Abstract
This paper revisits Edward Said’s Orientalism to interrogate its methodological strategies, literary representations and contemporary relevance. By highlighting Said’s theses on the overlapping reach of knowledge and power, I argue that Orientalism remains foundational with critical supplementation from contemporary postcolonial scholarship. Drawing on theorists such as Homi Bhaha, Gayatri Spivak, Timothy Mitchell and Mahmood Mamdani, the paper situates Said’s work within ongoing debates on hybridity, subalternity, and global politics. Ultimately, I contend that orientalism endures not as a closed system but as a provocation to rethink representation, identity and cultural authority.
Introduction and Preface
Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978; 2003 preface) remains a critical text in postcolonial studies. In his preface, Said acknowledges the contradictions of writing about the Orient within Western discourse, noting that “neither the term Orient nor the concept of the West has any ontological stability; each is made up of human effort, partly affirmation, partly identification of the Other” (xii). His insistence that imperialism’s epistemological impact is as enduring as the Holocaust’s moral legacy is provocative: “We allow justly that the holocaust has permanently altered the consciousness of our time: why do we not accord the same epistemological mutation in what imperialism has done, and what Orientalism continues to do?” (xvi–xvii). This highlights the enduring epistemological investments of colonialism that resonate with contemporary debates on identity politics and framing that underscores the persistence of stereotypes about the Orient in Western discourse. Said’s call for humanism to resist reductive identities such as “America,” “the West,” or “Islam” remains a powerful counterpoint to the hardening of attitudes in global politics (xxii).
By situating the Orient as a construct inseparable from Western imperial history, Said acknowledges the contradictions of writing about the Orient within Western discourse, noting that even counter‑narratives such as his risk reproducing the metaphors and categories they seek to resist. This tension underscores his central claim that Orientalism is not merely a body of scholarship but a system of power that shapes representation. Turning discourse against itself highlights the arbitrary nature of discourse framing, and yet risks treating “the West” as monolithic, overlooking internal dissent and alternative traditions. Later theorists such as Homi Bhabha complicate this binary by emphasising hybridity and cultural negotiation, suggesting that Said’s model, while foundational, may understate cultural fluidity.
The Scope of Orientalism
In examining oriental material, especially that which claims to capture the history of the East, interrogating the language of these narratives is designated as the first step. Beginning from the very beginning, Said questions the source of the label ‘oriental’ based on classifications embedded in hierarchical tendencies which institutionalise pairs of oppositions based on power plays of supremacy/privilege. He conceives ‘oriental’ as an idea adopted by the West to legitimise and rationalise colonial conquest. He however hints that this may be an oversimplification, as the demarcation between the East and the West dates centuries before colonial conquest (The tendency is for humans to designate an alien/strange/foreign culture/terrain as the ‘Other’). Noting that aside, ‘innumerable voyages of discovery; there were contacts through trade and war’ (39), which had established studies and research into anthropological history and ‘comparative anatomy’. Said grounds that, operating from this ‘position of strength’, emerged advanced discourse in favour of the West that tended/tilted towards elevating and giving it a privileged position in the hierarchy of culture, geography and history. This notion is reinforced and evidenced by existing reports and works that sought to establish that the Orient was ‘patently inferior’ to the West. He further grounds that the idea was to ground the superior authority of the West, as such, policies and checks were imposed to uphold this image of cultural strength. For instance,
It became common practice during the nineteenth century for Britain to retire its administrators from India and elsewhere once they had reached the age of fifty-five… no Oriental was ever allowed to see a Westerner as he aged and degenerated…(42).
