The Review of Orientalism
Orientalism was written by Said, interpreting an antihuman concept in the text. Orientalism, based on the definition given the author, is the “knowledge of the Orient that places things Oriental in class, court, prison, or manual for scrutiny, study, judgment, discipline, or governing.” Generally speaking, orientalism stands for an arrogant view to the orient with exaggerations, belittlements and unfair treat, relating to the comparison between the west and the orient. The author analyzed two men’s speech to indicate the problem of orientalism. At the same time, he also evaluated the influence of holding orientalism. In our text reading, from my perspective, basically there are one major idea implied by Said. That is “no knowledge is value-free”.
Although the contact between the west and the east has existed for a long time, the frequent and concrete one first happened during colonization, in Arab region. On account of the rule by the westerners, the contest of civilizations emerged inevitably. People began to compare those countries in every aspect. In Belfour’s speech, he talked about the supremacy of the west objectively. He also contained two large concepts. Power and knowledge. This time he argued that “to have knowledge of such a thing is to dominate it”, which is a sub-idea in the text, indicating the relationship between power and knowledge. But Said thinks this is problematic. In this relationship, superficially, it is a fact that everyone knows. However, it implies another invisible relationship. The Ruler and the ruled. In other words, the superiority and inferiority. This will distort the fact subjectively into opinions that “us” and “you”, which is also rewritten in “west” and “east”. In this case, westerners cannot fairly observe the east world because they will think that everything in the east is needed to be corrected as the influence of superiority.
To put the statement in a larger dimension, even if Belfour kept warning not to transfer the emotion as a superiority. Nevertheless, he could not truly do that. He always saw the east world with his own culture identity. This will lead to misunderstandings and other stereotypes, compelling two sides to secede from each other. The division caused by such tension will limit human’s development because people were prevented from knowing each other better.
Said’s explanation is impressive. I was shock by him when I first read this idea. In my opinion, I think I can differentiate the fact and the opinion or explanation in a right way because I will always use these two concepts in history learning. Thus, if I think about one thing dialectically, stereotypes should not occur. However, Said’s idea reshaped me, smashing my imagination of staying neutral while thinking. Everyone has a pair of colored glasses, gazing at the surroundings in life. Just with a glance, the glasses will not easily be taken off. But in other words, why do I have to take them off? Being aware of my limitations and then accept the occurrence of my stereotypes is also a way in which holding an optimistic attitude and accomplishing the intention of giving a better explanation based on the facts. If listen to both sides, I will be enlightened. And this is why I want to show orientalism in my ambiguous parable.
Orientalism-Why is it antihuman?
By assessing the speech given by Belfour and words from Cromer’s mouth, Said developed his own interpretation on Orientalism. He concluded that “Orientalism, then, is knowledge of Orient.” Other than Belfour’s controversial speech while talking about supremacy of westerners and Cromer’s opinion of “to have knowledge of such a thing is to dominate it”, he argued that an improper assumption was made during nineteenth and twentieth century that the Orient was in need of corrective study by the west. This has inspired people with one of the core ideas about knowledge: No knowledge is value free. More importantly, from Said’s perspective, he maintained that “”the Orientalist reality is both antihuman and persistent”. According to his book, several reasons are expected to support this insightful argument.
Since the colonialism had popularized over European countries when it was nineteenth and twentieth century, ruling other parts of the world was not unusual at that time. Eastern countries, compared to Europe, were somehow colonized by westerners. In this way, people usually relied on orientalism to look for the right excuse for getting rid of the questions from morality. However, Said is so thoughtful that he argues that Orientalism is just the underpins of colonialism before ruling. Orientalism offers premises to the ruling class to have a just reason to dominate the Orient. But this kind of reality is not always proper in defensing the colonization itself.
