The Man
Edward Said was born in Mandatory Palestine to a Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother. He was largely educated in Cairo, Alexandria, and finally at an elite prep school in the United States. He would go on to complete his Bachelor of Arts at Princeton, in addition to a Masters of Arts and Doctors of Philosophy in English Literature at Harvard.
With his education completed, in 1963 Said joined the faculty of Columbia University, where he would continue to work for the next four decades until his death.
Orientalism
Said’s book Orientalism is easily his most famous work. The book explores the backstory of the academic school of Orientalism and in doing so, exposes its very core as fundamentally linked to the imperialist and colonialist
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He posits that the vast majority of 19th century writers were very well acquainted with thee fact of empire. Various liberal cultural heroes of the time had views on race and imperialism that are easily found in the writings. He gives the example of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty and Representative Government, a book which extols the virtues of democracy, where Mill notes that these views could not be extended to India because “the Indians were civilizationally, if not racially, inferior.” Said also notes that a similar paradox is found in Marx’s writings, but does not elaborate upon that in the …show more content…
He says that in small part thanks to new electronic media, ranging from film to television, standardization and stereotyping of the orient has intensified the 19th century’s orientalist understanding of “the mysterious Orient.” He gives the primary example of the Middle East and the Western perception of Arabs and Islam. Of three chief reasons he gives for the growth of this problem, at least two can be directly attributed to orientalism. The first is the history of anti-Arab and anti-Islamic prejudices prevalent in the West, the third is the absence of a cultural position to identify Arabs or Islam. By creating an other, through the dichotomy between occident and orient, identification has been made near impossible, and by furthering a imperialist ideology through academic discourse for centuries, prejudices have become
In Document 1, a letter written in 1898, by an educator in India, Syed Ahmad Khan, tells of how Muslims are falling behind in education, the antiquated ideas of their forefathers do not survive their modern day and they must adapt British education. The Muslims were once the frontrunners of the world in medicine, technology, and education. He stated,”If the Muslims do not take to the system of education introduced by the British, they will not only remain a backward community, but will sink lower and lower until there will be no hope of recovering left to them.” The reluctance to adapt to British knowledge will ultimately be the demise of Islam. Similarly, 40 years later, Muslim literary figure and Egyptian nationalist, Taha Husayn, is all
One can view Islam as a terrorist religion, while another can view Islam as a peaceful religion. Neither perspective is wrong of Islam because perspective can be influenced by environment, personal experience, society, family, and a variety of other factors. This is why Marjane Satrapi’s unique influences affect her perspective on how she portrays imperialism, social classes, and revolution in her life and the book Persepolis. The photograph shows the United States and Europe taking the natural resources out of Africa.
They provide the exotic “other”, a juxtaposition with the Greeks who were perceived as the model of a civilized people, a literary trope that dates back to Herodotus and can be found in other Hippocratic texts, such as The Sacred Disease. The Greek author asserts that there is a certain “…feebleness of the Asian race” resulting from their “…mental flabbiness and cowardice.” (AWP 160) This, the author claims, leads them to be less warlike and be supportive of a monarchy—characteristics that would have been anathema to a Greek and would have placed Asians as mentally inferior to the Greeks. This emphasis on the inferiority of their mental condition is a theme that has been continued in by white authors in Western medicine with its views of Africans.
Schallmayer makes the argument that some races are just better than others, and that decades of non-European races losing in competition to Europeans just proves European superiority (Doc 6). However, this document should also be applied to other European nations because Germany was a particularly extreme center for racism. To prove this point, a British viewpoint reveals a less strained opinion on the subject. The Earl of Cromer’s memoir provides a positive outlook on the Egyptians ability to learn, but he still upholds his condescending European perspective, by stating that Egyptians would not have the ability to learn if it wasn’t for the British (Doc 7). The document must be examined with caution due to it being an excerpt from a published memoir which indicates time passing, thus making it a possible exaggeration to bring forth literature as a symbol of European nationalism.
