Orientalism

I thought it was pretty cool how Orientalism meant so many different things. The official definition, is the study of near and far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, and peoples by Western scholars. Opposite to “occident”, or “west”.

I also enjoyed looking at Orientalism in the fine arts. The architecture and different paintings and sculptures that were inspired by Eastern culture are truly amazing. An interesting fact about paintings I enjoyed was that “Orientalism” in the arts was not truly established until the 19th century, though Islamic Moors and Turks were depicted in Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque art.

Edward Said’s main argument was that “knowledge about the East is generated not through actual facts, but through imagined constructs that imagined "Eastern" societies as being all fundamentally similar, all sharing crucial characteristics that are not possessed by "Western" societies.” This is most interesting, because it is basically saying since the East is the anthithesis of the West, their culture and lives must also be the antithesis of the West. Said also warned against the "falsely unifying rubrics that invent collective identities," citing such terms as "America," "The West," and "Islam," which were leading to what he felt was a manufactured "clash of civilisations." I never really thought about it before, but what he is saying makes a lot of sense. Each of the topics is too broad and has way too many subcategories to define anything under a collective group name.