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Edward W. Said

Orientalism Paperback – October 12, 1979

by Edward W. Said (Author)

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More than three decades after its first publication, Edward Said's groundbreaking critique of the West's historical, cultural, and political perceptions of the East has become a modern classic.

In this wide-ranging, intellectually vigorous study, Said traces the origins of "orientalism" to the centuries-long period during which Europe dominated the Middle and Near East and, from its position of power, defined "the orient" simply as "other than" the occident. This entrenched view continues to dominate western ideas and, because it does not allow the East to represent itself, prevents true understanding. Essential, and still eye-opening, Orientalism remains one of the most important books written about our divided world.

Print length

368 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Vintage
Publication date

October 12, 1979
Dimensions

5.19 x 0.87 x 7.98 inches
ISBN-10

039474067X
ISBN-13

978-0394740676
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Intellectual history on a high order . . . and very exciting." --The New York Times

"Powerful and disturbing. . . . The theme is the way in which intellectual traditions are created and transmitted." --The New York Review of Books

"Stimulating, elegant yet pugnacious. . . . Said observes the West observing the Arabs, and he does not like what he finds." --The Observer

"An important book. . . . Never has there been as sustained and as persuasive a case against Orientalism as Said's." --Jerusalem Post

From the Inside Flap

The noted critic and a Palestinian now teaching at Columbia University,examines the way in which the West observes the Arabs.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; First Ed. edition (October 12, 1979)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 039474067X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0394740676
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.19 x 0.87 x 7.98 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #11,765 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3 in Colonialism & Post-Colonialism
- #4 in Islamic Social Studies
- #5 in Caribbean & Latin American Politics

Customer Reviews:
1,129 ratings

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Wandering Reader

Painful to read, only an academic could tolerate this

Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2019

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Horribly painful to read. His thesis is clear from the introduction. Three hundred pages of documentation for the thesis is excessive. This is ivory tower gum flapping. You will get more from reading other reader's summaries and analysis, rather than suffering thru this on your own. I had to read it for class, otherwise I never would have. Read the summaries you can find elsewhere and you'll get the gist. Don't torture yourself. Nonetheless, his point is valid and insightful, just drowned in excessive detail and support. Just take his word for it and save yourself the hours required.

59 people found this helpful

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Art V.H.

Foundational

Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2018

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Giving Said his due, this is a magnificent work of scholarship that has, nearly forty some years after its publication, entered into many daily discussions of "difference" as they take place in the so-called western world.

It's perhaps quite a long read, but rest assured it is well worth it! I find myself going back to certain passages from the beginning, particularly Said's invocation of Gramsci and the "historical record," as well as his later investigations into American Orientalism, focusing heavily as they do on East Asia--in the current era, China.

28 people found this helpful

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A. Gonzalez

Prescient

Reviewed in the United States on May 22, 2018

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Perhaps even more relevant and essential a critique and study than before!

22 people found this helpful

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Kris Alejo

Love this book

Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2019

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Said’s book is one of the most interesting things I’ve ever read.

13 people found this helpful

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dhydavid

excellent textual critique although seems repetitive and verbose at times

Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2011

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I like how Said uses literary texts in his analysis to show the historical origin of the concept of the Orient and the Oriental. Indeed, certain uses of words and sometimes certain expressions will reveal the underlying cultural bias. This book is an excellent practice of textual analysis. Although nowadays the concept of Orientalism has become so commonplace that many of the arguments given in this book seems outdated, it is to be emphasized that maybe it was exactly due to original research carried out in this book many years ago that Orientalism became widely known.

However I do have a few complaints. In many places in the book, the author sounds really repetitive and unnecessarily verbose. Actually his arguments are not exactly as complex as they seem. Big words, repetition and lots of rhetorics just resort to the readers emotions and sensations, rather than speaking to the sense or the mind directly. Also I do not know why the author ignores East Asia. Of course from his ethnic background, we might not expect him to have sufficient knowledge of the cultural contacts between the West and East Asia. But I doubt this. I am more inclined to think that the author is not interested in East Asia at all. Orientalism is just a channel for him to express his own pride and celebration of his own culture. So in this regard, what his grand theory amounts to might just be a resentment or complaint against the West, rather than a global theory of historicization of cultural stereotypes.

