(Grade 11)
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.