While this is a rather outlandish instance, Said maintains that this framed the policy of the colonialist. He further illuminates the process of transition of the Orient from a subject (an idea) into a ‘body of knowledge’- Orientalism; the embodiment of scholarship that has the Orient as its specimen in diverse fields such as anthropology, science, economics, etc. Here, the Orient is a specimen, a subject and raw material that can be forged into ‘useful substance’ (44) for the ‘enhancement of the ‘authority’ at home. Said examines this relationship within given binaries like inferior/superior, developed/developing, etc., alongside words that depict the superiority of a realm over another, i.e., the prophetic and the political (46). Similarly, words like ‘penetrate’, ‘discovery’ signal an existing superior culture, which through great expeditions/escapades subdued, seduced and stripped bare the other to have intercourse with it. Moving through the study of Cromer and Balfour to that of Henry Kissinger, Said typifies the intellectual discourse that goes back and forth on the Orient, while capturing evolving trends/outcomes of power-play in historical discourse.
Similarly, situating Islam in the context of Orientalism projected it as a distorted, ‘misguided version of Christianity’ (61). Said notes, ‘…what is more important still is the limited vocabulary and imagery that impose themselves as a consequence’ (60). An example is the attempt to understand Islam from Biblical perspective because Christianity preceded it. This approach, he concludes, is a prejudiced instrument of proselytisation aimed at converting Muslims to Christians, hence the need to impose a false image on Islam as the ‘other’ religion that has become synonymous with ‘terrorism’. This analogy derives from the biblical construct of Ishmael as a ‘supplanter’. Said explains this as a natural response ‘it is natural for the human mind to resist the assault on it of untreated strangeness’’ (67).
The process captured as ‘‘schematization’’ is typified in Dante’s Inferno, which locates Mohammed in ‘the eighth of the nine circles of hell…Mohammed thus belongs to a rigid hierarchy of evils’’ (68). Said summarises his impression thus,
Dante’s poetic grasp of Islam is an instance of the schematic, almost cosmological inevitability with which Islam and its designated representatives are creatures of western geographical, historical and above all, moral apprehension (69).
Adding points to the arbitrary process involved in classifying the ‘other’ in a ‘fixed closed system’ (70), Said remarks,
…in the process of political domination of the Orient; to formulate the Orient, to give it shape, identity, definition with full recognition of its place in memory, its importance to imperial strategy, and its ‘natural’ role as an appendage to Europe; to make of every generalisation and out of every generalisation (86).
Said further captures the process through which texts emerged as ‘authority’ narratives on the Orient and how they stimulate discourse that defines the birth of other texts (93)
Once we begin to think of Orientalism as a kind of Western projection into and will to govern over the Orient, we will encounter few surprises…Orientalism had accomplished its self-metamorphoses from a scholarly discourse to an imperial system (95).
This calls for an interrogation into texts realised using the Western language. He observes, ‘language and race seemed inextricably tied’ (99). ‘To colonise meant at first the identification of interest’. This soon metamorphosed ideas into tangible institutions.
A bin called oriental existed into which all the authoritative, anonymous, and traditional Western attitudes to the East were dumped unthinkingly’ (102). The effect being carried into reality is a consciousness pervaded by ‘dehumanised thoughts’ (108)
This has transformed the subject into an organised body of knowledge-orientalism, from which other interpretations derive.
So impressive have the descriptive and textual successes of Orientalism been that entire periods of oriental cultural, political and social history are considered mere responses to the West. The West is the actor, the Orient a passive reactor (109).
Therefore, Orientalism is the generic term employed by Said to describe the Western approach to the Orient, ‘to designate that collection of dreams, images, and vocabularies available to anyone who has tried to talk about what lies East of the dividing line’ (73).
Methodological Approaches
Said outlines three strategies to avoid reproducing dogma: Beginning primarily with establishing how the disadvantaged socio-political position of the Orient makes it vulnerable to sustained abuse. He notes how ‘continued investment made orientalism as a system of knowledge about the Orient, an acceptable grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness…’ (6). Investment here is taken by Said to include both the fiscal and ideological. Hinging on Gramsci’s concept of ‘hegemony’, it explains how the West’s privileged position has been legitimised through the machineries/institutions of indoctrination that allow the ‘Orient’ to reinforce and facilitate the identity imposed on it by the West.
