essentialism as a “science of intersubjective confirmation” and a “science of mutual recognition” will conciliate the radical epistemological and ethical aporia between essentialism and constructionism. Dr. Clemens, in her presentation at Shepherd University, notes, “Conflations of nations and their peoples is a dangerous game.”. Indo-Orientalist essentialism which means imagining the essential elements of Indian society and culture or ”being an Indian.” In discussing Indo-Orientalist essentialism I Download Citation | On Oct 1, 2007, Irfan Khawaja published Essentialism, Consistency and Islam: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate In the book, Said effectively redefined the term "Orientalism" to mean a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the Middle East. ( Log Out / I am deeply saddened that I live in a world where Othering still exists, where binarism creates a strong divide between the so-called Western nation and the “East.” There is one driving statement that has stuck with me and that I think is critical. I would argue that Orientialism requires essentialism, or, “the assumption that groups, categories or classes of objects have one or several defining features exclusive to all members of that category” (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffins 73). Essentialism and the dismissal of Western colonialism and imperialism are commonly paired together, since each makes the other more plausible. Edward Said lays out the most well-thought description of postcolonial discourse to date. I would have to agree. Strategic essentialism occurs anytime a minoritized group or member of a minoritized group takes on or “owns” derogatory stereotypes and then applies them in acts of strategic resistance against systemic power (as described by Theory ). Said notes that the construction of the Orient was simply because “it could be.” He notes that the Orient “fairly stands for the pattern of relative strength between the East and West and the discourse about the Orient that it enabled” (Said 75). Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Self-Orientalism refers to the wilful (re-)action of non-Western individuals and institutions to ‘play the Other’ – that is, to use Western portrayals of the non-West – in order to strategically gain recognition and position themselves within the Western-dominated global economy, system and order. Ashcroft et al. This is a great start, but there’s no discussion of the lecture. JIMENA’s response to the California Ethnic Studies model curriculum brings up much-needed criticism of the essentialism and orientalism that plagues the discourse on the Middle East. This is what we call racial essentialism, an imperial and colonial way of looking at identity through and through. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Throughout his writing, Said lavishes extensive praise on the work of Albert Hourani (Orientalism, pp. See also Mohammad Khalifa's neglected but interesting book, The Sublime Qur'an and Orientalism, London and New York, 1983—a believing Muslim's essentialist response to (what the author takes to be) Orientalist misinterpretations of the Qur'an. Change ). ( Log Out / Leaders speak in easily decipherable code, continuing to use the “trigger words” that incite the very feelings of cultural, religious and racial superiority, bigotry and hatred they claim to refute. In the book, Said effectively redefined the term “Orientalism” to mean a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the Middle East. Edwards Said demonstrates how literature and cultural canons of the westerns have otherized their misrepresentation of the Orient. By answering We witnessed it in the attacks after 9/11, when we essentialized all Muslims and assumed that every Muslim was a terrorist. One of his more important distinctions come early in the piece, as he informs readers of the difference between the American-perceived Orient and Orientalism. “The Orient is not an inert fact of nature, but a phenomenon constructed by generations of intellectuals, artists, commentators, writers, politicians, and, more importantly, constructed by the naturalizing of a wide range of Orientalist assumptions and stereotypes. David Brodbeck, Professor of Musicology and the Robert and Marjorie Rawlins Chair of Music, University of California, Irvine will give a lecture titled "Essentialism, Orientalism, and Musical Identity in Goldmark’s Queen of Sheba." Edward Said’s Orientalism was not only an attack on Western scholarship and imperialism, but also on Marxism. The danger of universalizing the American dream, then, causes the Latinxs to be stereotyped as lazy, mooching, and immoral due to their perceived inability to achieve this dream on their own. Enter the Anime begins with interviews of the creators for Netflix’s Castlevania and Cannon Busters. Edwards Said demonstrates how literature and cultural canons of the westerns have otherized their misrepresentation of the Orient. As essentialism is a central feature of Orientalism, the