Orientalism, Occidentalism and Area Studies

Yong Haeju #I 29012

Lee Jinse #I 33010

Lee Hoggie #I 34009

Contents 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

Edward Said

1935~2003. 9. 24

Studied in Victoria University,

Cairo, Egypt

In 1950, Ph.D.

in Harvard University.

“ORIENTALISM” 1978

The distinction between pure and politi-cal knowledge

The methodological question

The personal dimension

From Orientalism to Area Studies 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 be-tween the West and the East, one stemming from the structure of the capitalist World-system.

From Orientalism to Area Studies

Area studies and Orientalism will be the distinctive and dis-ruptive places that these two disciplines hold within the orga-nization 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 rec-ommendations, governmental decisions, foundation support?

From Orientalism to Area Studies

Does Orientalism still correctly define the society of Asia?

How should we develop or use “Area studies” prop-erly?

Questions & Answer

The Relevance Debate

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 ini-tiative. 

The Legacy of Said’s Orientalism

Orientalism is a great tradition which was discredited by Said writings in 1978. Said is critical of the Orientalist tradition because he consid-ers 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 onto-logical 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.

The Legacy of Said’s Orientalism

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.

The Legacy of Said’s Orientalism

Martin Kramer Edward Said

Going back to Orientalist roots Emphasizes the need for

approaches that would explain and predict.

Expects academic to talk more to practitioners and produce policy-relevant work by restoring the links between scholarship and policy making.

Going beyond the distinction between Orient/Occident Considers Orientalist tradi-

tion ‘supremacist ideology of difference, articulated in the West to justify its dominion over East’.

Contributing to the mainte-nance of the status quo is what Orientalist tradition did best by providing knowledge for the imperial power.

The Relationship between Scholarship and Policy Making

  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 Amer-ican 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/Oc-cident divide and did not allow the Middle East to represent itself.

Where and what is ''the West"? “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."

Functions of the concept “The West”

The concept or idea of "the West" can be seen to function in the fol-lowing ways:

1. It allows us to characterize and classify societies into different cate-gories – e.g. "western," "non-western."

2. 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 = under-devel-oped.

3. 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 "non-West" = under-developed = bad = undesirable. In short, it functions as an ideology.

Internal Difference

The very term "the West," makes the West appear unified and homo-geneous. 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 Amer-ica, 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.

The consequences of expansion for the idea of ''the West"

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.“

Discourse about the West and the Rest

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 ef-fects. 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 be-cause it did not represent an encounter between equals.

Idealization, Fantasy A major object of the process of idealization was Nature itself. Sexuality was a powerful element in the fantasy which the West con-

structed.

Mis-recognizing difference Said says that "the essence of Orientalism is the ineradicable distinc-

tion 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.

Rituals of degradation Living close to Nature meant that they were “uncivilized”. The extent of any cannibalism was considerably exaggerated.

Stereotypes, dualism, and "splitting" 1) idealization; 2) the projection of fantasies of desire and degrada-

tion; 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 stereo-

typing.

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, at-tractive-disgusting, civilized-uncivilized, the West-the Rest. All the other, many differences between and within these two halves are col-lapsed, simplified.

"Noble" vs “Ignoble savages" 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 uncivi-lized.

The history of "rude" and "refined" nations 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, agricul-ture 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 Asiatic mode vs. Capitalist sys-

tem

The Asiatic mode is character-ized by: (a) stagnation, (b) an absence of dynamic class struggle, and (c) the domi-nance of a swollen state as a universal landlord.

Marx saw capitalist system as progressive, driving social de-velopment forward.

Societies dominated by the "Asiatic" mode of production have no internal class conflicts and lack a basic ingredient of social change.

Islam vs. Western Europe

The essential conditions for the transition to capitalism and modernity are: (a) ascetic forms of religion, (b) rational forms of law, (c) free labor, and (d) the growth of cities.

Islam as a "mosaic" of tribes and groups, never cohering into a proper social system, existing under a despotic rule with factional struggles.

Employs a basic dichotomy between the feudal economies of the West and the patrimonial political economies of the East.  

From' ''the West and the Rest" to Modern Sociology

Questions & Answer Can Orientalist tradition be a good approach for the future of

Area Studies? What is the proper way of studying a specific area? 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 overes-timation 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.

Orientalisms and Occidentalisms

Gifts Commodities

Archaic societies Dominated by kinship re-

lations that define indi-viduals and their connec-tions with and obliga-tions to one another.

Money is only a part, ‘people’ is the important element.

Household relation re-sembles gift relation

Modern Western soci-eties Members are alienated

from the people and the objects around them.

Transactions in which alienated individuals give and take alienated ob-jects in monetary trans-actions in the market.

Gifts and 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 Orien-talist 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

Essentialism and Antiessentialism

“BEYOND OCCIDENTALISM: TO-WARD NONIMPERIAL GEOHISTOR-ICAL CATEGORIES”

Imperial Maps 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 SelfIn 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 fo-

cus on Western development unwittingly obscures the role of non-Western people in the making of the mod-ern world, subtly reiterating the distinction between Other and Self that underwrites Europe’s imperial ex-pansion.

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.

Three Occidentalist Representational Modalities

The examination of Western representations of Otherness can be encompassed within an interrogation of why Oth-erness 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 as-sociated with the emergence of post-modernity.

Modernity and Occidentalism

Toward Nonimperial Geohistorical Categories. The interaction between geography and history involves

an exchange between past and present and present and fu-ture.

What is the difference between Orientalism and Oc-cidentalism?

If Orientalism was the creation of the center, then Occidentalism is the creation of the periphery. It means that Orientalism was cre-ated by the “great states” of the West in order to achieve their ob-jectives; 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 val-ues and beliefs of others to their reason.

Question & Answer