This document discusses concepts related to Orientalism. It describes how imagined geographies in historical texts portrayed other parts of the world, like Ethiopia, as inhabited by imagined others who were strangely different from Europeans. These imagined others were described as having transformations in their bodies, lives, needs, and more. The document also discusses how Orientalism shaped European views of the world and defined spaces like the Orient through the texts and perspectives of Europeans rather than people from those regions. Several discourses and themes are also outlined, like how Orientalism viewed concepts like development, morality, rationality, religion, and race in contrasting the Orient with Europe.

1. IMAGINING THE WORLD
TengkuNurshazliyana bt TengkuSahrum
Siti Nazihahbt MohamadHanapi

2. JOHN MANDDEVILLE: CHAPTER XVII
ETHIOPIA
People are slightly
drunken
They turned black when they
grow older
Large foot
Have one foot only
Many diverse folk
Live not long
Little appetite to
meat

5. A TEXTUALISED WORLD
Imagined geographies
 inhabited by imagined others, people who
were very different from Europeans.
 described the world to people, explained
their place within it, shaping how people
responded to the world.

6. IMAGINED OTHERS
Transformation of the Europeans in one way
to another.
 Transformation of body: these people had
huge ears, with their faces on their chest,
were giants or pigmies.
 Transformation of Gender: hairy women,
Amazons and androgenes.

7.  Transformation of life cycle: these people were
said to rear children just once or to conceive at
five years of age.
 Transformation of social: wife-gavers, who were
repeatedly an amiable race who give their wives
to any travellers who stopped among them.
 Transformation of needs: Astomi, who lived near
the headwaters of the Ganges, were said neither
to eat nor drink but existed by smelling roots,
flowers and fruits.

8.  Europeans were always seen as the reference
point, Europeans always represented what
was right and normal.
 Less bizarrely different peoples. Ex: Ethiopians
– black men in the mountains of Africa – were
understood to have been burnt black because
of their close proximity to the sun.

9. Aristotle’s Cosmology
Frigid Zone
Frigid Zone
Temperate Zone
Temperate Zone
Torrid Zone

10. ORIENTALISM
• Study of languages and traditions of the
Middle East.
• Edward Said’s redefines, ubiquity of a sense of
the division of the world into two spheres in
aesthetic production, popular culture, and
scholarly, sociological, and historical texts.

11. ORIENTALISM IS AN IMAGINATIVE GEOGRAPHY FOR TWO
REASONS
Projected a single culture into the space of the orient
that was at odds with the diversity of peoples,
cultures and environments
This space was defined by texts and not by people
from the Orient itself. These texts preceded
experience.

12. ORIENTALISM
Power emerged through institutions and
practices used.
Those resident in the space of the Orient
were not allowed to speak for
themselves.
Always described by others,
characterised by others.
Made up of a series of discourses that
explained the nature of the Orient (east) and
Occident (west)

13. Themes/ Discourses
• What is discourse?
That thing or system of ideas and beliefs and
words (the forms of “knowledge”), that sets
limits upon and yet produces what one person
is able to think or say or do in a given situation.
It is what makes you think or produces what you
say or think. It uses you as much as you use it.

14. Discourse can be thought of as a lens
through which people interpret the world,
which is not unchanging but is temporarily
and spatially specific.
Discourse is about the use of knowledge
and ideas, including their influence on
people, as much as the actual content or
meaning of such ideas.

15. Rationality:
rational : irrational
Orientalism
Occident: Orient
Religion
religious : heathen
Science:
science : superstition
Race
Development:
developed : backward
Morality
moral : immoral

16. 1. Development and time
Orient - Europe
1. backward - developed
2. unchanging - dynamic
(Enlightenment, the
drive of mercantile
capitalism/
Industrial
Revolution)

17. Orient -
3. Egyptians and Chinese
had great societies before
Europe had developed
BUT these civilisations were
now seen to be in decline.
4. Asia and North Africa –
old, decrepit, decaying civilisations

18. Orient - Europe
5. Sub-Saharan African dynamic yet mature
(endeveloped) and child-like
- It was the duty of Europeans to rule the
‘immature’ peoples in Africa because – not
sufficiently mature enough to govern
themselves.

