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Concept
Orientalism
Summary
In art history, literature and cultural studies, Orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects of the Eastern world. These depictions are usually made by writers, designers, and artists from the Western world. In particular, Orientalist painting, depicts the Middle East, and it was one of the many specialties of 19th-century academic art, and the literature of Western countries was influenced by a similar interest in Oriental themes.
Since the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism in 1978, much academic discourse has begun to use the term "Orientalism" to refer to a general patronizing Western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian, and North African societies. In Said's analysis, the West essentializes these societies as static and undeveloped—thereby fabricating a view of Oriental culture that can be studied, depicted, and reproduced in the service of imperial power. Implicit in this fabrication, writes Said, is the idea that Western society is developed, rational, flexible, and superior. This allows Western imagination to see "Eastern" cultures and people as both alluring and a threat to Western civilization.
Orientalism refers to the Orient, in reference and opposition to the Occident; the East and the West, respectively. The word Orient entered the English language as the Middle French orient. The root word oriēns, from the Latin Oriēns, has synonymous denotations: The eastern part of the world; the sky whence comes the sun; the east; the rising sun, etc.; yet the denotation changed as a term of geography.
In the "Monk's Tale" (1375), Geoffrey Chaucer wrote: "That they conquered many regnes grete / In the orient, with many a fair citee." The term orient refers to countries east of the Mediterranean Sea and Southern Europe. In In Place of Fear (1952), Aneurin Bevan used an expanded denotation of the Orient that comprehended East Asia: "the awakening of the Orient under the impact of Western ideas." Edward Said said that Orientalism "enables the political, economic, cultural and social domination of the West, not just during colonial times, but also in the present.
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