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''Orientalism'' is a 1978 book by Edward W. Said, a critical study of the cultural representations that are the bases of Orientalism, the West's patronizing perceptions and fictional depictions of "The East" — the societies and peoples who inhabit the places of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Orientalism, Western scholarship about the Eastern World, was and remains inextricably tied to the imperialist societies who produced it, which makes much Orientalist work inherently political and servile to power, and thus intellectually suspect.〔''The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought'', Third Edition. (1999) p. 617.〕 In the Middle East, the social, economic, and cultural practices of the ruling Arab élites indicate they are imperial satraps who have internalized the romanticized "Arab Culture" created by British and American Orientalists; the examples include critical analyses of the colonial literature of Joseph Conrad, which conflates a people, a time, and a place into a narrative of incident and adventure in an exotic land.〔''The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism'', Third Edition (1994), pp. 642.〕 The critical application of post-structuralism in the scholarship of ''Orientalism'' influenced the development of literary theory, cultural criticism, and the field of Middle Eastern studies, especially regarding how academics practice their intellectual enquiry when examining, describing, and explaining the Middle East.〔Stephen Howe, ("Dangerous mind?" ), ''New Humanist'', Vol. 123, November/December 2008〕 The scope of Said's scholarship established ''Orientalism'' as a foundation text in the field of Post-colonial Culture Studies, which examines the denotations and connotations of Orientalism, and the history of a country's post-colonial period.〔''The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism'', Third Edition (1994), pp. 642–43, 581–83〕 As a public intellectual, Edward Said debated Orientalism with historians and scholars of area studies, notably, the Orientalist and historian Bernard Lewis, who said that the thesis of ''Orientalism'' was “anti–Western”.〔Oleg Grabar, Edward Said, Bernard Lewis, ("Orientalism: An Exchange" ), ''New York Review of Books'', Vol. 29, No. 13. 12 August 1982. Accessed 4 January 2010.〕 For subsequent editions of ''Orientalism'' (1978), Said wrote an "Afterword" (1995)〔Orientalism: "Afterword" pp. 329–352.〕 and a "Preface" (2003) addressing criticisms of the content, substance, and style of the work as cultural criticism.〔Orientalism: "Preface," pp. xi-xxiii.〕 ==Overview== Orientalism is the source of the inaccurate, cultural representations that are the foundations of Western thought and perception of the Eastern world, specifically about the region of the Middle East. The principal characteristic of Orientalism is a "subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arab–Islamic peoples and their culture", which prejudice derives from Western images (representations) that reduce the Orient to the fictional essences of "Oriental peoples" and "the places of the Orient"; such cultural representations dominate the communications (discourse) of Western peoples with non–Western peoples.〔The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, Third Edition, Allan Bullock and Stephen Trombley, Editors. 1993, p. 617.〕 In practice, the imperial and colonial enterprises of the West are facilitated by collaborating régimes of Europeanized Arab élites who have internalized the fictional, romanticized representations of Arabic culture — the Orientalism invented by Anglo–American Orientalists.〔"Between Worlds", '' Reflections on Exile, and Other Essays'' (2002) pp. 556–57〕 As such, Orientalist stereotypes of the cultures of the Eastern world have served, and continue to serve, as implicit justifications for the colonial ambitions and the imperial endeavours of the U.S. and the European powers. In that vein, about contemporary Orientalist stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims, Said said: The thesis of ''Orientalism'' (1978) proposes that much of the Western study of Islamic civilization was an exercise in political intellectualism; a psychological exercise in the self-affirmation of “European identity”; not an objective exercise of intellectual enquiry and the academic study of Eastern cultures. Therefore, Orientalism was a method of practical and cultural discrimination that was applied to non-European societies and peoples in order to establish European imperial domination. In justification of empire, the Orientalist claims to know more — essential and definitive knowledge — about the Orient than do the Orientals.〔Said, Edward. ''Orientalism'' (1978) p. 12.