What is the Orient in Orientalism?
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 term orient refers to countries east of the Mediterranean Sea and Southern Europe.
What does Edward Said mean by Occident?
Orientalism
Who wrote the book of Orientalism?
Edward Said
What is Orientalism in sociology?
Edward Said defined Orientalism as the process of colonialism of the Middle East and argues that the idea of Orientalism creates an artificial separation between East and West, and in so doing it generates animosity between different religions, cultures, and lifestyles. …
How does Edward Said define the other in his work Orientalism?
Said asserts that European knowledge of the East goes arm in arm with expansionism, exploration and settlement. He argues that the ‘Orient’ is constructed and represented in the binary opposition against the Occident, as the ‘Other’.
What does postcolonial theory focus on?
Postcolonial theory is a body of thought primarily concerned with accounting for the political, aesthetic, economic, historical, and social impact of European colonial rule around the world in the 18th through the 20th century.
What could Said mean when he says that the Orient was almost a European invention?
The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences. In addition, the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience.
What is the Orient said?
Said, in his groundbreaking book, Orientalism, defined it as the acceptance in the West of “the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, ‘mind,’ destiny and so on.”
What is a postcolonial reading?
Postcolonial literature often addresses the problems and consequences of the decolonization of a country, especially questions relating to the political and cultural independence of formerly subjugated people, and themes such as racialism and colonialism. …
What is the concept of postcolonialism?
Postcolonialism, the historical period or state of affairs representing the aftermath of Western colonialism; the term can also be used to describe the concurrent project to reclaim and rethink the history and agency of people subordinated under various forms of imperialism.
Who were Orientalists in India?
The terms Orientalism and Orientalist first took on a markedly political meaning when they were used to refer to those English scholars, bureaucrats, and politicians who, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, opposed changes in British colonial policy in India that had been brought by the “Anglicists,” who argued …
When was Orientalism published?
1978