33 people found this helpful

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Mavs

Extremely challenging, insightful, and provocative.

Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2011

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Orientalism, by Edward Said, is a controversial and extremely complex book that challenges the standard conventions through which the West portrays the Orient. Said, a Palestinian American who spent his childhood in British Palestine and Egypt, cites a plethora of reasons for assembling this momentous piece of literature. First of all, he seeks to show that the Orient is not a static, monolithic, and never-changing group, and that making such broad generalizations is harmful. In addition, he argues against basic Western imperialism, against the idea of separating East from West, Oriental from Occidental, through a humanistic approach, because all that fall under such grotesque categorizations are ultimately human. Finally, Said desires to provoke debate, "widen the field of discussion," and challenge commonly held views, such as the simplified version of the Orient promoted by the United States media, for "in the demonization of an unknown enemy, for whom the label terrorist serves the general purpose of keeping people stirred up and angry...media images can be exploited."

Throughout his book, Said defines "Orientalism" in several different ways. In essence, every time he discusses a certain aspect of Orientalism, he ascribes it a specific meaning. Most generally, Said calls Orientalism a "generic term...to describe the Western approach to the Orient." However, Orientalism can also be the combined study of imperialism and culture. Including as many of the characteristics Said mentions, perhaps Orientalism can be defined more decisively, for although he discusses dozens of different types of Orientalism, a few common themes are omnipresent. Originating in the West, Orientalism is the artificial categorization of an intellectually stagnant Orient that encompasses a vast body of often degrading Western literature and justifies imperialist Western policies by promoting a sense of inherent superiority over Orientals.

One must realize that such divisions have existed throughout human history. This process originates from the basic human tendency to separate one's own group from others as soon as one encounters another, different group. This was also done in Ancient Greece in regard to the Persian Empire and is exactly what transpired when Islam collided with Christianity in the seventh century BC. "Islam became an image...whose function was not so much to represent Islam in itself as to represent it for the medieval Christian." This misrepresentation of Islam to the West was deemed adequate and misconceptions like equating Muhammad to Christ were simply accepted. The view of the Orient, Said argues, then stagnated, for unlike other fields of knowledge, Orientalism did not advance, and the misconceptions and negative beliefs were thus engrained in Western thought. This lasted until 1798, when Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt, founded the Institut d'Egypte, and thereby exposed Western scholars to Oriental culture, which ultimately helped facilitate European imperialism of the 19th and 20th centuries. Arthur James Balfour, British politician during this time, claimed that Egypt needs British rule because Egyptians could not rule themselves, while the infamously racist Lord Cromer goes so far as to say that "subject races did not have it in them to know what was good for them." In Orientalism, Said argues that these sentiments were largely imitated in American Orientalism after World War II. A great example of this is Henry Kissinger, who separates the Pre-Newtonian Orient from the Post-Newtonian West, and thereby argues that, "as thinkers, we are better off than they are." As such, the Orientalism once practiced Cromer and Balfour has not changed.

Said asks an important question in regard to the effect of Orientalism. "Can one divide human reality, as indeed human reality seems to be genuinely divided, into clearly different cultures, histories, traditions, societies, even races, and survive the consequences humanly?" The answer to this question is no, because of humanity's physical diversity. Difference, just as it causes the creation of distinctions, breeds contempt, and drawing a distinct dividing line between two groups only aggravates this feeling of being different, or in many cases, superior. This, in turn, exacerbates the issue of feeling hostile towards "others," because once one feels superior to another group, the innate desire to control this inferior group inevitably arises. Thus, the result of Orientalism, from a humanistic point of view, can only be negative.