〕 That Western writings about the Orient, the perceptions of the East presented in Orientalism, cannot be taken at face value, because they are cultural representations based upon fictional, Western images of the Orient. That the history of European colonial rule and political domination of Eastern civilizations, distorts the intellectual objectivity of even the most knowledgeable, well-meaning, and culturally sympathetic Western Orientalist; thus did the term "Orientalism" become a pejorative word regarding non–Western peoples and cultures: Said said that the Western world dominated the Eastern world for more than 2,000 years, since Classical antiquity (8th c. BC – AD 6th c.), the time of the play ''The Persians'' (472 BC), by Aeschylus, which celebrates a Greek victory (Battle of Salamis, 480 BC) against the Persians in the course of the Persian Wars (499–449 BC) — imperial conflict between the Greek West and the Persian East.〔Said, Edward. ''Orientalism'' (1978) pp. 56-59.〕〔''The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature'', M.C. Howatson, Editor. 1990, p. 423.〕 Europe's long, military domination of Asia (empire and hegemony) made unreliable most Western texts about the Eastern world, because of the implicit cultural bias that permeates most Orientalism, which was not recognized by most Western scholars. In the course of empire, after the physical-and-political conquest, there followed intellectual conquest of a people, whereby Western scholars appropriated for themselves (as European intellectual property) the interpretation and translation of Oriental languages, and the critical study of the cultures and histories of the Oriental world.〔''The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory'', Third Edition, J.A. Cuddon, Editor. 1991, pp. 660–65.〕 In that way, by using Orientalism as the intellectual norm for cultural judgement, Europeans wrote the history of Asia, and invented the "exotic East" and the "inscrutable Orient", which are cultural representations of peoples and things considered inferior to the peoples and things of the West.〔Said, Edward. ''Orientalism'' (1978) pp. 38-41.〕 The thesis of ''Orientalism'' concluded that "Western knowledge of the Eastern world", i.e. Orientalism, fictionally depicts the Orient as an irrational, weak, and feminized, non-European Other, which is negatively contrasted with the rational, strong, and masculine West. Such a binary relation, in a hierarchy of weakness and strength, derives from the European psychological need to create a difference of cultural inequality, between West and East, which is attributable to "immutable cultural essences" inherent to Oriental peoples and things.〔Said, Edward. ''Orientalism'' (1978) pp. 65–67.〕 The binary relationship of strong-West-and-weak-East reinforces the cultural stereotypes invented with literary, cultural, and historical texts that are more fictitious than factual, which give the reader of Orientalist texts (history, travelogue, anthropology, etc.) a limited understanding of life in the Middle East, because Orientalism conflates the different societies of the Eastern world, into the homogeneous world of "the Orient".〔(''Edward Said and The Production of Knowledge'' ), by Sethi, Arjun (University of Maryland) accessed 20 April 2007.〕 The greatest intellectual impact of ''Orientalism'' (1978) was upon the fields of literary theory, cultural studies, and human geography, by way of which originated the field of Post-colonial studies. Edward Said's method of post-structuralist analysis derived from the analytic techniques of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault; and the perspectives to Orientalism presented by Abdul Latif Tibawi,〔Tibawi, A.L. "English-speaking Orientalists: A Critique of Their Approach to Islam and Arab Nationalism", ''Islamic Quarterly'' 8 (1964): pp. 25-45.〕 Anouar Abdel-Malek,〔Abdel-Malek, Anour. "L'orientalisme en crise" ("Orientalism in Crisis"), ''Diogène'' 44 (1963) pp. 109-41.〕 Maxime Rodinson,〔"Bilan des études mohammadiennes", ''Revue Historique'' (1963) p. 465.1.〕 and Richard William Southern.〔Southern, Richard William. ''Western views of Islam in the Middle Ages'' (1978) Cambridge:Harvard UP, 1962.〕 The historical impact of ''Orientalism'' (1978) was in explaining the ''How?'' and the ''Why?'' of imperial impotence, because, in the late 1970s, to journalists, academics, and Orientalists, the Yom Kippur war (6–25 October 1973) and the OPEC petroleum embargo (October 1973 – March 1974) were recent modern history. The Western world had been surprised, by the pro-active and decisive actions of non–Western peoples, whom the ideology of Orientalism had defined as weak societies and impotent countries; the geopolitical reality of their actions, of military and economic warfare, voided the fictional nature of Orientalist representations, attitudes, and opinions about the non-Western Other self.〔Said, Edward. "Afterword", ''Orientalism'' (1978) pp. 329-352.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Orientalism (book)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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