Acknowledging his affiliations, Said indicates three methods he has enlisted to tame bias and the tendency towards replicating new sets of dogmas. He identifies three aspects: The distinction between pure and political knowledge (9), the methodological questions (15) and the Personal Dimension (25) as the formulae adopted by him to prevent his falling into the pit of grand narratives. Under the first approach, the distinction between pure and political knowledge, Said interrogates the general notion that projects ‘true’ knowledge as ‘fundamentally non-political’ as a fallacy that obscures and dims the true nature of reality, which is predicated on ideology largely determined by the privileged in/on any given society/subject. One’s relationship with reality (material culture) is therefore significantly impacted by the position he operates from (his affiliations, class, race). He typifies this on page 11. Said therefore designates Orientalism as,
A cultural and political fact, (then) it does not exist in some archival vacuum; quite the contrary…most humanists scholars are, i think perfectly happy with the notion that texts exist in context. (13)
He situates orientalism within the political and humanistic worldview by raising ‘political questions’ while being careful to create a balance by avidly capturing ‘the alliance between cultural work, political tendencies, the state, and the specific realities of domination’ (15). He surmises, ‘governed by such concerns, a humanistic study can responsibly address itself to politics and culture’. Similarly, Said designates a humanist as one whose ‘ideological colour is a matter of incidental significance to politics. This is unlike the person whose works have political undercurrents and therefore ideology is woven into his material’ (15). Said gives that he would be operating under these two positions (political knowledge as incident and pure knowledge as experience) as it is near impossible to dissociate a scholar from reality (10) in guiding his questions on existing narratives on the Orient.
The second approach, the methodological question, deals with the experience of the ‘Orient’ with the West and the colonial culture under specific groupings. This he does in an attempt to capture the general impact of colonial conquest on its colonies (Orient). He espouses how these experiences shape the consciousness that pervade discourse on the Orient and how the writer is not immune from this tendency. He therefore advocates the application of deliberate strategies to create a mastery of the forces of history/culture in intercourse in any attempt to represent and understand the worldview/concept of the Orient.
He advances to proffer two pairs of methodological devices: Strategic location and Strategic formation. While the former locates the ideological position of an author based on his handling of Oriental subject matter, the latter refers to the acknowledgement of the interconnectedness of texts. Therefore, ‘the orientalist poet or scholar, makes the Orient speak, describes the Orient, renders its mysteries plain for and to the West…(21). If premised on Michel Foucault’s premise that whoever controls discourse determines what is true, it then grounds that the re-interpretation and re-representation of the Orient would present an alternative truth, image to contradict/contrast to the systemic image of the ‘other’ built and imposed on it by the West. Or in the least, a counter narrative in dialectic opposition would as much raise questions on ethno supremacist notions inherent in texts to interrogate its claims as a grand image of the Orient.
The third approach, the personal dimension, interrogates how a writer’s experience comes to bear in his occupation of representation. Said typifies the contradictions embedded in his identity as an ‘Arab Palestinian’ and capitalises on his experience as a migrant (in America), to uncover ‘the web of racism, cultural stereotypes, political imperialism, dehumanising ideology’ (27), acting out against the Arab or Muslim Orient. Said maintains that the fate of the Palestinian is amplified in its cultural twist with religious underpinning; a sort of double jeopardy/tragedy.
These combined approaches, distinguishing pure from political knowledge, interrogating methodological questions, and acknowledging personal experience challenge the notion of “true” knowledge as apolitical, anticipate Foucault’s discourse theory, and highlight how binary framing shapes truth claims. Similarly, by foregrounding his own identity as a Palestinian in exile, Said adds a personal dimension that strengthens his critique; however, it also raises questions about the balance between subjective testimony and scholarly detachment. While persuasive, critics such as Gayatri Spivak have argued that Said insufficiently addresses the silencing of subaltern voices, and Homi Bhabha’s emphasis on hybridity complicates Said’s binary framing of Orient and Occident. Said’s strategies are powerful, but they remain vulnerable to reproducing binaries. Spivak’s concern with and Bhabha’s emphasis on hybridity fragments this critique, showing that while Said destabilises Orientalist authority, his framework requires further nuance to account for marginalised voices.
