Occidentalism: The Importance Of Orientalism In The Middle East
730 Words3 Pages
1. Said, Edward. Orientalism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978).
The term is used by Said and he brings some definitions to it. According to Said, historians, literary scholar, and cultural scholars used it to depict the eastern culture and society. Writers, designers, and artists are among the main actors who included it in their works of art. It was west’s mission to speak instead of the ones who cannot speak. That was the superior of Europe in general. Britain, France and Germany have used the same way to colonize the culture by creating stereotypes. Said thinks that it functioned as official policy by creating field for it to be activated and legitimized. Not only, scholars or artist but also sailors and other political characters also…show more content… Countries gain their independence towards the end of the 20th century because those powerful countries started to lose their old power. Those countries started to rule themselves; it made them to be aware of their own existence as a power. At this juncture, Occidentalism gains importance since east would write about their colonizers. This research will focus mostly on the last forty years in the Middle East to demonstrate Orientalism. The importance of Turkey for Occidentalism to be strengthened should not be underestimated. After Turkey showed reaction to the speech by Israel president Simon Peres, more scholars and writers started to talk about the other side of Europe. The Middle East’s silence towards Europe was broken. Now there are people who appear on media and writes articles about how the other and what they look like. This should be highlighted because it will shape the following discourses…show more content… It is mostly used in humanities and social sciences. Bradley gives a short summary of the work by Derrida and he states that ‘’it is important to recognize from the very outset that-for all his alleged attempts to question truth, meaning or authority- Derrida’s philosophy stands or falls on the quality of argument’’ (5). He states that grammatology ask question such as ‘’what writing is, when and how it originated, and the ways in which it differs from other forms of communication like speech’’ and it does not provide solutions but create a site of problems (5). Deconstruction is related to the meaning of the texts with its contradictions and internal oppositions on which they are built. Contradictions and oppositions are complex and unstable. Hence, it demonstrates that there is not any text which is a complete whole, on the contrary, contains uncompromising and contradictory meanings. It concludes that a text has more than one meaning. However, according to Derrida, interpretations of the text go only till certain point because the text connects them so inseparably that they become