East And East: The Perspective Of The West And The East

A PLACE WHICH NEEDS ATTENTION: THE EAST The term Orientalism, was used by the West, to define the East. Orientalism is the perspective of the West, the way they see the East. The West here, is the Western Europe and the East is rest of it. Also Said divided Orientalism into two groups which are “latent and manifest Orientalism.” Nineteenth century scholars were mostly interested in Manifest Orientalism which is things we can observe about the Orient like language, literature, art, history. Most nineteenth century scholars saw Orient as backward, degenerate and weird. Because of this thought nineteenth century scholars saw Orient as a place requires attention of the West. The Orient was inefficient to represent itself so the West should advertise
(Said 1979: 22) These words are made up by humans to put people in some boxes. The relationship between the West and the East is based on power, domination. Orientalism occurred because one side wanted to rule the other. The West became the winner. Orientalism, therefore, is not an airy European fantasy about the Orient, but a created body of theory and practice in which, for many generations, there has been a considerable material investment. (Said 1979: 23) It means that for many years European people have seen the Orient as an investment. Saying that “the East needs attention” is a weak interpretation. Edward Said who made great observations about Orientalism was also agreed that the East is under the Wests hegemony. Said mentioned in his book that the domination of the West has started very long time ago with colonialism. (1979: 24) Powerful countries such as England and France went all over the world and when they saw that East was different from their countries then they believed that they can exploit and take them under the Wests
The scholars thought that Orient is unequal for many ways and the most important one is gender inequality. For instance, Gustave Flaubert used “Kuchuk Hanem” as a prototype of an Oriental woman in his novel (Somay 2014: 18). He revealed the fact of the inequality in Orient. Flaubert wanted to show the readers that she is ‘typically Oriental’. She never spoke of herself, she never represented her emotions, presence, or history. He spoke for and represented her. (Said 1979: 23) The West thinks of itself as masculine-big guns, big industry, big money - so the East is feminine-weak, delicate, poor…but good at art, and full of inscrutable wisdom-the feminine mystique. (Somay 2014: 18) The West saw the East as a different world. Representing the East in a book by the West was a great solution for the East to show themselves to