 the critic's role in propagation of distorted fiction.
p. 102 "Oriental" subsumes race, and perhaps a parallel exists in how "Indian" or "Native American" subsumes tribal affiliations.
p. 104 liberation is a crisis for Orientalism, because it makes the contemporary Oriental person politically relevant.
p. 106 what jobs does a course of study in Orientalism or "Middle Eastern Studies" prepare one for at Harvard? What kinds of power relations do those jobs have with people living in the Middle East?
p. 108 the projection of "we" from rich oligarchs actually doing the owning of world resources onto their white (but not brown) constituents/citizens is important because it prevents solidarity between the exploited that might threaten the order of things.
p. 108 limitations of Orientalism come packaged with the dehumanizing project that dictated its origins.
p. 108 fixing the subject in time denies it any contemporary relevance. See how the civilizations in CIV I have leaders from different periods
p. 109 the Orient as reactive, but never active within history (with perhaps the minor exception of Islamic aggression).
p. 110 Orientalism eliminates humanistic values. At least in part through dehumanization, but how else?

Ch. 2: Orientalist Structures and Restructures

I. Redrawn Frontiers, Redefined Issues, Secularized Religion

p. 115 "regenerating" Europe with Asia as desperate cultural looting by a poisoned culture.
p. 116 explicit criticism of science via Flaubert
p. 119 Academic Orientlism curtails (but in part draws from) artistic Orientalism.
p. 119 the role of classification as an impulse
p. 120 a shift from religious them/us to racial/national them/us, but with religion hanging on as a distinction
p. 122 anyone who seeks to become an expert on other humans risks this kind of speaking-for.
p. 123 a "discipline of accumulation"

II. Silvestre de Sacy and Ernest Renan: Rational Anthropology and Philological Laboratory

p. 124 academics as a necessary part of imperialism; complicity
p. 124 the evangelist tendency of Orientalism
p. 125 "chrestomathy"
p. 125 the classroom in contrast to hands-on direct learning, and the dangers of focusing on simplifying examples
p. 126 preserving & making knowledge accessible (simplified by Napoleon's invasion of Egypt)
p. 127 who are the actual recipients of knowledge?
p. 127 "pioneers" in academic fields are like pioneers in real life: we glorify them, but don't notice what they're destroying
p. 128 defamiliarity to the general student audience as an excuse to enclose material as academically sophisticated
p. 128 obscurity necessitates/justifies curation and abbreviation
p. 129 academic legacies
p. 132 natural sciences as a source of pressure for the humanities: utilitarianism in university administration
p. 133 scientific racism and the idea of a "natural law"
p. 134 what does it mean to be a "liberal?" What does it mean that Wellesley College is a "Liberal Arts College?"
p. 134 scholarly pursuits as a substitute for spiritual ones.
p. 135 the valorization of Christianity as a backdrop to Orientalism
p. 140 giving voice to the "voiceless" speaks over them.
p. 142 deviance/exoticness as a necessary property of collected/exhibited objects.
p. 143 how much of modern linguistics/science is still ultimately grounded in some of these ideas? How do you separate the useful from the biased? Can you?
p. 143 Lacunae create a malleable history that can be arranged to suit the scholar's hypothesis a la Opera Omnia.
p. 145 is nature fundamentally intelligible? Is culture? To whom?
p. 145 (re)construction as a form of imperial domination; in Minecraft construction is literally a form of territorial domination.
p. 146 the true power & influence of the historian
p. 148 Said's relation to words as a scholar of literature often involves defining "senses" through reference to particular (and presumed widely accessible) works, like Dickens' "Our Mutual Friend," which I for one have never read.
p. 148 Renan sees nationalism as more important than e.g., empiricism, for all that he loves science. What do the scientists of today see as more important than empiricism?
p. 148 the important contradiction between disinterest/objectivity and domination/power/economic interest.