While Orientalism has successfully challenged common Orientalist views and created immense debate among scholars, it is not without faults. For example, Said urges to stop the use of generalizations, but he grossly lumps all Orientalists into one, treating them all in the same derogatory fashion. In addition, his widespread use of French and German without translation is somewhat challenging to the unilingual reader, which can negatively impact his book's common appeal. Finally, Said thoroughly criticizes Orientalists' representation of the Orient, but fails to provide examples of scholars from the Orient to convincingly prove that these Orientalist representations are in fact misrepresentations. In the end, it would have been extremely useful and even more riveting if he had attempted to show his readers how the Orient actually views itself.

37 people found this helpful

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JR in Texas

Difficult read, but good perspective

Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2021

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Said needs heavy editing to be comprehensible by most people. once you unpack his ideas, they are good points and worth the time, But it's like the blackbird fighter jet taking incredibly high res photos from darn near space flight heights. The detail is amazing as you're flying over centuries of ideas and thought at mach 3 speeds. if you can keep up, there's a lot there to see.

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Joel Ontiveros

Important book to read

Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2021

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This is great book on postcolonialism. The western gaze views everything else as the other and creates a specific narrative that places the west as superior. Said, helps one understand how the west shaped our view of the east.

One person found this helpful

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Pikestaff

Impressive but a tough read.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 23, 2019

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This book was widely praised when first published, but I found it tough going. The author's style is orotund in the extreme, with obscure vocabulary, paragraph-long sentences, and page-long paragraphs. He never uses a full stop where he thinks he can get away with semicolon, or a semicolon where he thinks he can get away with a comma. Until I got used to his rhythm, and managed to insert the necessary punctuation in my head, I found myself re-reading every other sentence, just to make sense of them.

As for its central thesis, about the condescending, imperialist and racist nature of orientalism - well, yes. Points well made, but did they really need to be made at such length? Perhaps at the time they did, and the author's range and grasp is impressive, but it all seems rather obvious now.

23 people found this helpful

Andrew Leisk

This book has changed how I think about others.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 10, 2020

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This book has altered, for the better I think, how I view other people and importantly other cultures. If you are serious about understanding then this is a book for you. We all tend to judge, I did but not know, other people, other cultures according to our own beliefs and ideas, our own perspective. This book has taught me to review my thinking: just because we do something one way it does not mean others who do it differently are wrong. This book for me is the top of the hit parade concerning my education. It's a difficult read, well not actually difficult, but its certainly not a time filler. It's a serious book to be read consciously, and carefully considered. You must read it.

10 people found this helpful

Elizabeth

This book is a concise beautifully written account of both the origins and the deficiencies ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 23, 2015

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This book is a concise beautifully written account of both the origins and the deficiencies in the field of 'Orientalism'. Said sites numerous sources and includes a generous amount of exerts to back up every point he makes which could make for some very interesting future reads if your that way inclined. I really love this book and the price was also great. Edward W.Said has a factual and at times humorously satirical execution which made the book extremely fun to read. I found myself chuckling at times as Said can be very deliberately funny and always is with elegance and poise. Great book for anyone interested in this topic or just matters of history and the factors which have shaped society. This was delivered speedily and in perfect condition. :)

8 people found this helpful

Bejarano

No need for an introduction. this is a MUST

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 29, 2018

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Said's Orientalism is a masterpiece. It will help you understand current topics such as "culture clash", "supremacism", "post-colonialism". Moreover, Said's thesis will be valid and key in understanding current tensions in the world and the resulting coming events.

3 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Edward Said’s masterpiece...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 31, 2018

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An ingenious analysis of the perpetual attitude and common view in the West (Occident) of the East (Orient) as an inferior, atavistic and dangerous ‘Other’. Orientalism looks into the ontology, the major influence and the prominence of this concept in modern society- the entire idea being ultimately derivative of imperialism and colonialism. Edward Said’s legacy lies in his fantastic work on this subject; more relavent than ever today as islamophobia and misconceptions of the (middle) East are common and rife.

3 people found this helpful

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