Edward Said
Edward Said is very important intellectual figure in the world especially on the basis of being able to see the West and East from the equal perspective. Said was born in Jerusalem when it was British mandate Palestine, on November 1st, 1935. This is significant to see that the environment in his youth was in the Arab Muslim population. As Said referred to himself as a “Christian wrapped in a Muslim culture”. It is clearly seen in his life experiences as “His father was a US citizen with Protestant Christian Palestinian origins who had migrated to Cairo before Edward's birth. His father was a businessman and had served under General Pershing in World War I, while his mother was born in Nazareth, also of Protestant, Christian Palestinian.” This is obvious that Said was able to see East culture by living in it and also have its origins from eastern culture as being Palestinian origin ethnicity. However, there is connection with West by being Christian origin and living there since his university studies.
When there would be looking into important events that has happened in his life period of East culture environment. Edward Said was a in his youth times when Israeli military forces conquered West Jerusalem in 1948 by the war against Arab-Israeli conflict starting spot. And the new era started in his life by that event, because his family went away from there with other Palestinian refugees to Cairo. After that, Said finally was there in Princeton and Harvard universities and lately settled down in the U.S.A., and that was his academic career started, when he became a professor of comparative literature at Columbia University, a celebrated scholar, and the leading supporter for Palestinian self-determination idea from that time.
While we should concentrate on his works in the academic career times, it can be said that he wrote his first political essay on title that, “The Arab Portrayed” as a response to Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir’s declaration in 1969 that “There are no Palestinians.” Said writes that “I took on the slightly preposterous challenge of disproving her, of beginning to articulate a history of loss and dispossession that had to be extricated, minute by minute, word by word, inch by inch.” That piece of his work started a lifetime of writing and activism on this issue. Said was supporter for the rights of the Palestinian people to determine their own future. Actually Arabs were not intellectual enough to write and speak in English at early times of Arab-Israeli conflict starting period; Said can be considered as the most important figure because of that in his times. He says that “The struggle for equality in Palestine/Israel should be directed toward a humane goal, that is, co-existence, and not further suppression and denial.”
Said’s political involvement made him expelled from Israel and Palestine for most of his life and inflamed criticism in that country. Because of his words on that issue, he has been called almost everything as it is written that “the professor of terror” to “a Nazi”, and also his office at Columbia was set on fire. But he did not give up publishing regularly in journal called The Nation, and also the Arabic newspaper that is called Al-Hayat in London, and many other publications he was writing about the issue for Palestinian. The motto of his working on that matter was “the bravery to say the most difficult things to the most difficult people in the most difficult circumstances.” Lastly, “Edward Said was died in his sleep in the early hours of the morning of 25 September 2003.”
Orientalism
The most influential of Said’s many books in the world can be said Orientalism (1978), which criticizes by his own words “subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arab-Islamic peoples and their culture” the book has arguing on that these prejudices have helped only as a rationalization for the West’s imperial ambitions in the Middle East and Asia that is seen as the Orient by the West.
The book is best known for explanation and also as critique that is called “Orientalism”, which he arguing about the wrong underlying Western attitudes toward the East that has been occurred throughout centuries. He mainly argued that this long tradition of false and romanticized images of Asia and the Middle East in Western culture had helped as a justification for Europe and American colonial and imperial ambitions in the world history and it still continues.
In his writing, He says that “the Orient as a term was European invention and had been since ancient, a place of romance, exotic beings and haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences” as he says for the definition of Orient that can be considered as seed of the Orientalism. On the other hand, the definition of The Orient was not completely same for U.S as Americans, because only Europeans had long tradition of what Said’s called as Orientalism. Orient was known as the greatest, richest and oldest colonies of Western Europe, also the source of its civilization and languages so the background information on the meaning of Orientalism of Said is from these definitions and historical knowledge. In short, that means the accepted difference between East from the view of the West. Despite of the fact that, Said also adds that Orientalism less used term in science because of it is too vague and general as he called.
The understanding of Said on the fundamental meaning of Western view for the Orientalism basically making the East as the other for the West that should be seen as completely different than them and they are worse people than western people. It can be clear explanation for their colonial activities, because the norm of accepting Orient people as human beings as they are not in the first place anytime in the Western view of Orientalism. Because of this idea, Said argued that Western writings on the Orient, and the perceptions of the East provided in them, are doubtful and can not be taken at worthy enough. According to Said, the history of European colonial ruling and political power over the East falsely deform the writings of even the most famous, well-meaning and sympathetic Western “Orientalists”.
Nevertheless, Said argued that “the West had dominated the East for more than 2,000 years, since the composition of The Persians by Aeschylus.” Basically means that Europe had dominated Asia that is total East, Orient called in his writing, It was politically so absolutely for so extensive period of time that the most superficially objective writings from West on the East were always with a prejudice that even most of the well-known historian Western scholars could not identify that anytime.
His argument was not just that the West has control over the East politically but also that Western scholars have taken the exploration and analysis of the Orient’s languages, their past and civilization for themselves by that domination. Therefore, Said claims that “they have written East’s history and built its modern identities from a perspective that takes Europe as the norm, from which the “exotic”, “inscrutable” Orient deviates.” It means, Europe was the authority that can write and decide that the West has modern norms but in contrast that East have only exotic, mystery that could be just the other. The writings were always had judge on the East as they are weaker than the West as nature.
For the contemporary world order that is seen as the United States is concerned about the East as it is only a small exaggeration to say that Muslims and Arabs are basically seen as either oil suppliers or probable terrorists. It is proven that especially while Iraq War happened, there was no much understanding the culture of local population as human being, but mostly seen as “the Other” that is recognized as Orient by the term of Edward Said.
In the Orientalism book, Said finishes that Western writings about the Orient show it as an unreasonable, weak, feminized “Other”, and contrasted with the rational, strong, masculine West, a contrast he suggests derives from the need to create “difference” between West and East that can be recognized to absolute “spirits” in the Oriental make-up. In 1978, when the book called Orientalism was first in printed, with fresh memories of the Yom Kippur war and the OPEC crisis still was affected in the world, and in the last chapter of the book, Said argued that these manners that are mentioned in the previous parts of the book still can be seen in the Western media and academic world.
Works cited:
-Amritjit Singh, Interviews With Edward W. Said (Oxford: UP of Mississippi, 2004) 19 & 219.
-Columbia News, Published: Sep 25, 2003
-Said, Edward, Orientalism, an Afterward, Raritan 14:3 (Winter 1995)
-Said, Edward, Orientalism, New York: Random House, 1978
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