Upton Sinclair was an author and socialist figure during the early 1900s. His place in history was forged by his many accomplishments in successful writing that exposed the horrors of the meat packing industry. He was also a famed critique of the government and offered ideas on its reformation and even ran for governor as a socialist but primarily gained he place in history for his book The Jungle . Upton Sinclair is a significant figure in history due to his outspoken nature and his exposure of the meat industry that led to a multitude of new regulations making food in America safer.
There are many men that have lived through the ages that can be used as people to mirror our character off of. Two people that i consider men of great character are Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and Ronald Reagan, who have both lived admirable lives; but sadly I must chose from only one of them. For me, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain shows promise as a mentor. He has multiple characteristics that are important for Servite men to have.
Media has covered the domestic issues and many international incidents which flow negative opinions of Islam. It is stated that Muslim people are given less opportunity to interact with the different people in a different scenario and it leads people to move to media for the information which is articulated (Bryant and Zillman, 2002). It is fact that there exist violence and discrimination against women and there exist breach of human rights of Muslim and is widely covered by mass media. Though some artifacts are demonstrated by media, there is a limitation for the truth about the Islam and Muslim to some extent. It is revealed that media has the power to influence the behavior and attitudes towards to Muslim people in Australia.
The book deals with the history of Islam and provides arguments over the liberal interpretation of the religion. The book puts the blame on the Western imperialism and the self-serving misinterpretations of Islamic law by the past scholars for the controversies which are taking place within Islam. The work by Reza Aslan challenges the clash of civilizations. The book
‘The Good Earth’ and the Possibility of ‘Anti-Orientalist’ Orientalism In 1931, American author Pearl S. Buck published The Good Earth, an English-language novel depicting a peasant’s life in rural China. The novel was immediately a financial and critical success; after selling millions of copies, it would win the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. Buck’s writing was praised for its evenhanded and insightful portrayal of Chinese culture and society. Retrospectively, however, many scholars have criticized it as a well-intentioned but reductionist and Orientalist treatment of China. Using Said’s conception of Orientalism as an analytical framework, this essay examines and evaluates charges of Orientalism in The Good Earth.
The author leaves out all that is anti-imperialism due to morals, as he states that self government is not a necessary component of civilization and says to the Senate“and treasure already spent a profitable loss than to apply any academic arrangement of self-government to these children. They are not capable of self-government. How could they be? They are not of a self-governing race. They are Orientals, Malays”
However, Marx addresses this matter and provides some basis in which we can understand the manifestation of such prejudices in society. Marx’s theories regarding of imperialism are of vital importance to our understanding of the issue of immigration today. In his article titled “On Imperialism in India” Marx addresses the matter of imperialism in the context India and quotes “Sir Stamford Raffles, the English Governor of Java” for his description of the effects of the ‘Dutch East India Company’ which states
Ameen Rihani:Bridging East and West: a pioneering call for Arab-American. New York. University Press of America.
Our academic disciplines, journals, movies, and our whole cultural system is highly affected by the inevitability of the conflict between 'Islam ' and 'West ' (Adib-Moghaddam, 2011). This " clash regime" is a cultural artifact which is positioned in different strata of society because it is made up by a system of interdependent discourses that disperse into society and form a powerful 'clash mentality (Adib-Moghadam, 2011, p.5). This clash regime has constituted a main part of today 's national and international political culture (Adiv-Moghaddam, 2011, p.5). Therefore, European culture gained its own strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient (Said, 1978). According to Macfie (2002), one of the convictions that is widely held in orientalism is the belief that Islam unlike other religions, is inherently violent its followers believe in the doctrine of Holy War or Jihad.
This is because orientalism is emerged during the period of European enlightenment which brings about the reasons of the West superiority over the East for a reason of European colonialism to make sense of the history when the East that are seen as different and need intervention and supported the Western colonial policy. To note that, the term ‘Orientalism’ is not invented by Said rather by those who studied or specialists about the Middle
We are going to see to what extent we can say that Macaulay’s “Minute on Indian Education” reflects British society and the western point of view at the time. In a first part, we will focus on the opposition between Orientalists and Anglicists and in a second part, we will see about the western society seen as culturally superior compared to other nations and societies. On one hand, there was an opposition