This document discusses several perspectives on orientalism and representations of the East from a Western perspective. It references works from scholars like Edward Said, highlighting how the West constructed an image of an "inferior East" and represented oriental cultures through frameworks that asserted Western dominance. It provides numerous quotes demonstrating how orientalist scholars and colonial officials viewed Arabs and Muslims as irrational, deceitful, uncivilized, and in need of Western guidance and rule. The document argues this shaped dominant cultural narratives that portrayed the East in aggressively negative stereotypes to justify Western control and domination.

1. • Lord Curzon, “East is a uni , where scholars never take their degrees”,
req Brits presence more or less forever.
• Thomas Arnold – Their imaginations provided by Kipling “ Dominions
over palms and pine”.
• Kip, “ Road taken by the white man in colonies, Oh, well for the world
where white men tread, when they go to clean a land”.
• Cultural satellite of US.

2. Edward Said's Orientalism and Eurocentric
Representations
• Charts the Western world's construction(s) of "an inferior East“
• The "Discourse" and Antonio Gramsci's conceptualization of
"hegemony.
• These Western paradigms and epistemologies are invested in the
various forms and modes of representation—including TV and films,
paintings and advertisements.
• Fiction and journalistic writings are critical forms of representation.
• Orient as a Geographical space cultivated, harvested and guarded.

3. • Globalization is just another name for submission and domination.
• Diff b/w imperialism and colonialism
• Kwame Nkrumah – neo colonialism ( new force op through
comprador equated with global capitalism)
• Glob of world eco indicates pol indep brought no change in eco and
cultural life
• Colonialist deliberately delayed indep to creating a elite social class
for representing them.

4. • Marx -The universal gp of all pre-capitalist societies as feudal or
‘Asiatic’ – excl non EU social pol gps from analysis.
• Karl Marx “Constructive or regenerating mission;; society Destructive
mission.
• Renan to Marx ( idealogically speaking) or for most rigorous scholars (
lane and Sacy) to most power imaginations (Flaubert and Nerval) saw
the orient req western attention, reconstruction and even
redemption.
• John Westlake, chapter on the principle of international law(1894)
argues, uncivilized needs to be annexed , or occupied by the
advanced powers.

5. • Electronic post modern world – Reinforcement of the stereotypes by
which the orient is viewed.
• Knowledge to Belfour was surveying a civilization from its origin to its
prime……to dominate.. To have auth over it.. Auth vs autonomy”
• Egyptions “would likely to be agitators who wishes to raises difficulties
than the good natives who overlooks the difficulties of foreign
dominations”.

6. • Knowledge of subj races or Orientals makes their mgmt easy and
profitable; knowledge gives power and more power more knowledge
and so on increasing profitable dialectic of info and con.
• Cromer and Belfour language –
• Oriental- some one judges,
• The one you’d study,
• Sth one disciplines, sth one illustrates –
• In each frame, the oriental is contained and rep by dominating frameworks.
Where do these come from?

7. Discourse
• Foucault- strong bounded area of social knowledge a system of
statements within which a world can be known- key features – the
world is not there simply to be talked about rather it through
discourse itself that world brought into being.
• Coleridge “language is the armoury of human mind; contains the
trophies of the past and wpns of the future conquest
• Lord Macaulay “ Our natives subjs are more to learn from us….”

8. • “Heat excites the Egyptians (an unqualified generalization)to
intemperance in sexual enjoyments”.
• Oriental women are the creatures of male power fantasy. Nerval
“Orient is like veil……
• Lane job is obj to make Egyptians totally visible; nothing hidden from reader;
to deliver them w/o depth, in swollen details.
• The crusades, he argues were not aggression; they were not just
counterpart of Omar arrival in Europe.
• Crusades were not religion but geo strategic impulsions…..civilization
supremacy.

9. • Chateaubriand argues,
• “Of liberty they know nothing; of prosperity they have none; force is their
God. When they go for long pds w/o conquerors who do heavenly justice, they
have the air of soldiers w/o ldrs, ctzs w/o legislators and family w/o father”.
• Cultural or intellectual proletariat.
• In the discussion about orient, the orient is all absence, whereas one
feels the orientalist and what he says as presence; yet we must not
forget the orient presence is enabled by the orient effective absence.

10. • After WW1, Turkey was surveyed for dismemberment. Laying out op
table for surgery of sick man of Europe.
• Behind the white man’s mask of amiable leadership, there is always
express willingness to use force, to kill or to be killed. What dignify
his mission is some sort of intellectual dedication; he is a white man,
but not for mere profit, since his chosen stars sits far above earthly
gain.
• Marx , Lascswell in agreement “ They can’t represent themselves,
they must be represented”.

11. • In films TV, Arab depiction oversexed degenerate, treacherous, low,
slave trader, camel driver.
• In news photos, Arab marauders ( captured white man and blonde
girl) - Arab are shown in large numbers – mass rage misery –irrational
gestures. Lurking behind all these images is menace of Jihad.
Consequence : a fear that the Muslim (or Arabs) will take over the
world.
• Fabulously deconstructed the anti Islam discourse. For hundred of
pages in vol 1 by Erfan Shahid chapter on Pre Islamic Arabic P.302.

