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Orientalism (book)

Orientalism
Orientalism, first edition.jpg
Cover of the first edition, showing part of The Snake Charmer (1880), an Orientalist painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904)
Author Edward W. Saïd
Country United States
Language English
Subject Orientalism
Publisher Pantheon Books
Publication date
1978
Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages 368
ISBN
OCLC 4004102
950/.07/2
LC Class DS12 .S24 1979

Orientalism is a 1978 book by Edward W. Said, about the cultural representations that are the bases of Orientalism, defined as the West's patronizing representations of "The East"—the societies and peoples who inhabit the places of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. According to Said, orientalism (the Western scholarship about the Eastern World) is inextricably tied to the imperialist societies who produced it, which makes much Orientalist work inherently political and servile to power.

In the Middle East, the social, economic, and cultural practices of the ruling Arab élites indicate they are imperial satraps who have internalized the romanticized "Arab Culture" created by French, British and, later, American Orientalists; the examples include critical analyses of the colonial literature of Joseph Conrad, which conflates a people, a time, and a place into a narrative of incident and adventure in an exotic land.

The critical application of post-structuralism in the scholarship of Orientalism influenced the development of literary theory, cultural criticism, and the field of Middle Eastern studies, especially regarding how academics practice their intellectual enquiry when examining, describing, and explaining the Middle East. The scope of Said's scholarship established Orientalism as a foundation text in the field of Post-colonial Culture Studies, which examines the denotations and connotations of Orientalism, and the history of a country's post-colonial period.


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