Postcolonial Breakthrough: Orientalism & the Eastern Excavation
Orientalism and the introduction of postcolonial critique, as Edward Said notes in his careful study of the topic, has helped identify Western culture’s grotesque addiction to binaries and propaganda in support of Western supremacy. It is with these obscure classifications like “Orient” and “East,” that we are forced to narrow our line of slight, in turn diminishing our sense of objectivity, whenever we consider the accurate depictions of cultures that position an opposite reality to those of the Western academic ideologues. Orientalism is a field of academic study that was birthed organically by Western expansionists in order to make the Middle East, India, Asia the center of “Europe’s greatest riches…,” as it provided key materials for the advancement of European civilization, culture, and a one-sided objective to dominate absolutely (Said 1).
Orientalism argues that the way we acquire knowledge from the Middle East and Asia is through a hyper-critical lens that misrepresents the realities of the Orient and the cultures of entire regions that are wildly diverse and complex. These cultural landmarks are inversely positioned by Western scholarship as something far less intricate, even going as far as portraying Asia, and all it’s incredible nuances, as a homogenous culture. By creating an avenue for academic bodies to experiment and prod Middle-Eastern and Asian cultures, Western scholars helped facilitate and preserve the distinction between geographical locations that were different than Western civilizations. The perpetuation of Orientalism as a Western study and an organized discipline, and the research involved in the Orient/Occident binary, created a blueprint for the large-scale processes that conquer the other by theory and mythos. Such topics of discussion don’t necessarily reflect the true nature of cultures outside of colonial England and France—and later, with the influence of American print journalism and Hollywood propaganda. With these dominant discourses in mind, the rise in novelists, poets, theorists, etc. under the gaze of the Orient reinforces the rhetoric used to keep the Orient at the center of immobilization, containment, critique, and fetishizing.
The author explains that study of the Orient, even if compartmentalized to different studies—like “linguistic Orient…a Spenglerian Orient, a Darwinian Orient, a racist Orient…” (Said 3)—the method which the Middle East and Asia is being theorized has not changed. “Islam is rarely studied, rarely researched, rarely known,” but scholarly works still get published solely based on the interpretation of the academic journals published beforehand. A cycle that is continuously perpetuated. The Orient is rarely studied, but consistently and unjustifiably the subject of observation and harsh critique, specifically in its purest “…form today in studies of the Arabs and Islam.” Edward Said, however, is solely responsible for transforming the rhetorical environment in which colonial disciplines and postcolonial analysis are now being canonized in academia. As Said explains, the reputation the Orient has sustained is that the world of the Egyptian, the East-Asian, the Indian is “incapable of defining itself,” “static,” and far removed from the “rational, developed, humane, superior” nature of the Englishmen or the Frenchmen who have come to rescue them from their impotence (Said 300-301).
Orientalism is not an area of study brought from the East as a sparked interest of the West, rather it is a structure that organizes culture and prioritizes the European identity as a superior philosophy. Said channels neo-Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci by saying that this method of codification creates a cultural hegemony that gives Orientalism “the strength it needs” (Said 2) to turn sensationalism into a productive system. The European’s ability to control the perception of the Orient is far more jarring, and telling of their influence, than their capacity to hold study around Orientalism. Gramsci’s role in Said’s interpretation of cultural hegemony is an important one. Where Gramsci, in his Prison Notebooks essay series, offers the idea that forced consent is a method which the hegemony uses to dominate with actual sheer force and assume “intellectual and moral leadership” (Gramsci, Hoare & Smith, 193) through the promotion of a coercive national consciousness, in order to further the expansion—or even stabilize said culture—specific corporate/economic incentives are offered by way of philosophy, education, and literacy.
As mentioned earlier, the West’s mission to dominate, colonize, paternalize, etc. the East is a one-sided ordeal. The dubious methods in which colonizers recruit the colonized, rallying to unite with a dominant hegemon’s ideology as a way to liberate the other from the perceived flaws and incapability of their own people and initiate a movement that called upon the Enlightenment of the East. Evidence of this is shown with Napoleon Bonaparte’s expedition to Egypt; the “inventor of Orientalism…” who, as told by French novelist Mathias Énard claimed, he not only brought along his militia across the Mediterranean—“drag[ged] science behind his army” in order to “penetrate the Orient” (qtd. by Silverman). Napoleon campaigned as a “friend” with the Ottoman Empire to set aside fear of an attack of the latter and “posed as a liberator of the people oppressed by the Mamelukes,” (Silverman). Napoleon went so far as to Westernize Cairo, the largest city in Egypt, by building an explicit foundation of Western cultural organizations, which included schools and newspapers, like the Institute of Egypt and Courrier of l’Egypte (Kruse), to showcase and remind the East of the valuable “ideas, doctrines, and trends” (Said 3) that ruled the parent-culture.
Léon Cogniet’s painting L’Expédition d’Egypte Sous les Ordres de Bonaparte (1835) captured a moment in history where Bonaparte’s analysis and abduction of the Orient began during the French’s war with the British. Originally, Napoleon traveled to the Middle East to cut off British trade routes from India, along the way he brought linguists, scientists, artists, and engineers to initiate the beginnings of the colonization process into Egypt, specifically. In this scene, it is said to be taken place on the roof of a derelict temple that is now being excavated by Neapolitan’s men and assisted by Egyptians themselves. Napoleon, of course, is ominously in the back of the crowd, sheltered by a tarp while the Egyptians are removing a sarcophagus from the ruins. There is one white man at the center-bottom looking at the sarcophagus by the head and smiling, basking in the enigma of an unknown culture. It is representational of the Western conviction that anything that can be successfully interpreted and manipulated, with the proper tools and resource, is free to be exploited. There is an obvious disparity between the two groups of people. One: fully clothed, directing, leading, surveying. The other: half-naked, carrying the weight of their ancestors and the burdens of their new leader, unprotected by the sun and therefore vulnerable physically and metaphorically.