12. • Hamady again: Thus, the Arab lives in a hard and frustrating
environment. He has little chance to develop his potentialities and
define his position in society, and holds little belief in progress and
change and finds salvation only in the hereafter.
• He could understand the condensation and bad faith of western writers
( camel risers to Modern Arab Revolutionaries). P.315.
• Though the powerful current of the anti-imperial has tempered the
western edge of the dominant culture still remains second order power
in the production of knowledge about themselves. And are only native
informants.

13. • Thus in the thirty-fourth chapter of his two-volume work Modern Egypt,
• "Accuracy is abhorrent to the Oriental mind. Every Anglo-Indian should always
remember that maxim." Want of accuracy, which easily degenerates into
untruthfulness, is in fact the main characteristic of the Oriental mind.
• Whereas, European is a close reasoner; his statements of fact are devoid
of any ambiguity; he is a natural logician, albeit he may not have studied
Jogic; he is by nature sceptical and requires proof before he can accept the
truth of any proposition;
• On the contrary, Muslims are often incapable of drawing the most obvious
conclusions from any simple premises of which they may admit the truth.
His explanation will generally be lengthy, and wanting in lucidity. He will
probably contradict himself half-a-dozen times before he has finished his
story. He will often break down under the mildest process of cross-
examination

14. • Knowledge to Balfour means surveying a civilization from its origins to
its prime its decline-
• Knowledge means rising above immediacy, beyond self, into the
foreign and distant.
• To have such knowledge of such a thing is to dominate it, to have
authority over it And authority here means for "us" to deny
autonomy to "it"-

15. • Here is T. E. Lawrence, writing to V. W. Richards in 1918: . . .
• The Arab appealed to my imagination. It is the old, old civilization, which has refined itself
clear of household gods, and Orientalism Now half the trappings which ours hastens to
assume. They think for the moment and endeavour‘ to slip through life without turning
comers or climbing bills. It is mental and moral fatigue, a race trained out, and to avoid
difficulties they have to jettison so much that we think honorable and grave
• Gertrude Bell: How many thousand years this state of things has lasted
[namely, that Arabs live in a “state of War”….but in all the centuries the Arab
has bought no wisdom from experience. He is never safe, and yet he behaves
as though security were his daily bread.

16. • 60,000 books dealing with the Near Orient were written between 1 800
and 1950; there is no remotely comparable figure for Oriental books about
the West.
• As a cultural apparatus Orientalism is all aggression, activity, judgment, will
to-truth, and knowledge. The Orient existed for the West,
• What we are left with is Bell's Arab: centuries of experience and no
wisdom. As a collective entity, then, the Arab accumulates no existential or
even semantical thickness.
• Gertrude Bell: It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that if the English
mission had been turned back from the gates of Kabul, the English tourist
would be frowned upon in the streets of Damascus.

17. • At bottom, Smith's vision of the world is binary. as is evident in such
passages as the following:
• The Arabian traveller is quite different from ourselves. The labour of moving from
place to place is a mere nuisance to him, he has no enjoyment in effort [as "we" do.
and grumbles at hunger or fatigue with all his might [as "we" do not]. ….. Moreover
the Arab is little impressed by scenery [but "we" are].
• In reading the Orientalists one understands that the apocalypse to be
feared was not the destruction of Western civilization but rather the
destruction of the barriers that kept East and West from each other.
• When Gibb opposed nationalism in the modem Islamic states, he did so
because he felt that nationalism would corrode the inner structures
keeping Islam Oriental; the net result of secular nationalism would be to
make the Orient no different from the West

18. • In the films and television the Arab is associated lechery or
bloodthirsty dishonesty.
• He appears as an oversexed degenerate
• Slave trader, camel driver, moneychanger, colorful scoundrelin the
cinema. History of Islam, defined by P. M. Holt's -Islamic civilization,
history as the High Renaissance in Italy. : ", [al-Ma'munJ seemed to
shrink from contact with Baghdad society and remained settled at
Merv, a serious Shi'i revolt, that of Abu'I-Saraya, who January 815 sent
out a call to arms from Kufa in support of the Hasanid Ibn Tabataba.“
• The Arab leader (of marauders, pirates, "native" insurgents) can often
be seen snarlirig at the captured Western hero and the blond girl (both
of them steeped in wholesomeness),

19. • He leers suggestively as he speaks: In newsreels or newsphotos, the Arab is
always shown in large numbers. No individuality, no personal
characteristics or experiences. Most of the pictures represent mass rage
and misery, or irrational (hence hopelessly eccentric) gestures. Lurking
behind all of these images is the menace of jihad. Consequence: a fear
that the Muslims (or Arabs) will take over the world.
• Most elementary courses in Oriental languages are taught by "native
informants" in USA
• The modern orient in short participates in its own Orientalizing.
• Oriental scholar will use his American training to feel superirioty to his own
people because he is being able to manage the orientalist system

20. • The phrase “ the arabs so far have demonstrated an incapacity for
disciplined and abiding unity. They experience collective outbursts of
enthusiasm but do not pursue patiently collective endeavors, which are
usually embraced half heartedly. They show lack of coordination and
harmony in orgazniation and function, nor have they revealed an ability for
cooperation. Any collective action for common benefit or mutual profit is
alien to them”
• To whom are the Arabs revealing, demonstrating, showing? To no one in
particular. obviously, but to everyone in general. This is another way of
saying that these truths are self-evident only to a privileged or initiated
observer.
• As her prose moves along, her tone increases in confidence-: "Any
collective action ... is alien to them." The Arabs exist only as an occasion
for the tyrannical observer; "The world is my idea.“