Thus the elaborate and detailed examinations of Oriental languages, histories and cultures were carried out in a context in which the supremacy and importance of European civilisation was unquestioned.

But as a group of related disciplines Orientalism was, in important ways, about Europe itself, and hinged on arguments that circulated around the issue of national distinctiveness, and racial and linguistic origins. Orientalism, in Said‘s formulation, is principally a way of defining and ‘locating‘ Europe‘s others. Since Said‘s analysis, Orientalism has revealed itself as a model for the many ways in which Europe‘s strategies for knowing the colonised world became, at the same time, strategies for dominating that world. The very term ‘Oriental‘ shows how the process works, for the word identifies and homogenises at the same time, implying a range of knowledge and an intellectual mastery over that which is named. The key to Said‘s interest in this way of knowing Europe‘s others is that it effectively demonstrates the link between knowledge and power, for it ‘constructs‘ and dominates Orientals in the process of knowing them. Orientalism describes the various disciplines, institutions, processes of investigation and styles of thought by which Europeans came to ‘know‘ the ‘Orient‘ over several centuries, and which reached their height during the rise and consolidation of nineteenth-century imperialism. Said‘s intervention is designed to illustrate the manner in which the representation of Europe‘s ‘others’ has been institutionalised since at least the eighteenth century as a feature of its cultural dominance.

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on NovemĮdward Said‘s publication of Orientalism (1978) made such an impact on thinking about colonial discourse that for two decades it has continued to be the site of controversy, adulation and criticism.

Orientalism by Edward W. Said