Summary
The premise of Orientalism in Said’s account: the Orientalist stands outside the Orient, as an existential and a moral fact, and from that outside makes the Orient speak and renders its mysteries plain for and to the West, so that the principal product of Orientalism is Representation rather than depiction (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.29-31 / printed p.20-22).
Details
- Orientalism is premised upon exteriority, that is, on the fact that the Orientalist, poet or scholar, makes the Orient speak, describes the Orient, renders its mysteries plain for and to the West (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.29-30 / printed p.20-21).
- Said’s analysis therefore addresses the Orientalist text’s surface, its exteriority to what it describes, not what lies hidden in the text; representations are examined as representations, not as natural depictions of the Orient, in truthful texts such as histories and philological analyses as much as in avowedly artistic ones (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.29-30 / printed p.20-21).
- The governing truism: if the Orient could represent itself, it would; since it cannot, the representation does the job, for the West, and faute de mieux, for the poor Orient (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.30 / printed p.21).
- What a culture circulates is not truth but representations; a written statement about the Orient is a presence to the reader by virtue of having excluded, displaced, made supererogatory any such real thing as the Orient, and Orientalism makes sense more by the West than by the Orient (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.30-31 / printed p.21-22).
Related pages
Orientalism (1978), Orientalism, Representation, Strategic location and strategic formation