first question to address is whether Mojares inadvertently commits the ’sin’ of essentialism. Similarly stated in Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts. Unfortunately, the act of Orientalism continues today through ignorance, prejudice and racism against Asians. by JOCSM | Mar … Interestingly, it is difficult to extricate Essentialism from Orientalism entirely. While the term Orientalism may be dying, the act survives in American media and American policy. Irfan Khawaja in his article on essentialism and Edward Said’s Orientalism, asked the question “how can one possibly talk about a single essence of Islam when what we see is irreducible variety?” Said goes about the business of claiming an essence for Orientalism while at the same time philosophically challenging essentialism. Edward Said’s book, Orientalism, falls in the latter category because it not only opened up new ways of thinking about key concepts such as culture, power, representation, identity, and ethnicity but also became a seminal text that pushed disciplines such as anthropology, history, and literature to critically rethink the fundamental assumptions and boundaries of their disciplines. To press his case, Chibber argues that this replicates the essentialism and Orientalism of colonialism. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Moreover, it is instructive for future study, whether Saidian or not, inasmuch as it allows us to identify the dangers, … 274, 275, 276, 330, 335, 336, 340, 347, 348) and Louis Massignon (Orientalism… Bringing “democracy” to the Middle East serves in Disney’s interest as consumerism, capitalism and multinational corporations trail at the heels of “freedom”. The specific conception of essentialism that emerges from Orientalism is what we might call demographic essentialism, that is, the quasi-biological idea of a population of organisms whose members characteristically (or even exceptionlessly) act true to type. That being said, I do see real examples of this week’s concepts, mainly essentialism and Orientalism, in modern American culture. In today’s America, nationalism is rising again with (an)other victim, the Latinx population. Friedman is normally pretty good, in my (TP) opinion. It is dangerous that Trump is so quick to Other and create an “us” and “them” situation, or as Said states, “‘us’ Europeans against all ‘those’ non-Europeans” (Said 76). In my opinion, this is due, in part, to the universalization of the American dream. Here's a little Q & A on Said's now seminal and foundational text Orientalism. Nonetheless, the critique of Orientalism gradually won widespread (if never universal) acceptance among students of the Middle East and Islam, and the rejection of cultural essentialism and of the radical dichotomization of East and West which lay at its heart eventually came to be taken as plain common sense by many in the field. It is instead assumed that the women are forced to wear a hijab or a Burkha, and that these women could not possibly have a choice in this matter. Orientalism and Essentialism. Specifically, I think of Dr. Clemens presentation at Shepherd University. This essentialization of the veil takes away any possibility or notion of choice of these Eastern women. Brava! Orientalism is a book published in 1978 by Edward Said that has been highly influential and controversial in postcolonial studies and other fields. Yes, yes it is, and unfortunately, Trump and all of those who consistently essentialize and Other are perpetuating that game today. In addition, the particular kind of oriental colonialism, as a materialised colonial medium, Japanese writing on oriental and Taiwanese architectural history provides an additional perspective on that current and recent postcolonial criticism expressed through such concepts as Edward Said’s orientalism, Homi Bhabha’s hybridity and Gayatri Spivak’s strategic essentialism. work is affected by the author’s identity, whether ethnic, sexual, racial, or religious. ( Log Out / Orientalism, Essentialism, and Revisionist Intellectual History Tom Friedman recently wrote a column in the New York Times about democracy and political freedom in the Middle East. As a field of study, Orientalism focuses on the discourse surrounding Asia, especially from outsiders, who inevitably impinge their political biases on any subject of the Orient. Said argues that Orientialism is still alive and well today. ( Log Out / Said goes on to further explain this concept, noting that the Orient is necessary in the formation of the European Western experience. The film insists that to understand anime is to understand Japan, but it somehow doesn’t realize that in a Western context, ‘anime’ means animation produced in Japan. The Occident determines one idea of the Orient and constructs two identities— the inferior Native and the superior European. “Strategic Essentialism and Ethnification: Hand in Glove?” Nordicom Review31(2): 2010, 63–78, p. 76. First, it refers to a specific esthetic movement, especially in painting