Literary and Cultural Representations
Said notes the shift in the structure of the Orient between the 18th/19th century, which moved between condescending tones and echoes; that largely shaped the way the Orient was perceived. This process he ascribed chiefly to ‘the ability of the mind to breach the doctrinal walls erected between the West and Islam…’ (118). This is consequent on a certain level of influence superimposed by travel literature, arts, paintings, etc. However, new images emerged with the rise of historicism to infuse a pluralist sense of history and establish a link between all cultures and history. This advancement, according to Said, was short-lived with the advent of academic Orientalism. The envisaged change in the fortune of the Orient could not be sustained because of the ‘controlled derivation’ that was superimposed on this new image. This is reflected heavily in the science of anthropology that sought to ‘classify nature and man into types’ (119).
Said identified this shift under four elements: expansion, historical confrontation, sympathy and classification (120). He points out that these ‘secularising tendency rather than remove the old pattern of history only ‘reconstituted, redeployed, redistributed’ the old landmarks, thus introducing a new breed he termed ‘Modern Orientalism’. This hints at hybridity, summarising his thesis on modern orientalism thus, ‘a hero rescuing the orient from obscurity, alienation, and strangeness which he himself had properly distinguished’ (121). He emphasised that research was targeted at the reconstruction of a dead or lost Oriental language, meant ultimately to reconstruct a dead or neglected Orient (123).
Said demonstrates how literature and art naturalised Orientalist stereotypes through Gustave Flaubert’s portrayal of Kuchuk Hanem to exemplify how the Orient was sexualized, reinforcing fantasies of Western dominance: Flaubert’s privileged position “allowed him not only to possess Kuchuk Hanem physically but to speak for her”. Drawing further parallelism with Dante’s Inferno, which situates Mohammed in “the eighth of the nine circles of hell” (68), illustrating how religious imagery framed Islam as deviant. Travel literature and pilgrimages further entrenched the Orient as exotic, licentious, and inferior.
Recounting the tale of ‘a savage display’ by a certain ‘young man’ at the marriage feast of Omar (113) in a narrative credited to Flaubert, Said provided context on how ideas are trafficked and re-echoed through narratives. By highlighting the significant influence of ‘travel literature, imaginary utopias, moral voyages, and scientific reporting’ (117) on representation of the Orient to show the connectedness between the mental structure and physical structure, that is, how the former impacts the manifestation of reality (how ideas evolve into physical institutions).
These examples reveal how cultural production both reflected and reinforced imperial ideology. Scholars such as Meyda Yeğenoğlu, in her feminist reading of Orientalism, have extended Said’s insights by showing how gendered tropes intersect with Orientalist discourse, deepening the understanding of power plays embroiled in cultural texts.
Structures and Restructures of Orientalism
Tracing Orientalism’s evolution, Said identifies a shift from condescending travel accounts to modern academic Orientalism. Figures such as Silverstre de Sacy and Ernest Renan reconstructed Oriental languages, ostensibly rescuing them from obscurity, erasing a supernatural/mystical tendency to rationalize the ‘rationality’ of religion or modern knowledge with models of comparison based on ‘rigid binary opposition between organic and inorganic languages’ (143); a practice that reinforces Western superiority. Said’s thesis that Orientalism “reconstructs and repeats” highlights its cyclical nature: “Orientalism organised itself systematically as the acquisition of Oriental material and its regulated dissemination as a form of specialised knowledge” (165). Interrogating the source of oriental materials based on the nature of their expedition would reveal the purpose of their works, evidenced in their choice of subject, diction, style, approach, etc. While some works are sourced from ‘imaginative, unrealizable dimensions’ (170), others were birthed from pilgrimages. He observes how,
Pilgrims, especially the French ones, exploit the Orient in their works so as in some urgent way to justify their existential vocation. Only when there is some additional cognitive purpose in writing about the Orient does the outpouring of self seem more under control (170)
These narratives have embedded in them distorted images of the Orient as ‘one whose civilization, religion, manners were so low, barbaric, and antithetical as to merit reconquest’ (172) while justifying the West’s domination of the Orient that is ‘obliterated by the designs and patterns foisted upon it by imperial ego, which makes no secret of its powers (173). The narrative of Chateaubriand, for instance, is isolated to reveal the restructuring of the image of the Orient in the light of religious affiliation/inclination. Similarly, upon the interrogation of the literature emanating from Europe, Said grounds his earlier position on the significance of travel literature in image framing. He summarized,
