Orientalism
Orientalism is a 1978 book by Edward W. Said, in which the author discusses Orientalism, defined as the West's patronizing representations of "The East"—the societies and peoples who inhabit the places of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. According to Said, orientalism (the Western scholarship about the Eastern World) is inextricably tied to the imperialist societies who produced it, which makes much Orientalist work inherently political and servile to power. According to Said, in the Middle East, the social, economic, and cultural practices of the ruling Arab elites indicate they are imperial satraps who have internalized the romanticized "Arab Culture" created by French, British and, later, American Orientalists; the examples include critical analyses of the colonial literature of Joseph Conrad, which conflates a people, a time, and a place into a narrative of incident and adventure in an exotic land. The critical application of post-structuralism in the scholarship of Orientalism influenced the development of literary theory, cultural criticism, and the field of Middle Eastern studies, especially regarding how academics practice their intellectual inquiry when examining, describing, and explaining the Middle East. The scope of Said's scholarship established Orientalism as a foundation text in the field of post-colonial culture studies, which examines the denotations and connotations of Orientalism, and the history of a country's post-colonial period.
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- Edward Said's "Orientalism" snapped the toughest parts of Foucault's structuralism into focus for me.
- That sounds interesting, I'll add that to my order list. What came to mind for me around this topic, was Edward Said's 'Orientalism'. Is an amazing critique.
- Short answer: Yes.
What is more, your line of thinking is a good one.
Edward Said constructed basically this same argument - persuasively, I think - in Orientalism, his book on the history of western writing about the east (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_(book)). If you can get a copy, I recommend it strongly: as you can no doubt see, the consequences of this idea are extraordinarily complex. For instance: what exactly determines Whiteness, if it's a concept that is defined only as "not-ethnic"?
Along those lines, Noel Ignatiev's (note: a controversial figure) book How the Irish Became White details how Celtic immigrants were NOT considered white in the antebellum South. Anyone in America, I think, with Irish or Scots ancestry knows the long history of American racism against the Celts. Ignatiev argues that the Celts 'gained' White status by setting themselves up as anti-Black by becoming strong proponents of slavery and speaking racist ideologies. I found this interesting and persuasive. The historical evidence of horrible and inhuman Irish anti-Black sentiment is obvious, but where other scholars have proposed things like "oh, the Irish came over and were racist just like everyone else" Ignatiev proposes a more universal truth about the way constructions of race interact.
- It should be noted as well that the concept of the "Eastern" is also Western in origin.
A good read about this is Orientalism by Edward Said.
- As far as a historical look at cultural stereotyping goes, Edward Said's book 'Orientalism' is not a bad starting point. From reading it I became far more aware that the way that a culture is described is usually far more to do with the culture that is doing the describing.
edit - A good example being the British tabloid view of Japanese animation. If you were to trust the UK press, then Anime is all about sex and violence. However about half of Japanese tv is animation, and most of it is pretty innocent, but what the British buy is all the sex and violence, so then we think that is what Anime is.
- Chinese people are already angry and resentful about something, and then something sets them off.
I could reply by pointing out similar behaviour in countries all over the world, it is a common human trait, not something that is somehow peculiar to China.
Out of interest, have you ever read "Orientalism" by Edward Said? As this discussion could almost be an example from it.
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