Here i am sharing the presentation of paper No. 11 Postcolonial Literature

1. “American Orientalism”
Name : Gausvami Surbhi A.
SEM : 3
Paper no : 11, Post-colonial Literature
Submitted to: Dr. Dilip Barad,
Department of English,
MKBU university.
Roll No: 23
Enrollment No: 2069108420170008
Email id: gausvamisurbhi17@gmail.com

2. What is “Orientalism?”
• "Orientalism” is a way of seeing that imagines,
emphasizes, exaggerates and distorts
differences of Arab peoples and cultures as
compared to that of Europe and the U.S.
• According to Edward Said, Orientalism dates
from the period of European Enlightenment
and colonization of the Arab World.
• Arab culture as exotic, backward, uncivilized,
and at times dangerous.

3. Continue…
• “Ideology, a set of prejudices that bolster a sense of
European superiority over the East and thus implicitly
or explicitly legitimate imperialism and colonialism, the
exploitation of subjugated people deemed culturally or
racially inferior to the dominant culture”
• Said states that “Orientalism is the corporate
institution for dealing with the Orient -dealing with it
by making statements about it, authorizing views of it,
describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in
short, orientalism as a Western style for dominating,
restructuring, and having authority over the Orient”

4. Essential Questions
• US relations with the Middle East.
• Why have relations between these two
regions been so difficult?
• Why have they been marked so consistently
by failure?
• What needs to change?

5. United States is
• Qualitatively Different Nation.
• “The first new nation“
• “Exceptional“
• “Occident”
• Developed, rational, flexible, and superior
• "white man's burden”

6. American Orientalism
• It starts from 11th September, 2001 Al Qaeda
attack on the World Trade center
• Sikh, Muslim, and “Muslim-looking” immigrants
and citizens all are suspicious and culprits
following the 9/11 attack.
• In schools, Muslim and South Asian American
children and youth were harassed and bullied.
• Thousands of men and women who were
deemed “suspicious” by authorities were
arrested, detained, and deported.

7. Continue...
• American media, Television, Hollywood films,
News, Popular video games spread “Islamo-
phobia” throughout the country and world.
• September, 1907 , Bellingham, Washington. The
Indians, also workers, were predominantly from
Punjab; most were turbaned Sikh men. The
rioters saw the Indians as aliens, outsiders, and
racial inferiors who were taking away American
jobs, jobs that should go to white men.

8. Continue…
• The paintings, created by American artists of
the 19th and early 20th centuries, depict the
Arab World as an exotic and mysterious place
of sand.
• 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, and “Egyptian
Girl in Street of Cairo”
• Camel, Balley dancers, Snake charmer

9. Continue…
• Due to American intervention in China,
Orientalism become more progressive as
China was converted into more Christian
society. Prejudices caused by the growth of
the ideas of Orientalism in the United States
were caused by China’s humiliation
• Orient is characterized as a “fantasy space”

10. Continue…
• According to historians, the United States
entered Orientalism in 1850s-1860s by means
of literature, painting, and music. Mark
Twain’s The Innocents Abroad (1869)
highlights the new development associated
with Orientalism.

11. Middle Eastern Images Covered in
• Chicago World fair (1893)
• Songs
• CDs and DVDs covers
• Novels
• Comic books
• Cartoons
• Films
• Video games
• Cigarettes
• Exhibition

12. Novels

14. Paintings
• Sanford Robinson
Gifford, an American
landscape painter
• (1) The Desert at
Assouan
• (2) Long Branch Beach

15. Music
• The Orient found in American music can be
characterized as fantasy developed by the
civilized world. For example, Jerome and
Schwartz’s song demonstrates the theme of
Orientalism through the representation of
local Chinatowns as “foreign entities within
the U.S. borders”

16. Cartoons

17. Movie
• Hollywood films portray
the eastern culture as
Alien, Exotic,
uncivilized, and
Undeveloped.
• “The president’s Man: A
Line In The Sand”