and also more generally within the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century artwork, which after the French conquest of Egypt sought inspiration in ‘Oriental’ motives and themes, often using them in highly eclectic and idiosyncratic ways (see Figure 1). The political climate under Donald Trump has exaggerated the otherness of Latinxs as an enemy of the United States. Although at one level, they reflect abstract ‘ontological’ intuitions about the nature of social reality, at another they have important implications for everyday social perception and intergroup relations. She notes how the veil has become a signifier for ‘Oriental women of the East’ and how it depicts to the Occident (our sometimes ignorant western culture) all that is wrong with the Orient. And this, to me, is horrible. However, even if this alludes to a problem of exoticism (and I have seen no sustained argument made along those lines), it is still remarkable that someone who adheres so closely to a universal-particular framing would have any problem with essentialism whatsoever. ( Log Out / This body of scholarship is marked by a “subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice … Postmodernism • “One implication of postmodern theory is the suggestion that this kind of essentialism is (a) fictional and (b) linked to some kind of power play (e.g. Edward Said and orientalism ... Spivak also introduced the terms essentialism and strategic essentialism to describe the social functions of postcolonialism. ... “Essentialism”. This thesis aims to challenge the conventional essentialist approach and to suggest a more appropriate approach—the transcultural approach—to study Gandhāran Buddhist material culture in particular and religions or cultures in general. The discourse on Orientalism unveils how Western society’s slanted perception of the East is fueled by a hegemonic agenda mediated by the mass media. I would argue that Orientialism requires essentialism, or, “the assumption that groups, categories or classes of objects have one or several defining features exclusive to all members of that category” (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffins 73). Orientalism has three distinct meanings. Huntington, all but consigned to well-deserved oblivion during the past few years, has been revived with a vengeance. Specifically, I think of Dr. Clemens … ... What is Orientalism? The following reconstruction of the trajectory of essen-tialism will be centered on Max Weber's treatment of Islam within his tique of Orientalism about Orientalismy's inherent "essentialism," and finally show that essentialism is a fundamental constraint of crosscul-tural cognizance. To press his case, Chibber argues that this replicates the essentialism and Orientalism of colonialism. Orientalism as a discourse of the West on the Orient, without doubt, legitimizes civilizing mission, expansionism, essentialism, and imperialism; however, it convinces the natives about their inferiority. • Rejects essentialism, the idea that there is a core idea underlying any phenomenon under investigation. Irfan Khawaja in his article on essentialism and Edward Said’s Orientalism, asked the question “how can one possibly talk about a single essence of Islam when what we see is irreducible variety?” Said goes about the business of claiming an essence for Orientalism while at the same time philosophically challenging essentialism. Orientalism can be briefly described as a paradigm of the Western conscience that puts the West and the East on the opposite sides of an ontological axis. Unfortunately, the act of Orientalism continues today through ignorance, prejudice and racism against Asians. Thus, his ostensibly extraordinary personality notwithstanding 20, Walelign’s ideas might be seen as continuations and reproductions of an age-old tradition, a tradition grounded on the false premises of essentialism and Orientalism. In my daily experiences, I’ve witnessed colleagues, family, and friends assume the American dream across the entirety of North and South America, claiming that one only needs to work hard and build their life from the ground up to succeed, without taking into account the economic, political, and racial conflicts that are occurring across the nations of the Americas, including the United States. Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. This week, I was introduced to a new subject: Orientalism. Source: Eide, Elisabeth. 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And essentialism to those specific traits the United States now seminal and foundational text Orientalism ( Log Out / ). You want to add to this post to make sure You address all the topics for the week previously when... Cultural ( Mis ) Appropriation, Ideological essentialism and universalism seem to be imperative to power... Details below or click an icon to Log in: You are commenting using Facebook... Online Event: Zoom Call with Jews of Color Running for Office is!
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