Orientalism: A book Review

‘Kitaboon Ka Shehr Gilgit’ has organized an event ‘Kitab Gard Ki Roodat’ in Which Aziz Ali Dad and Aafiyat Nazar had reviewed two books, Orientalism by Edward Said and later speaker talked on ‘Diverse and Tribal Domains: Hunza Gojal by Zafar Iqbal’. Aziz Ali Dad had talked in an interactive way, in which audience were involved in intelligible way. There is an academic and scholarly significance of Orientalism by Edward Said, Aziz Ali Dad has earlier published research work on it “Orientalism and Subalternity in India: A subaltern critique”. http://readinglaunge.blogspot.com/2014/02/orientalism-and-subalternity-in-india_5955.html

Edward Said’s Orientalism is the masterpiece ever written in History explains and distinguish between East and West. How west is representing East on manifold fronts is the centre of the work while viewing Mitchel Foucault’s lens of ‘discourse’, which sees how to reshape, restructure or rewrite the knowledge or episteme of the East.

The aim was to represent east while showing the rationale of the East as inferior in intelligence, culture, politics and imagination. The scholarship of orientalism was created to rule Eastern Nations as ‘others’ is challenged in a strict sense by Said.

The colonial, British and French powers were on the same page in order to fulfil economic interests at the top of the imperial agenda. The political game was played by ‘on-duty political agents’ sent by British Raaj, for the sake of research, and exploration.

Later, the literature they produced was aimed to subjugate, and conquer the Eastern States. The art of exploitation was played in an intelligible way, created a web of chains, which still hover over minds and nation-states.

Said argues how European forces were involved in dividing the world in East and West, and constructed concepts of Orient and Occident, or civilized and uncivilized, or ‘ours’ vs ‘them’ or ‘us’ and others. The researches, anthropologists and writers were visiting East on varying times and attempted to write literature, culture, anthropology, and everything related to east. This created western biases in representing east. Scholarly rejected work later studied by Eastern people and began to think in Western lens, which is inferior knowledge or incomplete about the society of the East. This led colonial powers to subjugate Eastern territories in social, economic, and thinking patterns.

The constructed conceptualizations of ‘others’ phenomena is still active to diminish creativity, imagination, art and philosophy. The literature produced was inferior in degree and character. It explains, ‘others’ are subjected to represent at different levels. Same happened at greater degree, as British began to pervade in East, including India, South Africa, East Asia, Caribbean and other areas of Global East. The literature produced in time and space assisted colonial powers to rule, loot, plunder, and annex at greater length.

Written By Kamran Karim

Our next ‘Kitaab Gard Ki Roodat’ event will explain more.