He says that in small part thanks to new electronic media, ranging from film to television, standardization and stereotyping of the orient has intensified the 19th century’s orientalist understanding of “the mysterious Orient.” He gives the primary example of the Middle East and the Western perception of Arabs and Islam. Of three chief reasons he gives for the growth of this problem, at least two can be directly attributed to orientalism. The first is the history of anti-Arab and anti-Islamic prejudices prevalent in the West, the third is the absence of a cultural position to identify Arabs or Islam. By creating an other, through the dichotomy between occident and orient, identification has been made near impossible, and by furthering a imperialist ideology through academic discourse for centuries, prejudices have become
Said is very critical about how the Western scholars have studied Eastern countries because Orientalists have books that are only focusing on the Orient and the Orientalist as their main authority even today, the Orient being the Easterners and the Occident being the Westerners. This therefore leads to Western novelists, theorists, poets promoting the distinction or difference between the East and West and creating theories, social
Although he failed to support that main point, the rest of his arguments would be hard to dispute considering the amount of support he was able to gather. This analysis would be very useful to readers who are looking for a more in depth understanding of the piece. Also, this analysis was proved usefully in my American Literature class due to the fact it brought many great ideas for
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.
In this way, it was difficult for people to recognize the presence of the West in descriptions of the Orient. In addition, discourse limits people’s knowledge of the East within certain constraints. Since people receive knowledge that has once been filtered through discourse, they can only accumulate knowledge within the boundary set by the authority. In the case of Orientalism, the Orientalist interpretation created its own “internal consistency” rather than focusing on the “correspondence between Orientalism and Orient”, (Said 5). Such internal consistency allowed the Europeans to form “systematic discipline” on different sectors of the Orient (3).
Through their writings they distort real story of India so as to give emphasis to their superior status. In contemporary non-fiction books written by western writers’ they portray “East” as savage minded, criminals and “West” as superior, dominant type. Through this envision they created an image of East as the “Other” which is no way similar to them. This ideate distinction between East and West formed the basis of Edward Said’s “Orientalism”. The Eurocentric superiority perception compels them to distort the reality according to their preferences.
Moreover, he maintained a sophisticated tone throughout the article with fairly easily understood language.He also delivered comprehensive definition of almost all relevant key words and explained it with context to the matter being discussed. Moreover, the structure of article is very effective as it went in order to prove and explain each component of his thesis, so that’s how his thesis is delivered on a strong base in the end. However, his argument was not fair as he failed to evaluate the subject through a wider perspective and restricted the article till his chosen, very specific scenario. He showed a very staunch behavior towards his claim but was pretty unfair towards the opposing argument that he did not evaluate their proposition. Furthermore, he commits logical fallacy of red herring, where he derails from the topic being discussed and discusses irrelevant issues.
Book review – the argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen It takes courage and defiance for a person still learning, to select a work from celebrated author like Mr. Amartya Sen, and accept that one might even require to criticize the work, based on one’s limited yet very personal understanding of it. Even so I was able to gather the courage because the content of ‘The Argumentative Indian’, is so profound, stimulating and overarching, that it compelled me to go beyond a simple reading. Mr. Sen is looking at the History, Identity and culture of India through the lenses of contradictions that have been part of literature, religion, gender conceptions and society the nation. He organizes his study in four sections, dealing with ‘Voice and Heterodoxy’,
The idea that creativity is something that can measured is not a logical way to determine imagination, nor is it something that could even be possible. When I really first started thinking deep into this notion, I was worried that I was blinded by my own thoughts, delusioned and could not see the light of the other path. Not only was I gifted with so many articles and interviews detailing the process, but the amount of documentation that held the same beliefs I did helped me understand that my rations weren’t coming out of nowhere. Going chronologically, I started to build up my thinking on this idea when I was choosing my art piece. I knew what I wanted from the beginning.
On the one hand, it was highly informative to do the research about my culture and getting deep to it. On the other hand, the topic was too broad and extremely evasive. Accordingly, it was hard to stay in topic and be precise about what you were writing. It seemed inappropriate to judge the situation only from one aspect. Also, I gained many skills from the assignment which will be applicable academically.