Edward Said’s Orientalism: Various Flaws and Weaknesses

Edward Said’s Orientalism is his signature contribution to literary criticism and academic life. The book questions a pattern of misrepresentation of the Orient (East) by the Occident (West). It argues that there had never been a neutral scholarship that studied the Orient. This is because those who were doing the study belonged to the West. This fact exercised colonial power over those being studied. This unequal power relation created the very object of study. It means ’we’ could study ‘them’ because ‘they’ were separated from ‘us’ and subject to ‘our’ rule.

The evaluation and critique of Edward Said’s set of beliefs, known as ‘Orientalism’, forms a significant background for postcolonial studies. Besides, it has also given birth to a new sub-discipline—the cultural study of colonialism. However, Edward Said’s Orientalism has various flaws and weaknesses as well. Various literary theorists, anthropologists, historians, and political scientists have often cited as well as criticized it. However, it received strong criticism from academic Orientalists, including some of Eastern background.

Edward Said’s Orientalism made a parenthetical statement that ‘the world is made up of two unequal halves, Orient and Occident’. This statement presents a useful summary of the binary opposition he creates. Nevertheless, here Said acknowledges the obvious opposition of Orient and Occident. Whereas, at various stages in the text, he complicates the issue. He refers to Orient both in opposition to that which is ‘Western’ and also that which is ‘European’. At the same time, neglecting its already established natural antonym.

Some Major Drawbacks of Said’s Binary Distinction Between the Orient and the Occident

The dualistic definition of the Occidental half of the binary by Edward Said causes a great problem. It is obvious that he uses the two terms apparently interchangeably. Yet, despite the overlapping of definition to some extent, the lack of true synonymy between ‘European’ and ‘Western’ shows that it is no longer explicit what Said is suggesting the Orient (East) to be defined in opposition against. Since this binary construction is crucial to Said’s theory, if it is improperly explained or seems indistinct, the whole theory raises doubt.

Said’s binary distinction between the Orient and the Occident further becomes doubtful by his discussion of the commonality of German Orientalism, American Orientalism, and Anglo-French Orientalism. By naming them separately, and in therefore acknowledging a difference as well as a commonality between the three, Said opens up the possibility of the existence of multiple Orientalisms rather than a single unified system of Western thought, which he elsewhere defines Orientalism as being.

This concession to divisions within European thought, and further, between European and American thought, highlights the problems of trying to discuss and theories such large terms as Europe and Western. Moreover, Said discusses the problem he claims every writer on the Orient faces. These problems, in his views, are: “how to get hold of it, how to approach it, how not to be defeated or overwhelmed by its sublimity, its scope, its awful dimensions”. However, at the same time, he appears faced with similar problems of the sublimity, scope and dimensions of his terms as he discusses the Occident.

EDWARD SAID’S ORIENTALISM: DEFINITION, SUMMARY & ANALYSIS

Fractured Unity of Occidental Models in Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’

As the unity of Edward Said’s Occidental models fractures, his binary system breaks down yet further. The central binary distinction between the Occident and the Orient becomes increasingly complex. For, it becomes more apparent that while we can define Europe and the West in relation to their differences with the Orient, so can we similarly define the West’s component parts in relation to their differences with each other. In this way, the binary opposition upon which Said’s premises his theory is problematic because he has defined it poorly.

Moreover, Said theory also appears doubtful because of the reductive nature of the terms he uses. Such reductive tendencies are not only present in his discussion of Europe/the West/the Occident. They also appear to the same degree in his discussion of the Orient. In addition, while Said acknowledges the geographical span of the Orient, “which extended from China to Mediterranean”, and has already discussed the perils of sublimity in writing about the Orient, he nevertheless still seems to forget the cultural and societal span this sweeping labelling of ‘the East’ takes in, and continues to talk about the Orient as a single sublimed entity.

