Edward Said Orientalism Summary

Edward Said’s book Orientalism challenges a vast amount of scholars and their work on the Orient. Said discusses the knowledge and power, the separation of the West and East, and the obsession with the Orient. In his works he analyzes many scholars, political leaders, and military leaders justify his argument. Because Said’s work attacked years of scholarly work done by what he calls Orientalist, he received many criticisms, which would then tear apart his book just as he did. One of the larger points that Edward Said discussed was the idea of knowledge and power. In several points in his book Edward Said points out the knowledge gave the Imperial nation power over their conquest. This argument starts off with Said discussing Arthur James …show more content…
Massignon is one example Said supplies that Orientalism in almost innately built in to Europeans. For much of the passage on Massignon, Said does not condemn the scholar but speaks rather highly of him, but not matter how different his writings were from others in his field Said states the following “no scholar, not even a Massignon, can resist the pressures on him of his nation or of the scholarly tradition in which he works.” This is true for Karl Marx as well. Marx although condemning the treatment of the Orientals, he himself is guilty if generalizing a large amount of people into one term. These two examples show another one of Said’s argument about Orientalism. Orientalism is nearly impossible to escape, men like Massignon who Said comment works tirelessly on defending Muslim civilization, and Marx who clearly stated his opposition to the treatment of the Oriental still used generalizations and were unable to express their ideas without using and expressing their ideas like previous and contemporary …show more content…
A majority of the comments derived from a sense of negativity. When looking at Sadik Jalal al-’ Azm he critiques Said’s work in many ways one being that Said rarely draws conclusions about the arguments and claims he makes. Said according to Al-’Azm often becomes loquacious and does not have a sense of consistency in this approach of describing Orientalism. Al’ Azm also critiques Said for his seemingly odd bias toward certain writers like Massignon and his distaste for others. A more hostile critique comes from Lewis who critiques Said for focusing narrowly on British and French imperialism, in which Lewis believes, is “arbitrary.” Lewis then continues to state that Said had displayed a general lack of knowledge of what scholarship was that he bogged readers down with repetitive synonyms. Lewis continues that discuss how he believed that Said had rearranged history and added in texts from different sources that he had reinterpreted, as well as brought in other sources that had opinions on the matter but were not related. He continues to express contempt for the book by stating that Said has many “blind spots” in his knowledge of Orientalism. Oleg Grabar though less hostile in his discussion often agreed with Lewis’ critique of Orientalism. However, he did believe that both Orientalist and anti- Orientalist needed to be more clear on their arguments and questions the raise.