Noun
orientalism- In the figurative arts, the tendency to represent eastern subjects, to assume stylistical characteristics original of the East.
Read full definition at wiktionary.org
...Orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists. An "Orientalist" may be a person engaged in these activities, but it is also the traditional term for any scholar of Oriental studies.The use in English of "Orientalism" as a synonym for academic "Oriental studies" is rare; the Oxford English Dictionary cites only one such usage, by Lord Byron in 1812. Orientalism was more widely used in art history referring mostly to the works of French artists in the 19th century, whose subject matter, color and style used elements from their travel to the Mediterranean countries of North Africa and Western Asia. Read full entry
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- 1.Orientalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the book by Edward Said, see Orientalism (book) ... Orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the ...
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O
rientalism
- 2.Orientalism (book) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Orientalism is the 1978 book by Edward Said that has been highly influential in ... Chapter 1: The Scope of Orientalism. 1.2 Chapter 2: Orientalist Structures ...
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O
rientalism_(book)
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Orientalism?
Describe how Orientalism has
evolved into prejudice &
discrimination against Arab
and Muslim Americans.?
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History of Orientalism It is difficult to be precise about the origin of the distinction between the "West" and the "East". However the rise of both Christianity and Islam produced a sharp opposition between European Christendom and the Muslim cultures to the East and in North Africa. During the Middle Ages Islamic peoples were demonised as "alien" enemies of the Christian world. European knowledge of cultures further to the East was very sketchy indeed. Nevertheless, there was a vague awareness that complex civilizations existed in India and China, from which luxury goods such as woven textiles and ceramics were imported. As European explorations and colonisations expanded a distinction emerged between non-literate peoples, for example in Africa and the Americas, and the literate cultures of the East. In the 18th century Enlightenment thinkers sometimes characterized aspects of Eastern cultures as superior to the Christian West. For example Voltaire promoted research into Zoroastrianism in the belief that it would support a rational Deism superior to Christianity. Others praised the religious tolerance of Islamic countries in contrast with the Christian West, or the status of scholarship in Mandarin China. With the translation of the Avesta by Abraham Anquetil-Duperron and the discovery of the Indo-European languages by William Jones complex connections between the early history of Eastern and Western cultures emerged. However, these developments occurred in the context of rivalry between France and Britain for control of India, and were associated with attempts to understand colonised cultures in order more effectively to control them. Liberal economists such as James Mill denigrated Eastern countries on the grounds that their civilizations were static and corrupt. Even Karl Marx characterised the "Asiatic mode of production" as unchanging. Christian evangelists sought to denigrate Eastern religious traditions as superstitions (see Juggernaut). Despite this, the first serious European studies of Buddhism and Hinduism were undertaken by scholars such as Eugene Burnouf and Max Müller. Serious study of Islam also emerged. By the mid-19th century "Oriental studies" was becoming an established academic discipline. However, while scholarly study expanded, so did racist attitudes and popular stereotypes of "inscrutable" and "wily" orientals. Often scholarly ideas were intertwined with such prejudicial racial or religious assumptions. Eastern art and literature were still seen as "exotic" and as inferior to Classical Graeco-Roman ideals. Their political and economic systems were generally thought to be feudal "oriental despotisms" and their alleged cultural inertia was considered to be resistant to progress. Many critical theorists regard this form of Orientalism as part of a larger, ideological colonialism justified by the concept of the "white man's burden". |
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What are two to three What are two to three
characteristics or
orientalism? How can
orientalism and prejudice
contribute to hate crimes
against Muslim and Arab
Americans.
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Orientalism refers to the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, and can also refer to a sympathetic stance towards the region by a writer or other person. Edward Said in his controversial book Orientalism, uses the term to describe a tradition, both academic and artistic, of hostile and deprecatory views of the East by the West, shaped by the attitudes of the era of European imperialism. When used in this sense, it often implies prejudiced outsider interpretations of Eastern cultures. In contrast, the term has also been used by some modern scholars to refer to writers of the Imperialist era who had pro-Eastern attitudes, as opposed to those who saw nothing of value in non-Western cultures. central idea of Edward Said is Western knowledge about the East is not generated from facts, but through imagined constructs that see all "Eastern" societies as fundamentally similar, all sharing crucial characteristics unlike those of "Western" societies, thus, this ‘a priori’ knowledge established the East as antithetical to the West. Such Eastern knowledge is constructed with literary texts and historical records that often are of limited understanding of the facts of life in the Middle East. Before Said's was widely used as the opposite of "occidental". The comparisons between them generally were unfavorable to the Orient. The word "Orient" fell into disrepute after the word "Orientalism" was coined with the publication of Said's book Said emphasized the relationship between power and knowledge in scholarly and popular thinking, in particular regarding European views of the Islamic Arab world. Said argued that Orient and Occident worked as oppositional terms, so that the "Orient" was constructed as a negative inversion of Western culture. In particular, Said can be seen to have been influenced by Gramsci's notion of hegemony in understanding the pervasiveness of Orientalist constructs and representations in Western scholarship and reporting, and their relation to the exercise of power over the 'Orient'. Edward Said limited discussion to academic study of Middle Eastern, African and Asian history and culture, he asserted that Orientalism is, and does not merely represent, a significant dimension of modern political and intellectual culture. Said's discussion of academic Orientalism is almost entirely limited to 19h - 20 century. Most academic Area Studies departments had already abandoned an imperialist or colonialist paradigm of scholarship. He names the work of Bernard Lewis as an example of the continued existence of this paradigm, but acknowledges that it was already somewhat of an exception by the time of his writing . The idea of an "Orient" is a crucial aspect of attempts to define "the West." Thus, histories of the Greco–Persian Wars may contrast the monarchical government of the Persian Empire with the democratic tradition of Athens, as a way to make a more general comparison between the Greeks and the Persians, and between "the West" and "the East", or "Europe" and "Asia", but make no mention of the other Greek city states, most of which were not ruled democratically. Taking a comparative and historical literary review of European, mainly British and French, scholars and writers looking at, thinking about, talking about, and writing about the peoples of the Middle East, Said sought to lay bare the relations of power between the colonizer and the colonized in those texts. Said's writings have had far-reaching implications beyond area studies in Middle East, to studies of imperialist Western attitudes to India, China and elsewhere. It was one of the foundational texts of postcolonial studies. Said later developed and modified his ideas . Many scholars now use Said's work to attempt to overturn long-held, often taken-for-granted Western ideological biases regarding non-Westerners in scholarly thought. Some post-colonial scholars would even say that the West's idea of itself was constructed largely by saying what others were not. If "Europe" evolved out of "Christendom" as the "not-Byzantium," early modern Europe certainly defined itself as the "not-Turkey." Said puts forward several definitions of 'Orientalism' in the introduction to Orientalism. Some of these have been more widely quoted and influential than others: •"A way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient's special place in European Western experience." •"a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between 'the Orient' and (most of the time) 'the Occident'." •"A Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient." •"...particularly valuable as a sign of European-Atlantic power over the Orient than it is as a verdict discourse about the Orient." •"A distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, historical, and philological texts." |
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What are some characteristics I have to list two to three
characteristics of Orientalism
and how it and prejudice
contribute to hate crimes
against Muslims, Arabs, and
any other related group.
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