Edward Said’s Orientalism Theory: Overshadowed by Improperly Defined Concepts

Although Edward Said acknowledges Orientalism as ‘a Western style’. However, he seems to fall too easily into line with the western thought he critiques. He does so by delineating the Orient as a holistic unit because of its exoticism and its ‘otherness’ to the West, instead of any commonality of features within itself. By not seeking enough to define and question the concepts and labels he uses in his discussion, Said falls victim to their reification.

This eventually makes Edward Said’s Orientalism theory overshadowed by concepts that he fails to define properly and gain control over. Also, this evidence seems to indicate the necessity of a number of different binaries to fully construct the complex system of interrelationships. These interrelationships are between the various acting nations and people in this discourse, rather than one simple distinction of the West and the East.

READ BRIEF SUMMARY OF EDWARD SAID’S ORIENTALISM

Major Flaw in Said’s Claim about the Orient’s Silence

As we’ve discussed, Said’s often sweeping and reductive nature is explicit to an extent in his problematic use of the terms around which his argument revolves. Another example of such a generalizing tendency in Orientalism appears in his suggestion that:

“Orientalism is premised upon exteriority, that is, on the fact that the Orientalist, poet or scholar, makes the Orient speak, describes the Orient, renders its mysteries plain for and to the West”.

Another central aspect of Said’s theory is that the knowledge gained about the Orient from representations of it in literature, is crucial to the power the West held over it. In his own words:

“Knowledge of the Orient, because generated out of strength, in a sense creates the Orient, the Oriental, and his world”.

However, we can see such writers such as William Jones, Warren Hastings, Robert Southey, William Hodges as Said describes. That is, to speak for the Orient, and thus, to create it in the minds of their readers. While, theirs are not the only representations of the Orient that exist. Often cited as an Indian author’s first text in English, The Travels of Dean Mahomet (1794) is quite significant in this regard. An autobiographical book , it is an instance of the exception of Said’s generalized rule of exteriority. Its production and existence is enough to dispute Said’s claim about the Orient being spoken merely from the outside—the West.

Mahomet’s work clearly defies Said’s convention. It is an explicit example of a description of the Orient, rendering its mysteries plain and clear for the West, not written by an external ‘Orientalist’, a European poet or scholar travelling in the East. However, its author is an Indian writer who has travelled in and emigrated to Europe.

Edward Said’s Orientalism Theory: Based Upon A Generalized & False Assumption

Therefore, Edward Said’s Orientalism theory seems based upon a generalized and a false assumption that ‘such an Orient was silent’. Although very much in the minority, the existence of Mahomet’s text rejects Said’s notion of such silence. The book further reveals that it is not the imperial eyes’ that solely created the Orient. However, the representations of the East by the Eastern people also played a role in its creation.

Nevertheless, Mahomet is not simply an Indian writer who offers a simple refutation of Said’s claim of exteriority. Instead, since he migrated to Europe, Mahomet is a hybrid figure, as culturally English as he is ethnically Indian. Similarly, his text is a hybrid. Other European Orientalist texts seem to influence it in style and possibly in content. Yet, it is also different due to his different view of events. Although Mahomet’s text doesn’t base on exteriority to the Orient to the same degree as works by contemporaneous writers, neither can seem the work of a completely Oriental insider.

It shows that there are certain complexities surrounding Mahomet’s location as a writer. Therefore, his work’s example cannot completely disprove Said’s claim of Oriental exteriority. However, it does highlight the fact that there are elements to Said’s Orientalism that he oversimplifies and doesn’t explore as fully as he might have done. For Said to claim that “Orientalism is premised upon exteriority” is as reductive in its own way as the earlier problems surrounding his definition of the binary opposition of the Orient and the Occident. This is because it is without examination of a character like Dean Mahomet or other recourse to evidence and examples.

Conclusion

As I’ve demonstrated in the above argument, Edward Said’s Orientalism theory has certain flaws and weaknesses. However, in spite of these flaws and weaknesses, there is a also testament to the importance of Said’s work. That is, it provoked such criticism and debate nearly two decades after its publication.