…their legacy embodies the fate of Orientalism and the options to which it was limited. Either one wrote science like Lane or personal literature like Chateaubriand. The problems with the former were its impersonal Western confidence that descriptions of general, collective phenomena were possible and its tendency to make realities not so much out of the Orient as out of its observations. (176)
The point of divergence lies in their style and approaches, as evident in the form and diction of narrative; however, they all converge in the adoption of the Orient as specimen. Said makes an exception as he notes an ‘anti-narrative’ in the ‘par-pilgrimage’ of Neval (181). On the other hand, the sexual innuendos woven through all of Flaubert’s Oriental experiences, exciting or disappointing, are an almost uniform association between the Orient and sex’’ (188). Narratives such as Flaubert’s concretise this invitation to conquer and occupy through image framing, where ‘association is clearly made between the Orient and the freedom of licentious sex’. Said links this to all of Flaubert’s novels that ‘associate the Orient with the escapism of sexual fantasy’ (190). Similarly, while noting the oppressive regulation of Oriental material, Said captures how designating pilgrimage as an important experience significantly shaped the Orient’s identity, thus he accuses Kinglake’s narrative of being a ‘pathetic catalogue of pompous ethnocentrism’ (193). He vents,
Although Kinglake blightly confesses to no knowledge of any Oriental language, he is not constrained by ignorance from sweeping generalizations about the Orient, its culture, mentality, and society (193).
The prestigious position with which pilgrimage was viewed and a narrative built around pilgrimages designating them as a ‘holy land’ and a great feat when attained by the orientalists, so much so that Burton had to disguise to penetrate Mecca.
This cyclical model risks portraying Orientalism as static rather than adaptive. Timothy Mitchell’s Colonising Egypt deconstructs Orientalist discourse and its evolution through modern institutions, highlighting a more dynamic interplay between knowledge and power. By situating Orientalism within broader structures of classification and regulation, Said exposes how scholarship became complicit in imperial governance.
Contemporary Orientalism
In his final chapter, Said distinguishes between latent Orientalism (stereotypes and unconscious assumptions) and manifest Orientalism (policies and practices). Said with an interrogation of the contemporary quality of oriental material as one largely ‘framed by a whole set of forces that brought the Orient into Western empire’ (205). Noting that ‘changing historical patterns’ is responsible for contemporary positioning, which locates the Orient at the periphery. He gives a concentrated summary of these circumstances on page 206. Isolating Islam as its subject, the chapter, having drawn similarity between female representation (207), advances to treat the stereotyping of its subject, designated as backward, degenerate, uncivilised, and retarded’. This form of stereotyping, Said says, is a product of ‘unconscious positivity’, an underlying consciousness that seeks to ground its authority to the detriment of an inferior ‘other’. He gives this consciousness as latent orientalism and goes ahead to draw a process of transition from consciousness to actuality. The actual representation of the imaginary in lived experience generated from stated views about the Orient, he designates as manifest orientalism. This, he said, formed the basis of and the processes of colonialism,
In the precisely actual form in which the modern Orient was lived in, studied or imagined, the geographical space of the Orient was penetrated, worked over, taken hold of. (211)
This, Said gives explains ‘the coincidence between geography, knowledge, and power, with Britain always in the master place’ (215). Having summed up the process of transcendence from latent to manifest orientalism as evidenced by the practice and feeling of colonialism (213), Said proceeded to give a concentrated sample of narratives to typify the link between idea (latent) and actualised (manifest) orientalism (218-219). Enumerating further the process of raising the consciousness on the Orient as a ‘geographical space to be explored (219), and how the West had deployed ‘its diffusive apparatus’ in the actualization of its idea to reality, Said captures the tension in this transition while focusing on the restructure of narrative aimed at maintaining status quo, ‘‘The source of pressure is narrative, in that, if any Oriental detail can be shown to move, or to develop, diachrony is introduced into the system…’’(240), Therefore, narratives in contemporary Orientalism are given as ‘recapitulation’. Even Jaure’s cl/aim to occidentalise the Orientals is put under scrutiny. Said notes,
there is a peculiarly privileged position occupied by the Western orientalist, whose representative function is precisely to show what needs to be seen (247).
