Orientalism: what it is, and how it facilitated the domination of a continent

Western culture has created a perspective on Asia that legitimizes its subjugation.

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

In this article we will see what Orientalism has been 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..

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 disseminated in the educational centers of the first world and the stereotypes associated with the East transmitted by the media. Edward Said, theorist and activist, expressed these criticisms in his famous works-essays Orientalism y 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 empathetic boundary between these people and the direct heirs of European culture.. Unfortunately, this is the position taken by a large part of European Orientalist scholars.

Missionaries, explorers and naturalists who went into the East to examine it did many new works, but also imposed an external vision on the cultural heterogeneity of Asia Even those called by the curiosity for the strange, made it easier for the boundary between the us and the them to turn Eastern societies into an enemy to be conquered and conqueringwhether to protect the West or to save Asians and Arabs from themselves.

The civilizing narrative

In a way that escapes all 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 optimal conditions. The narrative that has been constructed since the 18th century in history books with respect to Orientalism has been, sadly, one 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: associating everything that is done there with the bad habits of the foreigner, the savage, the infidel, the underdeveloped... In short, a simplistic description is made of the people of Asia and their customs, always using the concepts characteristic of Westerners, as well as their scale of values, to talk about cultures that are unknown.

Even if the exoticism of the East is extolledeven if the exoticism of the Orient is extolled, these peculiarities are spoken of as something that can only be appreciated from the outside, a phenomenon that is not so much a merit of the Orient as a trait that has appeared in an unsought way and that can only be appreciated from the outside. In short, Orientalism separates Orientals from what they could be proud of.

It could be argued that the binary narrative of the Western view of the Eastern world, the "us" and the "others," has been negative to say the least for the people of Asia, especially when associated with another race. The Western point of view, which proclaims itself to be the holder of truth and reason, nullifies any possibility of rejoinder, nullifies any possibility of rejoinder on the part of the observed one.. It is this imaginary strip between the West and Asia imposed by Orientalism that has allowed a distorted vision of the strange, the unknown, so that this simplification makes it easy to conclude that it is an inferior culture.

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The legacy of the orientalist narrative

For Orientalist scholars such as Edward Said and Stephen Howe, all the analysis, exploration and interpretation that emerged from the Western encyclopedias, especially the English and French ones, represented a paving of the way for the legitimization and justification of colonialism at the time. a paving of the way for the legitimization and justification of the colonialism of the time.. Expeditions to Egypt, Syria, Palestine or Turkey served to prepare reports favorable to a potential political-military intervention in the area: "we have the duty to govern them for the sake of the civilization of the Orientals themselves and that of the West above all else," said Arthur James Balfour in 1910.

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

Eveling Baring, the so-called "master 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 experiences, tempered by local considerations, we will consider what is best for the subject race". Once again, this is done without any 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 the clichés and stereotypes of the that have been built over the last centuries on everything Eastern, Arab or even Muslim. The author does not make a study of the history of the East, but uncovers all the propaganda machinery of "ideological clichés" to establish a confrontational relationship between East and West.

In both the 18th and 19th centuries, the dichotomy of "us and the others" was coined, 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 them orphaned of their own interests.The decolonization era was a setback for the interests of the historical powers, leaving them without arguments to perpetuate their interference in the interests of the East.

Consequently, Western conservative propaganda once again confronted two cultures with an unequivocally warmongering term: "the clash of civilizations". This clash responds to the heritage of orientalism to endorse geostrategic plans on the part of the U.S. superpower, especially to legitimize the military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. legitimize the military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq..

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