III. Oriental Residence and Scholarship: The Requirements of Lexicography and Imagination

p. 149 Note how Said does not extensively introduce Renan or Sacy. I still don't really have the greatest sense of what their works actually were like, because I'm not coming to this book as an expert in Orientalism or its history.
p. 149 Anti-semitism & science
p. 149 Note how science/philosophy uses scientific/philosophic "progress" as its yardstick for cultural/racial "achievement."
p. 150 This business of linguistic roots and "race, mind, character, and temperment" is deeply un-empirical, and it is easy today to denounce it as unscientific, which it is. Yet it is essentially scientific because it is part of the continuous scholarly tradition and social institution of Science.
p. 150 inequality invites study which enshrines inequality. That's actually just like many modern diversity programs.
p. 151 the simultaneous attraction and repulsion of earlier fictitious depictions inspires scholars who exhibit the same tendencies.
p. 152 the invisibility to the colonizer of the knowledge of the colonized.
p. 153 the reduced model of the Orient constructed to support intellectual dominance also becomes useful for national dominance & imperialism.
p. 153 the compatibility of the meliorist/progressivist strand in Marxism with colonialism.
p. 154 the Orientalist grapples only with masses or heroes/villains, never with individuals. Aggregation and exemplification together are enough to allow complete distortion.
p. 155 the outright denial or at least invisibilization of suffering is a standard colonialist excuse.
p. 155 the function of Orientalism on full display as it unmakes Marx' sympathy.
p. 155 how does what we choose to read constrain our engagement with our own topics?
p. 156 the sociological processes that undergird science as an institution.
p. 158 all representations are reconstructions that alter the original.
p. 159 erasing the author (as we do in science so thoroughly) serves at least to minimize the perspective and biases of the author.
p. 159 the requirement that one do something new and also produce correct knowledge serves to manufacture authority. Same as in science.
p. 160 "objectivity" as opposed to authenticity/sympathy
p. 160 once again, who is the beneficiary of produced "knowledge?" Who is it available to?
p. 162 overwhelming detail gives an air of representativeness.
p. 163 the contradiction between "objectivity" and "familiarity."
p. 166 the interdependency between conquest and scholarly study: museums need artifacts, and conquistadores need interpreters and objectives.
p. 172 The dual contradictory excuse: the Crusades were not aggression, and they were justified aggression.
p. 172 the crucial role of the concept of "liberty" in Western justifications for colonialism.
p. 175 um... what? Inscribing your name on a Pyramid, and not even doing it yourself?
p. 176 "a lively sense of an Oriental's human or even social reality—as a contemporary inhabitant of the modern world" as a bar to pass.
p. 179 examples of colonialist justifications.
p. 180 sexism as part of colonialism.
p. 190 these tropes are alive and well today.
p. 190 various kinds of "surplus" population, with the Orient as a destination or depository.
p. 191 more detailed description of the academic institution of Orientalism.
p. 191 minority interests as proxies for European schemes, and the Kurds and Syrian Christians of today.
p. 192 works that are too realistic or reflect real circumstances aren't appealing to European audiences.
p. 192 this is a core media studies approach: juxtaposition of a body of work using brief descriptions.
p. 193 Orientalists travelling in the Orient who are disinterested in its reality (and who do not speak any Oriental language).
p. 196 Mastery over and understanding of systems permits a more detailed (but no less imperialist) perspective on the Orient, without risking empathy.

Big points

~p. 24 There's a very deep criticism of humanistic epistemology going on here, which could extend to scientific epistemology as well: We like to think as scientists or humanists that we produce knowledge by writing down our ideas so that we can communicate them. But Said's work here demonstrates the ridiculousness of the idea of studying a subject merely by reading about it, and furthermore, it shows that in our position as inhabitants of a politicized society, and as relatively more or less dogmatic adherents to scholarly traditions of knowledge, our contributions to those traditions are inevitably just that: not knowledge, but rather the extension of a tradition, which is in fact also simultaneously a hegemonic cultural force and thus a mechanism of power/domination. This relates to the philosophical idea of intentionality.
- An example: how should I teach someone about California? Instead of writing a book or even website about it, it's better that I take them there and travel with them so they can experience it themselves. In fact, no amount of reading, looking at pictures, watching videos, or even playing VR games can substitute for the actual experience of being there, and particularly meeting those who live there (note: and who exactly are we talking about?). Thus any kind of humanistic study of California can never authentically serve the purpose of educating people about California, or producing true knowledge of California. In fact, even as someone who grew up in (part of) California and has lived there the majority of my adult life, I have only a shallow knowledge of it.
- But is this problem confined to humanistic inquiry? It may not be quite the same in the sciences, but neither it is totally absent. Some true knowledge of technical subjects can also be acquired mainly by experience, and therefore again writing and publishing is an empty gesture, to a degree. Knoweldge ends up being shared not by words, but by reenactment and rediscovery (which admittedly could be guided by words). Of course this highlights the importance of educational institutions where experience can be propagated, but those have very limited reach.
- Caveat: Even going to a place and meeting the people there may not produce knowledge of them if one arrives with preconceived notions and does not respect those people.
~p. 147 There's something that Said has not mentioned yet, which is any notion of whether scholars in the Orient were constructing their own histories, and whether those might be more authentic. Given the ridiculousness of the European histories of the Orient being constructed in Europe, it might be interesting to contrast them against e.g., Arabic histories of the Arabian peninsula or of Islam.
~ p. 150 Looking at the roots of modern science (e.g. linguistics) reveals much we might disagree with. But those positions can be filtered through sequential citations directly into our own work.
- p. 151 more examples of this in history.
p. 150 Inequality invites study which enshrines inequality. This is often evident today in the study of modern racism, where scientists looking to "prove" racism don't overtly essentialize the distinctions the find, but neither do they always grapple with the mechanisms of white supremacy which perpetuate those differences.
~ p. 153 How is Minecraft potentially useful for imperialism/colonialism today?
~ p. 154 The dangers of treating humans either as homogeneous cultural units or as mythologized exemplars.
~ p. 160 Who is the beneficiary of the "knowledge" that is produced by academia? Who does or does not merit access to it?