Edward Said's Orientalism

Introduction

The book "Orientalism" made the literary scholar Edward Said, internationally known. His thesis, the image of the Orient, which is maintained until the present time both of the Western civilization and of the Arab population. Professor of comparative literature at Columbia University from 1963 to 2003, Edward Said is one of the most famous Arab intellectuals and the most listened to. His books have been translated into over thirty-five languages ??and analyses are still disputed (Said, pp 11-17).

He wrote, Culture and Imperialism (2000) and Orientalism. The East created by the West (published in English in 1978 and translated into French in 1980). Undoubtedly, this last book was a great event. Some see it as the inaugural act of the so-called postcolonial studies.

According to Harry Sacher, an "Orientalist" renowned (even if he refuses the title), the analysis developed here are "justified" and historically fruitful. They aroused in the mid-professional Orientalists "something like a trauma", which resulted in a healthy questioning (Said, pp 11-17).

Discussion

In the introduction to the book, Said says his motivation for the analysis of Orientalism is expressing the status as "oriental" who lived and grew up in two British colonies, Palestine and Egypt, with their education, therefore, Western, culminating his career United States, where he is today. Studying Orientalism, Said made "an inventory of the traces it has left me the culture whose domination has been a powerful factor in the life of all Orientals." (Said, pp 11-17)

The progress of the institutions and the contents of Orientalism coincided with European expansion, which extends from 1815 to 1914. The two great empires, the British and French were sometimes allies, sometimes rivals, but they shared not only the territory, profits or sovereignty, but the intellectual power of that which Said called Orientalism, which was the general file information ...