Said, Edward William. Orientalism. Penguin Books, 1991. Pages 1-47
The main concept around the idea of Islamophobia in America and the rest of the western world has to do with Edward Said’s orientalism. I have written my second theory paper on Orientalism and how it pertains to Islam and plan to use the many concepts I wrote about in the paper in my final paper.
Since my paper is about the altered views, and false realities that many americans face with Islam, It stems directly into my argument about islamophobia and how is alters the global culture and religious aspects of our world. Below are some of the best quotes relating to Edward Saids article, several of which I put into my second Theory Paper that revolved around Orientalism
-19th century Napoelan gave more interest towards Middle East, Arabia, and Islam, and the orient shifted towards east asia Page 17
-“That is why for me, the islamic oritent has had to be the center of attention” Page 25-26
-From the 1950’s on because of turbulance (use another word) , “Noone will have failed to note how the “East has always signified danger and threat during this period, even as it has meant the traditional Orient as well as Russia.” Page 26
-“Televisions, the films, and all the media’s resources have forced information into more and more standardized molds.” Page 26
-“furthermore , it hardly needs saying that because the Middle East is now so identified with Great Power politics, oil economics and the simple minded dichotomy of freedom-loving, democratic ideal and evil, totalitarian, and terroristic Arabs, the chances of anything like a clear view of what one talks about in talking about the Near East are depressingly small.” Page 27
America calls Islam into question because it is a topic of the east,
-“This is not to say that Orientalism unilaterally determines what can be said about the Orient, but that it is the whole network of interest inevitably brought to bear on (and therefore always involved in) any occasion when that peculiar entity “the orient” is in question.” Page 3
“Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between the ‘Orient’ and (most of the time) ‘the occident’. Page 2
“Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient – dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it : in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.” Page 3 Modern way of looking at Orientalism.
“This is not to say that Orientalism unilaterally determines what can be said about the Orient, but that it is the whole network of interest inevitably brought to bear on (and therefore always involved in) any occasion when that peculiar entity “the orient” is in question.” Page 3 Today, we make islam what is it because of past colonial ways of looking at the religion and culture as barbaric and uncivilized. When in reality that is not true, and the first known math and sciences are written in arabic
“After all, any system of ideas that can remain unchanged as teachable wisdom )in academies, books, congresses, universities, foreign service institutes) from the period of Ernest Renan in the late 1840s until the present in the United States must be something more formidable than a mere collection of lies.” Page 6
“Nevertheless the determining impingement on most knowledge produced in the contemporary West (and here I speak Mainly about the United States) is that it be nonpolitical, that is, scholarly, academic, impartial, above partisan or small minded doctrinal belief.” Page 10
Page 9 Talking about how politics and knowledge. If knowledge is truth that it can’t be made political. So, the media is constantly lying then about topics of islam, so maybe Trumps fake news thing could take us somewhere? How does islam become politics in the United States ?
“My idea is that European and then American interest in the Orient was political according to some of the obvious historical accounts of it that I have given here, but that it was the culture that created that interest, that acted dynamically along with brute political, economic, and military rationales to make the Orient the varied and complicated place that it obviously was in the field I call Orientalism.” Page 12
Indeed, my real argument is that orientalism is – and does not simply represent- a considerable dimestion of modern political-intellectual culture, and as such has less to do with the orient han it does with “our” world. Page 12
On Page 12, Said is talking about the western plot to hold down orientalism
He lists it as geopolitical awareness in aesthetic scholarly economic sociological historical and philological TEXTS All of this maintains orientalism. It takes a certain will or intention to understand the western control and manipulation. He also agrees that it is shaped to a degree by political power. He believes that Orientalism is ” …shaped to a degree by the exchange with power political, power intellectual, power cultural, power moral.” Page 12
19th century Napoelan gave more interest towards Middle East, Arabia, and Islam, and the orient shifted towards east asia Page 17
“There is some significance in the fact that the two most renowned German works on the Orient, Goethe’s Westostlicher Diwan and Friedrich Schlegel’s Uber die Sprache und Weisheit der indier, were based respectively on a Rhine journey and on hours spent in Paris Libraries.” Pg 19
For example, in film .. “My analysis of the Orientalist text therefore places emphasis on the evidence, which is by no means invisible, for such representations as representations, not as ‘natural’ depictions of the Orient.” Page 21
The purpose of Saids writng is to further understand the “strength of western discourse” Page 25
“That is why for me, the islamic oritent has had to be the center of attention” Page 25-26
From the 1950’s on because of turbulance (use another word) , “Noone will have failed to note how the “East has always signified danger and threat during this period, even as it has meant the traditional Orient as well as Russia.” Page 26
“If the world has become immediately accessible to a western citizen living in the electronic age, the orient too has drawn nearer to him, and is now less a myth perhaps than a place crisscrossed by Western, especially American interests.” 26
“Televisions, the films, and all the media’s resources have forced information into more and more standardized molds.” Page 26
“furthermore , it hardly needs saying that because the Middle East is now so identified with Great Power politics, oil economics and the simple minded dichotomy of freedom-loving, democratic ideal and evil, totalitarian, and terroristic Arabs, the chances of anything like a clear view of what one talks about in talking about the Near East are depressingly small.” Page 27
Society and literary culture can only be understood and studied together.” Page 27