Orientalism: what it is, and how it made it easier to dominate a continent

Orientalism is the way Western media and scholars interpret and describe the Eastern world.From a supposedly objective point of view. It is a concept that is associated with criticism of how the West came to create a story about Asia that legitimized its invasion and colonization.

In this article we will see what orientalism has consisted of and how it has been the cultural arm with which the West has dominated Asia, especially the Near and Middle East, according to theorists such as Edward Said, famous for making this concept known.

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The origins of Orientalism as an idea

Authors linked to the Asian continent and Arab culture have actively denounced both the perspective on Asia that is disseminates in the educational centers of the first world as the stereotypes associated with the Orient transmitted by the media communication. Edward Said, theoretician and activist, captured these criticisms in his famous works-essays Orientalism and culture and imperialism.

According to Said, Western society has learned to refer to the inhabitants of Asia by appealing to a concept of "the other", the unknown, something that establishes a moral and empathic border between these people and the direct heirs of European culture. Unfortunately, this is the position that has been taken by much of the European orientalist scholars.

Missionaries, explorers and naturalists who entered the Orient to examine it did much new work, but they also imposed an external vision. on the cultural heterogeneity of Asia Even those called by curiosity about the strange, made it easier than the limit between us and the they turned oriental societies into an enemy to be defeated and conquered, either to protect the West or to save the Asians and Arabs from themselves.

The civilizing story

In a way that escapes any reason, since the time of Roman rule, there has been a certain need on the part of the great empires to "civilize" the eastern peoples, to help the barbarians to develop in order to survive in conditions optimal. The narrative that has been constructed since the 18th century in history books regarding Orientalism has sadly been that of domination.

No matter the author or the intellectual condition of the writers or narrators who speak of Asia through Orientalism, they all follow the same descriptive pattern: associate everything that is done there with the bad habits of the foreigner, the savage, the infidel, the underdeveloped... In short, a simplistic description of the Asian people and their customs, always using the characteristic concepts of Westerners, as well as their scale of values, to talk about cultures that are they don't know

Even if the exoticism of the Orient is extolled, there is talk about these peculiarities as something that can only be appreciated from the outside, a phenomenon that is not so much a merit of the orientals as a feature that has appeared in an unsought way and that is only appreciated since out. Ultimately, Orientalism separates Orientals from what they could be proud of.

It could be affirmed that the binary account of the western vision regarding the oriental world, the "us" and the "others" has been negative for the people of Asia, especially if another race is associated with it. The Western point of view, which claims to be the holder of truth and reason, cancels any possibility of reply by the observed. It is that imaginary strip between the West and Asia imposed by orientalism that has allowed a distorted vision of the strange, of the unknown, so that this simplification makes it easy to conclude that it is a culture lower.

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The legacy of the orientalist story

For specialist scholars in Orientalism such as Edward Said or Stephen Howe, all the analysis, exploration and interpretation that emerged from Western encyclopedias, especially English and French, he supposed a leveling of the ground for the legitimization and justification of the colonialism of the time. The expeditions to Egypt, Syria, Palestine or Turkey served to prepare reports favorable to a potential political-military intervention in the area: "We have a duty to govern them for the good of the proper civilization of the Orientals and that of the West above all else," said Arthur James Balfour in 1910.

This was one of the speeches that represented the role of England in the colonial era of the 19th century, seeing its influence in the Maghreb and the The Middle East is the result of growing local nationalism (Arab, African, Ottoman) and tensions over the area's economic resources such as the Canal de suez. What was supposed to be a dialogue between West and East, turned out to be a political tool of occupation by the European powers.

Eveling Baring, the so-called “owner of Egypt”, crushed the popular nationalist rebellion of Colonel Ahmed al-Urabi (1879-1882) on behalf of the British Empire, and shortly thereafter, delivered another speech of dubious impartiality: “according to Western knowledge and experience, tempered by local considerations, we will consider what is best for the race submitted”. Once again, it is incurred without any kind of modesty or remorse.

Edward Said's critique

A fully orientalist debate would not be understood without mentioning the Palestinian scholar and writer Edward W. Said (1929-2003) for his work Orientalism. This essay meticulously describes clichés and stereotypes that have been built over the last few centuries on everything that is Oriental, Arab or even Muslim. The author does not make a study of the history of the East, but he does uncover all the machinery propaganda of "ideological clichés" to establish a confrontational relationship between the East and the West.

In both the 18th and 19th centuries, the dichotomy of “us and the others” was coined, with the latter being the inferior civilization that needed to be controlled by a central power from Europe. The era of decolonization was a setback for the interests of the historical powers, leaving orphans of arguments to perpetuate the interference in the interests of the East.

Consequently, Western conservative propaganda returned to confront two cultures with an unequivocally warmongering term: "the clash of civilizations." This clash responds to the inheritance of orientalism to endorse the geostrategic plans by the superpower of the United States, especially for legitimize the military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

According to Said, once again a distorting and simplifying element of a whole set of cultures was set in motion. The value placed on the perspective of Orientalism was well recognized by his fellow citizens. Europeans, who supported any "civilizing" action towards those lands that are so far away remain. The Italian writer Antonio Gramsci makes another assessment of all this "western truth" and proceeds to deconstruct his theories. For the transalpine, American anthropology aims to create a homogenizing account of culture, and this has been seen time and time again throughout history.