Orientalism : Edward said

Orientalism : Edward said

This blog is a part of my classroom activity in which students have to write on the interview of Edward Said about Orientalism. Here is the link of the given task by teacher, to see click here

‘orientalism’ is the term used to show Western approach and attitude towards Middle , North African and Asian people, society and culture. Western people see them as unintelligent, undeveloped, uncivilized and lower than themselves.
So, in this way they think themselves superior than the Eastern people. This is the simple meaning of the term ‘orientalism’.
As this term suggests, ‘orient’ that is east and on the contrary there is ‘occident’ means west.
After the coming of the book “Orientalism” by Said, in 1978, this term started getting place in the field of research and education.

Here is my responses to Identify some concept related Orientalism from the interview of Edwards Said.

Orientalism tries to answer the questions of why,when we think of the Middle East for example,we have a preconceived notion of what kind of people live there,what they believe ,how they act.
Orientalism creates an image outside of History, of something that is placid and still and eternal.What the whole world thinks about east and all Orientals may not be the truth, it is not in the history, but it is created mentality by Europe to the world. Power operates the mind of world. As there is politics behind this, Arabs almost always play the role of terrorists, violent and irrational people in most of the movies, they considers Muslim as two things : Villains and fanatics.
Orientalism operates is a threating and demonized figure of the Islamic Terrorist that is emphasized by jounlists and Hollywood. Said argue that there is lot more going on there that is misunderstood or not seen by the peoples of the west.
Said argued that orient and occident worked as oppositional terms, so that the orient was constructed as negative inversion of western culture.
Orientalism traise to explain that how we understand people,strangers, who look different to us by virtue of the color of their skin.

Thank you............. ....

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