The Relationship Between Orientalism And The East

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A PLACE WHICH NEEDS ATTENTION: THE EAST The term Orientalism, was used by the West, to define the East. Orientalism is the perspective of the West, the way they see the East. The West here, is the Western Europe and the East is rest of it. Also Said divided Orientalism into two groups which are “latent and manifest Orientalism.” Nineteenth century scholars were mostly interested in Manifest Orientalism which is things we can observe about the Orient like language, literature, art, history. Most nineteenth century scholars saw Orient as backward, degenerate and weird. Because of this thought nineteenth century scholars saw Orient as a place requires attention of the West. The Orient was inefficient to represent itself so the West should advertise…show more content…
(Said 1979: 22) These words are made up by humans to put people in some boxes. The relationship between the West and the East is based on power, domination. Orientalism occurred because one side wanted to rule the other. The West became the winner. Orientalism, therefore, is not an airy European fantasy about the Orient, but a created body of theory and practice in which, for many generations, there has been a considerable material investment. (Said 1979: 23) It means that for many years European people have seen the Orient as an investment. Saying that “the East needs attention” is a weak interpretation. Edward Said who made great observations about Orientalism was also agreed that the East is under the Wests hegemony. Said mentioned in his book that the domination of the West has started very long time ago with colonialism. (1979: 24) Powerful countries such as England and France went all over the world and when they saw that East was different from their countries then they believed that they can exploit and take them under the Wests…show more content…
Semitic languages have a bad influence for the Orient because it differs the East from the West and the communication between them decreases. Most common Semitic languages are Arabic and Hebrew. Ernest Renan was a writer and a philologist who did researches about the Semitic languages in nineteenth century. Every nation has their own words to talk but for Ernest Renan, Middle East languages are not enough developed. For Renan’s opinion, the biggest mistake that the Middle East people have ever made is their language. (Harris 2003:) Because these languages have different format and it creates a difference between the East and the West and this differentiation triggers the alienation of the East. The other thing that separates the East and the West is religion. When Christianity dominates the huge part of the West, the East was dominated by Islam and the other Asian religions. This religion difference has created a disagreement between the East and the West. Both sides tried to put forward their own religions. Islam made some Eastern countries

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