19. 2. Morality
Orient - Europe
1. immoral “white-man’s
burden’ to improve
the Orient’s morals.

20. How it was invoked..
Assessments of
other cultures of
religious practices
Order and hygiene
Sexuality – Orient often
seen as a place of
unrestrained sexuality
Discussions and
laziness – Orient (not
productive)

21. 3. Rationality
Orient - Europe
1. Irrational (not accepting notions of
science and
reasons
of European science – turning
into animistic beliefs and magic.
“backward”

22. 4. Religion
• Orientalism did not accept Hinduism, Islam,
other than non-Christian religions – TRUE
RELIGIONS instead MYTHS and BELIEFS.
• Orientals were NOT religious and should be
converted to Christianity.

23. 5. Science
• ‘proof’ of western superiority
• European science had allowed people to
conquer nature, time and space, the body
• Africans and others were seen to be living
with nature.
• Natives were unable to exploit natural
resources and transform nature
• European diseases killed many indigenous
peoples

24. Medicine
conquered
illness
Morality controlled
natural bodily
desires
Mining extracted
resources from
nature
Travel conquered
time and space

25. 6. Race
• ‘scientific’ category of European domination
• Measurable biological facts ( head shape or
brain size) – explaining western superiority.

26. ORIENTALIST ART
• Paintings are interesting
- Broad appeal
- For the majority of Europeans, paintings were
the only insight they had into the Orient.
- Presented incredible detail, convincing
viewers of their authenticity through the
‘reality effect’

27. The Fanatics of Tangier, Delacroix, 1838

28. Delacroix, 1838
‘their enthusiasm excited by prayers and wild
cries, they enter into a veritable state of
intoxication, and, spreading through the
streets, perform a thousand contortions, and
even dangerous acts.’

29. Dance of the Almeh, Gerome, 1863

30. Gerome, 1863
Women revelling in the pleasure of
WILD and RELEASED SENSUALITY
(impossible to depict European women
at the time). Erotic, on excess, and
male fantasies played out in sites of
languid opulence.

31. Gateway to the Great Temple at Balbec, Roberts,
1841

32. David Robert, 1841
Ruined greatness and an implied
criticism of the local people for
NEGLECTING their own monuments –
architecture falls into decay. (decaying
civilisations themselves.

33. ORIENTALISM IN THE PRESENT
• Orientalism is still with us but in a slightly
different form.
• The west is no longer just Europe, now the
United States of America – become more
influential (Hollywood)

34. George W. Bush’s ‘War of Terror’
• September 11th 2001.
• Created a binary imagined geography that has
divided the world into the WEST and the ‘axis
of evil’ to the EAST.

35. Samuel Huntington’s “The Clash of
civilisations”
• Between the WEST(secular-Christian west)
and ISLAM (Islamic East)
• The events of September 11th seemed to
prove the theory, despite various voices,
including Said and Huntington himself, which
insisted that this was the action of a small
group of extremists rather than being
representative of Islam more generally.

36. CRITIQUE OF ORIENTALISM
Occidentalism
RetextualisationGender
Historical
Differences

37. 1. Occidentalism
• Said reduces all of Europe (and later also
North America) to the Occident.
• There are traditions of ‘Occidentalism’,
representations of Europe and its culture from
the non-Western world.
• Orientalism X Occidentalism
(POWER)

38. 2. Historical Difference
• While we can trace the continued existence of
themes from Orientalism into contemporary
culture, clearly some things are different
today
• The way we view the images of the rest of the
world which used to be taken for granted

39. 3. Gender
• Critiqued for an implicit gendering of the
Orient as FEMALE.
• Men who are active and capable, and women
are passive and unable to represent
themselves.
• Feminists have argued that western women
travellers produced very different accounts
because of the power relations they
experienced at home.

40. Retextualisation
• No one can provide a true representation of
reality, all is constructed through discourse.
• Now the Orientalists’ texts are replaced by
Said’s text.