Orientalism

In his groundbreaking book Orientalism, Edward Said systematically studies Western scholarship on and representation of the Near East or the Arab world. Focusing on British, French, and U.S. thinkers and artists since the 19th century, Said argues that rather than pure, objective, and disinterested scholarship and cultural practices, Orientalism aims to discursively subjugate the East. It belongs to the imperial drive to, rephrasing Socrates, “know thy colony” and control it. Said incisively diagnoses Orientalist representations as projecting ...