Orientalism By Edward Said: Book Review

With the publication of Orientalism in 1978, Edward Said hugely influenced scholarly debates about the Middle-East and the perception of the West. In 2007, Daniel Martin Varisco presented an in-depth, critical reflection of Said’s book Orientalism in Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid. Varisco does this by analyzing supporters as well as opponents of Said’s book about orientalism. Varisco’s reasoning for writing the book was not because he necessarily disagreed with what Said argues, it is rather that Varisco thought Said’s points could be better argued with the right evidence.
When Said published Orientalism in 1978, the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle-East received large attention in the Western media coverage. Edward Said, himself

In the first chapter, “The scope of Orientalism” Said points out numerous scholarly writers from the West, such as Balfour, Kissinger, Gibbs etc. as evidence that they draw a geographical line between the West and the East, thus creating a consciousness of “we”, the good, civilized West, and “them”, the primitive, evil East. The second chapter “Orientalist structures and restructures” uses evidence of de Sacy and Renan, in order to retrace the steps of modern orientalism in the enlightenment period. As, according to Said, “the essential aspects of modern Orientalist theory and practice… can be understood… as a set of structures inherent from the past…”(122). The final and biggest chapter, “Orientalism Now” gives an account of the Orientalists from the late 19th century to late 20th century. Here, Said addresses the colonization period where the “Occident” orientalists observed and lived with the Orient. He uses mostly French or English sources for this part. As for instance sources form Napoleon or Mark Twain. In 1995, Said added a Afterword chapter in the book and in 2003, Said brought out another a “revised” version of Orientalism and added a

As Isstaif states, “[Varisco] is certainly wrong when he claims that ‘Said's exposé of [W]estern Orientalism has received limited attention in the real Orient’ (qtd. In Varisco 17). in point of fact, Orientalism has twice been translated into Arabic, and then engendered several series of books on Western Orientalism generally, and a score of books and hundreds of articles on Said and his Orientalism“ (n.p.). Furthermore, Isstaif is disappointed in Varisco because “he hardly covers the reception of Orientalism in the Arab world—one could easily write a book on the subject, there being more than enough material to do