Here, what needs to be known is defined by the West. And in this light, history is given as a narrative. Drawing from the narrative of Hurgronje that espoused the power play inherent in the relationship between the East and the West, Said established that there was no such thing as an objective representation of the Orient by the Western orientalist whose aim is clear, ‘to know the Orient then, is to know it because it is entrusted to one’s keeping, if one is a westerner’’ (256).
The religious background to Islamic orientalism is also given space to examine the polarity in the views of different orientalists with an inherent tendency towards Eurocentricism, as evident in their narratives whose style, diction, and form tilt towards the Western model. Massignon’s position that projects Islam as an offspring of Christianity (268) is typified to emphasise the application of how the West’s conception of the Orient to Islam-designates it (282). The final part of Orientalism now identifies and discusses popular images and representations of the Arab culture
…news reel or news photo, the Arab is always shown in large numbers. No individuality, no personal characteristics or experiences. Most of the pictures express mass rage and misery, or irrational gestures…(287).
Contemporary trend in orientalism is enshrined in slanderous and racist labels, such as: Violence and deceit are carried in the Arab genes (287). Said moves forward to the propaganda in the academic attitude towards the Islamic Orient (290), evidenced in condescending narratives masking the reality (292). This leads to a discussion on his point on cultural relations policy (293) that maintains that history cannot be reduced to such notions. (298).
Said locates contemporary orientalism to be engulfed in the ocean of hypocrisy and highlights how it has fizzled out nationalism and imposed Islam as a collective identity. As if there were no Arab Christians, and remarks that the lack of counter-narration (301) upholds this tendency. He notes how this designation governs policy and defines relationships, i.e., Israeli policy towards the Arabs (306). This is enshrouded in the practice of selective vision where ‘…truths are self-evident only to a privileged or initiated observer (310). Western Orientalists have taken it as a prerogative to define the reality in the Orient. According to Lewis’ narrative ‘Muslims, like most other colonial peoples, are incapable of telling the truth or even seeing it… they are addicted to mythology…’ (318). Said emphasised the need for counter-narratives, giving the onus laid on the Islamic/oriental orientalist to project an alternative image of Islam, the Arab and the Orient as a whole. (323). He notes that while ‘there are dozens of organisations in the United States for studying the Arab and Islamic Orient, there are not in the Orient …’ (325). He states that there is no avoiding the interrogation of the West in its relationship with the East and the power-play that envelops it, hence, ‘there is no avoiding’ the fact and tendencies that govern such relationships. Consequently, Said summarises thus,
Modern thoughts and experience have taught us to be sensitive to what is involved in representation, in studying the Other, in racial thinking, in unthinking and uncritical acceptance of authority and authoritative ideas (327).
He therefore calls for political and historical awareness to challenge the failure of Orientalism to identify with human experience (328).
This distinction illuminates how ideas translate into colonial domination: “In the precisely actual form in which the modern Orient was lived in, studied or imagined, the geographical space of the Orient was penetrated, worked over, taken hold of” (211). Islam becomes the focal point of contemporary Orientalism, framed as backward and threatening. Said’s critique remains strikingly relevant, particularly in the context of U.S. foreign policy and media portrayals of the Middle East. Later scholarship, such as Mahmood Mamdani’s Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, argues that the binary is a misleading Western construct that creates a dichotomy between secular, cooperative [good] vs fanatical [bad] Muslims, stripping Muslims of political agency whose identity is defined based on alignment with U.S goals. This exemplifies how Orientalist binaries intensified after 9/11, suggesting that Said’s framework requires updating to account for new geopolitical realities. His call for humanism to resist reductive identities and embrace pluralism remains a powerful counterpoint to the persistence of Orientalist discourse.
