Edward Said Orientalism Analysis

Edward Said was a Palestinian-American literary scholar, one of the famous intellectuals in the world, and a political activist. He is best known for his theory on “Orientalism”, and the conception of the East by the West as a result of a relationship of power.
Said was born in 1935 in Jerusalem, grew up in Cairo and later on sent to study in the United States where he later on continued his studies and established his position as Professor at Columbia University. According to Said, his own special position as “a child growing up in two British colonies” and his life in the United State, forced him to confront his own Identity as Palestinian in a western society, and understand himself as “the Oriental subject”. The main event that helped

According to said, this distinction is the foundation to many european theories, literature, social descriptions and political reports on the Orient and its people.
The third meaning reflects a special way that the West is “dealing” with the Orients. Starting roughly at the late eighteen century, “Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as 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 of dominating ____ and having authority over the Orient.”
Said describes the construction of the concept of Orientalism as a process of three historical stages that started from a relationship of familiarity and closes between the West - that was represented those days especially by France and Britain. The first stage took place until the early nineteen century, and included mostly “India and the Bible lands”. The second stage started at the beginning of the nineteen century and lasted until the end of World War Two and was based on a relationship of domination, and the third stage contains the shift of dominant power from Europe to The United

His main point is that cultural knowledge as a collection of literature, music, art, academic research and more, is influenced by power and affect it. As opposes to the common believe that “true knowledge” is pure from all political influences, Sais argues that the researcher or the Author is always affected by him or her environment. Therefor any kind of knowledge whether it is scientific knowledge or art is “contiminated” by politics, and for that reason, every knowledge about the Orient will be affected by politics and power. However the European discourse of the Orient is not only affected by power but also is a type of power in itself by constructing and maintaining the Oriental way of thinking that keeps the hierarchy between the two entities and provides justification to the domination over the