The most interesting characters in this piece, and the overall assertion to Said’s native informant concept, are the two men standing in the center. The Egyptian, who is more clothed than any other darker-skinned character, garnished in a white robe and holding a staff, which is symbolic of his nobility, is distracted by the white men who are writing/reading something on paper (or papyrus). The Frenchman next to him is looking at the treasure that has been unearthed. One could assert that because these two are in such proximity to each other, that there is an understanding between the two. A deal was struck. The Egyptian noble, the native informant as Said would claim, is observing the skill of the French, thirsting for that knowledge, while the Frenchmen is waiting to manipulate discourse itself by deconstructing the Egyptian culture solely through observation. Orientalism begins with such advances. Said explains that with this knowledge and experience of the East, the “umbrella of Western hegemony” that covers the Orient births complex structures that evokes study, theoretical concepts, and “sociological theories of development” (Said 2).
Once Bonaparte’s imperialistic insignia was etched into Egypt, he left the administrative duties to Egyptian nobles that would relay information back to him. Said’s argument also includes that Orientalism becomes established and successful once the hegemony’s direct influence is no longer needed—that the influence itself is enough for surveillance and order. Putting Egyptian nobles on Bonaparte’s payroll is what Said calls the native informant, where the loyalties of the natives are now compromised due to their conflicting interest with the Orientalist, and secretly “remains a despised heretic” (Said 301) from a distance, perpetuating Orientalist dogmas internally and obscuring the cultural discourse with what is “commonly circulate” by its representation, and not by its truth (Said 3). With that in mind, Orientalism, and the concept of East/West binary, is comprised of a grande fiction that is not only a product of coercion and institutionalization, but a willful deconstruction and abduction of entire Eastern identities and cultures. The Egyptian noble, even if he has all the resources to help his people directly in front of him, he is static and too easily distracted by the Western characters. The only purpose he serves is to repress and force his own people to do exactly what Bonaparte’s excavation team wants them to do.
It is the uncanny ability to turn study of the Orient into a standard of the Western consciousness—with all the stereotypes and the misinformation that is exaggerated. It then then manifests into a “general culture” (Said II), a culture that is written off as the norm by blanketed abstractions. Orientalism does not exist without the willful obliteration and negotiation of the Other’s identity and culture, as it is packaged with “powerful stereotypical representations” that ideological regimes such as Orientalism is dependent on. It is dependent on the daily reproduction of the concept of the ‘Oriental’ performance which is “practiced and (re)negotiated” in daily life (Practical Orientalism, 2006). With these unchallenged stereotypes discourse, and the conversations leading to truth and precision, shifts into a fabrication, a lie, a propaganda strategy for the Western elitists. Said, who was born in Jerusalem, recounts that his own personal experience being a part of the “Orient” was very different from the Westerner’s interpretation. He saw it in art, like Cogniet, and books that pre-dated his time—and then more recently with the “forced information” that is propagated by television, films and “all the media’s resource” (Said 3) that straightens the stereotypes societies outside of the Orient are familiar with.
Said attempts to break down scholarship and culture through a rather difficult lens. How do you go about dismantling a whole study that you yourself unknowingly have participated in? “How does Orientalism transmit or reproduce itself from one epoch to another?” (Said III). How do we interpret and move forward with the phenomenon of Orientalism with all its complexities and not get overwhelmed or watered-down with preference or allegiance? If Western philosophy has the potential to influence Eastern scholarship, not by observation, but through methods of coercion and positions of hierarchy, how authentic could the scholarship of Middle-Eastern and Asian authorities be if there is a possibility that history itself has been payed off by a Western perspective? It is because of Edward Said’s contribution to post-colonial studies that we are now alerted to the pitfalls of misrepresentation, to the coercive measures in which knowledge and influence is regulated—or worst abducted. We are now able to resist the sweep of Orientalist rhetoric.
For someone like Said, who has dedicated quite a bit of time in critical analysis and to the modes of representation in source material that establishes and eventually dictates the trajectory of culture, he argues that each “humanistic investigation” must be met with resistance. Connections that best illustrate the study of the subject matter must be made. We must consider the “historical circumstances” and remove ourselves from the ideology that “literature and culture are presumed to be…innocent,” (Said III). The notion that discourse can’t be dishonest or falsified is an idea that Said detests and must actively be met with opposition and critique, no matter what side of history you are on.
(1982)
Work Cited
Excerpts from Edward Said. Introduction. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1979.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York. Vintage Books: A Division of Random House Inc. 1979
Kruse, Clémentine. “Expedition of Egypt (1798-1801)”. (2012) Les cles due Monyen-Orient. 2 Mar. 2012. http://www.lesclesdumoyenorient.com. Web. Accessed: 2 April 2017.
Silverman, Jacob. “A French Novelist Confronts Orientalism” The New Yorker 30 Mar. 2017. www.newyorker.com . Web. Accessed: 2 Apr. 2017.
Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, Ed: Quentin Hoare & Geoffry Nowell Smith. New York, International Publishers. 1971. Print.
Haldrup, Michael, et al. “Practical Orientalism: Bodies, Everyday Life and the Construction of Otherness.” Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography, vol. 88, no. 2, 2006, pp. 173–184. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3878386.
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