What’s more, in the procedure of colonization, there is a phenomenon or tension that secedes the whole human reality under the theory of Orientalism. In this way, “West” and “East”, usually regarded as “us” and “them” by the westerners, are not only a geographical identity but also a seceding ideology, dividing in different races, cultures, histories, etc. It seems that “West” represents the strong and “East” stands for the weak, causing more misunderstandings and inevitable but unnecessary tensions. Said also queries the feasibility and correctness of such division in his book. In other words, he expects to find a solution to avoid “hostility expressed by the division”. He holds the view that emphasizing the division is usually towards “not especially admirable ends”, limiting human with preventing them from knowing each other better including religions, cultures and other aspects in different parts of the world. This is antihuman and not for evolving. Instead, it is also a degenerating of human. When westerners become more “west”, at the same time, easterners become more “east”, it is not doubt that the antihuman segregation is just incorrect and meaningless.
Interestingly, although Kissinger’s idea of observing the world is creative, his view also follows the essence of how Orientalism treat the world. It is called binary opposition. His interpretation to the reality whatever the developing or developed countries and pre-Newtonian or post-Newtonian perspective, somehow has no difference from the division. Said writes “Kissinger may not have known on what fund of pedigreed knowledge he was drawing when he cut the world up into pre-Newtonian and post-Newtonian conceptions of reality”. This is also an example of revealing that Orientalism is persistent according to Said.
Last but not least, Said maintained that substituting into a different position with the same conception as before is also antihuman as well. He used an example described in an essay that proving “the relative position of elements is quite different”. This also gives an insight that differences will create vision disparity.
To sum up, Orientalism is antihuman mainly because it causes secession between different parts of the world, limiting people knowing each other. And it is also a fundamental theory contributed to colonization. It is clear to see that Orientalism now still exists and may last for a long time though new explanations to the reality are raised.
Madman
The writer Xun Lu wrote the Diary of a Madman to reveal the fatal harm of feudal ethics sarcastically. But just lucubrating the text, in other people’s eyes, the madman did not seem normal and rational in daily life. On the contrary, the madman had endowed madness, and the people represented reason. Otherwise, it is also concise that in the Diary of a Madman, with the description of the writer, there is another major binary opposition revealed between the lines. That is eating and saving.
In the text, not merely one place the writer mentioned the term eating people. Almost every page of the text has eating people this brutal phrase. When the madman, which is the protagonist of the story, first came on the stage, he was afraid of sights from other people, even the dog. He was worried about being eaten. Coincidentally, the madman was reading a history book to derive the tradition of eating people as well as understand it, he saw on a sudden and found that ‘the whole volume was filled with a single phrase: EAT PEOPLE!’(4) Generally speaking, eating people is the major fear from the madman’s bottom of the heart. However, compared to eating, the writer seldom mentioned the term saving directly. Just at the end of the story, the writer advocated that saving the kids from influencing by the idea of eating people. This is not because saving was not important in this story. Instead, saving that foreshadowed within the writer’s intention was the crucial access to interpret that the madman was not mad and the rational people were not rational. The emotion conveyed by the writer to save the kids strikingly contrasts with eating people. At the same time, the conflict between saving and eating is also a climax in this story. The madman’s questioning raised awareness of other people being against eating people, trying to save others, though he failed. This implies that the behavior of questioning by the madman, for instance, the experience he inquired a man about eating himself, was just the behavior of saving. The writer used an invisible brush to depict and deepen the meaning of saving, which is the shining point of the story. And the hierarchical binary opposition is just involving this topic.
The text focused on saving more than eating explicitly. In a way, the madness of the madman was the direct performance of saving, and the reason for the rational people was the revelation of eating people. The writer described the madness with heavy and thick colors to emphasize saving. During the story, the madman observed others’ sights and behaviors carefully, even a subtle detail was not left by him. And at the end of the story, ‘save the children’ (13) underlined saving for another time even if the madman recovered. The writing intention of Xun Lu is precise now. Eating that represented Feudal ethics was not admirable. He described the conflict between eating and saving in detail, and his subjective tendency was also inclined to save.
However, the ending of this story was dramatic. And from my perspective, although the madman was trying to save others, he was assimilated by the environment around him, which was not an optimistic ending. ‘By now, however, he had long since become sound and fit again; in fact he had already repaired to other parts to await a substantive official appointment’ (1). This is the best evidence to show the assimilation. The madman became normal and his saving was not successful. At last, the ending of the story was not the same as the hierarchy of this binary opposition. But the attitude toward the saving was corresponding as before.