Distinguishing between latent Orientalism (stereotypes and unconscious assumptions) and manifest Orientalism (policies and practices) illuminates how ideas translate into colonial domination, though the boundary between latent and manifest is often blurred. Islam becomes the focal point of contemporary Orientalism, framed as backward and threatening. Said’s critique remains strikingly relevant, particularly in the context of U.S. foreign policy and media portrayals of the Middle East. Said’s framework requires updating to account for new geopolitical realities. His call for humanism to resist reductive identities and embrace pluralism remains a powerful counterpoint to the persistence of Orientalist discourse.
Said emphasized that “the hardening of attitudes, the tightening of the grip of demeaning generalization and triumphalist cliché…has found fitting correlatives in the looting, pillaging and destruction of Iraq’s libraries and museum” (xiii) and these are the tendencies that all critique of ideas, representations and discourse must interrogate.
Conclusion
In his Afterword (1995), Said, alluding to the reception of Orientalism as evidenced by its different editions, called for following study with critical lenses into labels that sought to designate/dismiss Orientalism as ‘Islamism, Muslim fundamentalism and an anti-western narrative’. He contested that this was imposed by certain ‘political and urgently ideological elements’ (334). However, his earlier claim that his aim is to present contrasting ideas/realities evident in the hierarchical relationship between elements of oppositional pairs (elements that stand culturally and historically in binary opposition) is maintained. Also, to unravel through examination of the structure, pattern and language of oriental narratives, their ideological inclination to expose the Eurocentric tendencies which the Oriental/Arab orientalist is not absolved of, as he has been indoctrinated and has internalised ideas of traditional orientalism.
He highlights his special interest as ‘the extension of post-colonial concerns to the problems of geography’ (352). Orientalism as a narrative casts light on the representation of the ‘East, Islam as an Orient’ and the orientation (consciousness) imposed on it by the West. The oriental scholar is not immune to this consciousness, which has been passed down through history. Its aim is to invoke questions that would stimulate a deeper study of the ideology backing representations of all narratives on the Orient, the affiliations of the orientalist notwithstanding.
Said concludes by giving a peek into emerging trends in scholarship that transcend institutionalized boundaries, ‘…of domains once believed to have been exclusive to one people, gender, race or class are re-examined and shown to have involved others’’ (353-354). He is optimistic that a scholarship would make a breakthrough to advance knowledge beyond established landmarks.
Said’s Orientalism is both a critique of Western scholarship and a call for humanistic engagement. Its enduring strength lies in exposing the coverage of knowledge and power. Yet its limitations, such as binary framing, insufficient attention to hybridity, and underdeveloped engagement with subaltern voices, invite further interrogation. Ultimately, Orientalism remains a foundational text whose relevance endures, not as a closed system, but as a provocation to rethink representation, power, and cultural identity.
Works Cited:
- Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994.
- Mamdani, Mahmood. Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror. Pantheon, 2004.
- Mignolo, Walter D. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Duke UP, 2011.
- Mitchell, Timothy. Colonising Egypt. Cambridge UP, 1988.
- Quijano, Aníbal. “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America.” Nepantla: Views from South, vol. 1, no. 3, 2000, pp. 533–580.
- Said, Edward W. Orientalism. 25th Anniversary ed., Penguin, 2003.
- Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Can the Subaltern Speak? Edited by Rosalind C. Morris, Columbia UP, 2010.
- Yeğenoğlu, Meyda. Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism. Cambridge UP, 1998.
Ajibogwu, Rosemary Ojone, PhD, is an academic who has applied herself in a number of ways in research. She believes in humanising knowledge and advocates for revolutions in reading to account for current trends and evolving histories. She’s currently a lecturer at Bingham University, Karu.