Orientalism: An Overview

The definition of orientalism takes up no more than two sentences in the dictionary. Coincidentally, Orientalism came to be such a complex and deep concept which Said devotes his entire book in discussing about it. His book – Orientalism unfolds the history of the Orientalism, reveals the “dark” side of an orientalist’s mind and describes the different dimensions of Orientalism. He also attempts to expose the truth of the Orient, which he warned that: “One ought never to assume that the structure of Orientalism is nothing more than a structures of lies or of myths, which were the truth about them to be told, would simply blow away” (Said). In order to understand the truth Said`s referring to, one ought to first understand the origin and characteristics of Orientalism that led to the establishment of the truth.
First of all, one of the interpretations of Orientalism according to Said is: a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between “the Orient” and “the Occident”. This quotation suggests that Orientalism makes an instant distinct between the East and the West and that the West`s perception of the East is based on the archive of knowledge. Historically speaking, the study of the Orient flourished in the 18th and 19th century as Europe became advanced in the scientific discoveries, and took interest in knowing about the unfamiliar East. Europeans adapted Darwin`s method of categorization of species and used it in the same manner analyzing about the East based on prior knowledge in earlier voyage discoveries. To illustrate, Said notes: ``Europeans, as systematizes of knowledge, could claim to place ``Oriental`` societies within the ``family`` of human cultures in the same way they could place a certain kind of clam in the family molluscs.`` Orientalism therefore, has separated the world into distinct cultures and sorted certain traits accordingly into distinct classes since the earlier times. Together, the ideal Orient