peting for power within a single state structure. Peoples with no fixed sense of territory
and a fluid identity suddenly found themselves citizens of a nation-state. The imposition of
this political form upon the South is informed with a longstanding view of the South as a place too irrational to govern itself or establish political structures that originate in the
cultures of Asia, Africa, or the Middle East.
4. Alternatives and Applications: Edward Said and Orientalism
“Oh, I come from a land, from a faraway place, where the caravan camels roam, where they cut off
your ear If they don’t like your face, It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.”
Original lyrics to opening song in Disney’s animated feature, “Aladdin”
Edward Said, who died in the fall of 2003, was a Palestinian-born literary scholar with a
worldwide readership. As one of the founding authors in post-colonial theory—the branch
of scholarship concerned to explore world history and culture from the point of view of
those living in the regions once colonized by the West—Said’s writing was an inspiration to
a generation of scholars and activists. Said’s work is a central resource in Karim’s book,
and a discussion of Orientalism adds to our understanding of Karim’s concern to rescue
our understanding of Islam from the clutches of stereotype.Said defined Orientalism as "a
manner of regularized (or Orientalized) writing, vision, and study, dominated by
imperatives, perspecti英语论文网 【http://www.51lunwen.org】ves, and ideological biases ostensibly suited to the Orient." In other
words, Orientalism is a discourse—a way of representing experience in words, pictures,
and forms, notably as these take the form of art, scholarship, news and popular culture,
conversation, and myriad other forms of human expression—that has defined for millennia
how the West thinks about the East. For Said, the “East” here was primarily the Middle
East—the reputed home of Disney’s Aladdin—and Said’s birthplace. But “East” can also
refer to the Far East, including China, Japan, and other Asian countries.
In Said’s classic formulation, Orientalism takes three historic forms.
First, it is the body of knowledge that Western scholars of the East have developed over
the centuries to understand the East’s history, culture, politics, religions, etc. In other
words, Orientalism is an academic culture of scholars interested in the East.
Second, and more significantly, Orientalism is a discourse based on a sharp distinction
between the West and the East. Where the West presents itself as rational, democratic,
capitalist, technological, and capable of self-restraint, the East is imagined as the West’s opposite: irrational, barbaric, tribal, traditional, and helplessly given to expressing its
appetites.
Third, Orientalism is a form of what Said, making use of a concept from the French
poststructuralist scholar Michel Foucault, calls “power/knowledge.” Power/knowledge is a
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