Reading Up, Cont.
Since the 1978 publication of Palestinian-American scholar
Edward Said's groundbreaking text, Orientalism, critical analyses of Euro-American relationships with the region
once known as "the Orient" have become an important part of the contemporary intellectual landscape. The word "orient" comes
from the Latin oriens / orientis meaning the east, the rising sun. The Orient referred to the lands east of Europe,
and during the nineteenth-century, a time of rapid and extensive imperial expansion for Britain and France, this meant North
Africa, the MiddleEast, and particularly for Britain, India. It is important to understand that "the Orient" is a shifting
and strategic term that took on different meanings at various historical moments depending on who was using it and what their
agenda was. For example, in the U.S. the Orient is generally taken to mean East Asia. Ultimately, the Orient has frequently
been imagined as the opposite of the West or the Occident, whether that means Europe or the U.S., and has traditionally implied
all things "foreign" and "exotic." As scholarly work over the last three decades has shown, the binary categories "East" and
"West" are more about a set of beliefs than they are about a fixed geography. In Unthinking Eurocentrism, Ella
Shohat comments on the "geographical imaginary that imposes neat divisions, along a double axis (East/West, North/South),
on a globe inhospitable to such rigidities" (13). She writes that:
Like its orientalizing counterpart the "East," the "West" is a fictional construct
embroidered with myths and fantasies. In a geographical sense, the concept is relative. What the West calls the "Middle East"
is from a Chinese perspective "Western Asia." In Arabic the word for West (Maghreb) refers to North
Africa, the westernmost part of the Arab world, in contrast to the Mashreq, the eastern part. (In Arabic, "West"
and "foreign" share the same root--gh.r.b.) The South Seas, to the west of the US, are often posited as cultural "East." (13)
Writers like Shohat and Said are calling attention to the fact that the
West often sees itself as the center of the world, around which all else revolves, conveniently overlooking the debt owed
to other cultures. This is particularly true of Europe's appropriation of certain aspects of Arab culture, while denying Arab
people any recognition. Historically, Europe's relationship with the Orient has been deeply complex and problematic: "the
Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source
of its civilization and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other"
(Said 1). Profoundly rooted in the Eurocentric notion of cultural superiority, Orientalism can be seen "as a Western style
for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient" (3). This is the more recent interpretation of the term
"Orientalism" instituted by Said. In its more "neutral," and now antiquated, sense, it refers to the study of "oriental" languages
and culture, usually by white, Western "experts" known in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as philologists. Said
states that his analysis places emphasis on representations of the Orient "as representations, not as "natural" depictions
of the Orient," whether one is speaking of a "so-called truthful text (histories, philological analyses, political treatises)"
or an "avowedly artistic (i.e., openly imaginative) text" (21). Here Said is commenting on the frequent insistance on "truthfulness"
so often employed in European writing on other countries, and the fact that any portrayal is necessarily mediated through
one's own culture. He insists that images of the Orient by the West, whether they are paintings, photographs, novels, travel
narratives, news clips, etc., are always ideologically laden, yet many people simply take them at face value without analyzing
the underlying dynamics. Whether or not you agree with this, it is worthwhile to investigate some of the current critiques
of Orientalism, many of them written by scholars of Middle Eastern, North African and Asian origin.
Recommended reading (some of these books contain analyses of how women
and dancers of the Orient are represented in European writing and art):
Amin, Samir. Eurocentrism. Trans. Russell Moore. New York: Monthly
Review Press, 1989.
Alloula, Malek. The Colonial Harem. Trans. Myrna and Wlad Gozdic.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986.
Behdad, Ali. Belated Travelers: Orientalism in the Age of Colonial Dissolution.
Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1994.
Hourani, Albert. A History of the Arab Peoples. New York: Warner Books
Inc., 1991.
Kabbani, Rana. Europe's Myths of Orient. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1986.
Kahf, Mohja. Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant
to Odalisque. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999.
Lowe, Lisa. Critical Terrains: British and French Orientalisms. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1991.
Perez, Nissan N. Focus East: Early Photography in the Near East (1839-1885).
New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1988.
Porter, Dennis. Haunted Journeys: Desire and Transgression in European
Travel Writing. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
Shohat, Ella. Robert Stam. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and
the Media. London: Routledge, 1994.
About the Author: Elena M. Villa is a doctoral candidate at the University of Oregon,
where she teaches courses in comparative literature. She is a teacher and performer of both Flamenco and Middle Eastern Dance.
