Some considerations on Orientalism of Edward W. Said

Abstract

In the “Afterword” to the 1994 edition of Orientalism, Said wrote that the fate of his book was both fortunate and unfortunate. He stressed that he was happy “to record that many readers in Britain and America, as well as in English-speaking Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Caribbean, saw the book as stressing the actualities of what was later to be called multiculturalism, rather than xenophobia and aggressive, race-oriented nationalism.” Contrary to this positive response by English-speaking readers, Said lamented the negative reception of Orientalism in the Arab world. The main purpose of this article is to clarify Said’s assessments about the reception of his work, questioning theoretical elements of his orientalist theory. As a result, this article contains a first part on what Said called a “personal dimension” that constitutes the crucial starting-point for his work. After that, the article analyzes, in two brief sections, the theoretical elements present in Orientalism’s structure: the first section discusses different senses of “orientalism” and the concept’s ontological and epistemological bases; the second considers historical and geographical delimitations of the term. The conclusion presents critical aspects of the theoretical bases of Orientalism, in an effort to clarify Said’s opinions about the negative reception of his book in the “Arab world”.