Edward Said's Theory Of Representation Of Orientation

Representation plays a pivotal role in comprehending and interpreting the complex world around us. According to Stuart Hall, “representation is an essential part of the process by which meaning is produced and exchanged between members of a culture (Hall The Work of Representation 1997). How adequately one represents one’s own self or the world around them is a matter of prime concern for everyone ranging from critics to common man. However, no representation is neutral and it involves issues of power and control. Much postcolonial scholarships revolve around this issues of power and politics of representation with the deployment of what Foucault has popularly termed as “discourse”. Employing the Foucaultian discursive approach, Edward Said’s

He reiterates that the Orient is made visible through various western techniques of representation. These representations “rely upon institutions, traditions, conventions, agreed-upon codes of understanding for their effects, not upon a distant and amorphous Orient” (Orientalism 22). Therefore, the Orient has hardly any role in the process of representation, and it becomes a displaced and excluded object. Said’s theory of representation is widely applicable in any kind of discourse that seeks to analyze the Postcolonial condition. In this regard, the politics of representing Aboriginality has gained considerable significance in the current academic debates and discussions. Representations of the ‘native’ other have circulated in the white Anglo discourse beginning from the journals of the Captain Cook in Australia. As Mudrooroo

Until recently, the western trained archaeologist and anthropologist constructed the identities and histories of the Aboriginal people. The western hegemony which still existed in the anthropological and archeological practice effectively silenced the indigenous voices. The identity of the Indigenous Australians does not rest in an imagined Australian Aborigine, but in the multiplicity of names and identities. However, Anthropology is instrumental in constructing the one Aboriginal identity through the operation of language. Therefore, the Aboriginal people, who became one in order to redefine their cultural identity, seek to re-appropriate their past from the colonialist anthropological and historical narratives. In order to see why it is indispensable for the Aboriginal people to reinvent their past, it is important to find out how the Aboriginal people were actually represented in the Anglo-white narratives. In order to view the white Australian’s perception of the Aborigines from the period of contact till the present times it is necessary to examine some of the literary representations from the vast body of White representations. In 1843, Father Raymond Vaccari, a passionist missionary noted in his memoir, “Among the evil dispositions of the Aborigines, I may mention an