1. ORIENTALISM, OCCIDENTALISM AND AREA STUDIES
Theories of Area Studies
Prof. Kyu Young Lee
Week 6 - October
Yuri Liman, Milena Dobranova, Jung Ah Kim

2. Who is Edward Said?
Edward Wadie Saïd, (1 November1935 – 25 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and outspoken Palestinian activist. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and is regarded as a founding figure in postcolonial theory
He referred to himself as a "Christian wrapped in a Muslim culture." According to Saïd's autobiographical memoir, Out of Place (excerpted in London Review of Books article "Between Worlds"), Saïd lived "between worlds" in both Cairo and Jerusalem until the age of 12

3. His autobiographical memoir Out of Place won the 1999 New Yorker Prize for non-fiction. He was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Royal Society of Literature, and the American Philosophical Society.
Said's writing regularly appeared in The Nation, The Guardian, the London Review of Books, Le Monde Diplomatique, Counterpunch, Al Ahram, and the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat. He gave interviews alongside his good friend, fellow political activist, and colleague Noam Chomsky regarding U.S. foreign policy for various independent radio programs.
Edward Said died at the age of 67 in the early morning of September 25, 2003, in New York City, after a decade-long battle with chronic myelogenous leukemia

4. What`s Orientalism?
Orientalism is the study of Near and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, and peoples by Western scholars. It can also refer to the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists.
In the former meaning, the term Orientalism has come to acquire negative connotations in some quarters and is interpreted to refer to the study of the East by Westerners shaped by the attitudes of the era of European imperialism in the 18th and 19th centuries. When used in this sense, it implies old-fashioned and prejudiced outsider interpretations of Eastern cultures and peoples.

5. FROM ORIENTALISM TO AREA STUDIES
Kolluoglu-Kirli, Biray., The New Centennial Review. 3:3 (Fall 2003), pp
Yuri Liman

6. Introduction
Changing in relation Western vs. on-Western in the discourse of 9/11( evoking such categories as good/evil, civilized/uncivilized, Western/Eastern)

7. 1)area studies should in relation
With its relation with Orientalism in
Relation of being heir to this discipline
Heritage and similarities between A.S.
And Orintalism under geopolitics of
The post-World War II era
Distinctive and disruptive places
Withing organization of social
studies

8. Social science disciplines started t take shape in the second half of XIX century:
1.Sociology
2.Economics
3.Political science
Three of them correspond to the division of life spheres in capitalist society and its dominant ideology, liberalism
4.Idiographic history, began to understood as the study of “ what actually happened”
At first sight it seems that the subject matter was geographically defined, but it is not space, but time that is the key to the epistemology of social science. Social sciences mad euniversal claims valid over time and space:space being the universalized West, time being modern-capitalist temporality

9. 5. Anthropology-study of the history of societies and cultures without writing
Not necessarily the study of non-Western world. In other words, anthropology is the study of the childhood of mankind
6.Orientalism, subject geographically determined: non-Western world. Orientalist is a complex-knowledge scientist. But after World War II Orientalism gave its way to area studies.

10. Area studies defined by geography and classifies the world according to the economic and political interests and priorities of the USA, under guidance and support of government agencies
Area studies played 2 disruptive roles in the organization of social knowledge: structural and epistemological

11. The first: by challenging the literary and textual orientation of Orientalism, area studies initiated the flood of interdisciplinarity :emergence of women`s studies and ethnic studies,which subjects matters “should be handled with an interdisciplinary approach: (Wallerstein 1995)
The second:radical epistemological critique that emerged in reaction to knowledge produced under area studies departments.
Area studies operated with conceptual frame-work of the modernization approach, and were development-orientednew approaches to “Third World development” such as “dependency school” and the world system perspectives

12. According to Said(1978) Orientalism can be analized as “the corporate institution dealing with the Orient-dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settleng it, ruling over it: in short, Orentalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over Orient”.
Orientalism as an academic discipline, a tradition, a tradition of discilined learning whose studies revolve around Oriental culture, histories, and languages.
O. is organically linked to European capitalist expansion and the colonization that accompanied it

13. History of Orientalism
On the initial stage, religious ambitions and interests were more influential that political and economic ones ( Christian missioners and travelers played an important role)
1312-Church Council of Vienna establishes a series of chairs in Arabic, Greek, Hebrew at Paris, Oxford, Bologa,etc
1632 and 1636 –establishment of Arabic studies in Cambridge and Oxford respectively
1784-Asiatic Society of Bengal
1795-the Ecole de Languages Orientales in Paris

14. European colonial domination expended from 35% to up to 85% (Said 41) expansion of Orientalist institutions.
Turning point was Napoleon`s Egyptian Campaign, because Orientalism reached its maturnity as a body of knowledge, that coukd be directly used for both conquest and colonial administration.
1873 The Iternatonal Congress of Orientalists, formed the most vital and dynamic institutional settings for Orientalists from various European countries.

15. What happened with Orientalist knowledge?
According to Abdel-Malek there are 3 reasons to account for the crisis that shook traditional Orientalism:
-emergence of national liberation movement
-decolonization
-appearance of socialist states

16. But to most american scholars World War II was the prime reason for emergence of area studiesaccording to Palat (2000) war made explicit the need for personal with wide knowledge of different regions of the world and their languages, and expert with technical skills and regional knowledge with “technical proficiency”

17. As a result msny training programs emerged during WWII: Army Specialized Training Program, Civil Affairs Training Schools(although demobilized after the war)
1946 Social Science Research Council set the Committee on World Area Research “to determine the extent to which the facilities in the universities could meet the anticipated government requirements”

18. SSRC recommends the government to invest in language and area studies:
1958 National Defense Education Act`s(NDEA): $ 34 mil for non-Western academic programs, $ 11mil –language profciency programs, $7 mil for development and research, $16mil for student stipends (from around $ 206 mil)
Besides governmental support, lots of financial funds came from various organizations:
-Rockefeller Foundation($1 Mil)
-Carnegie Foundation($2.5 mil)
-Ford Foundation( $278 mil!!!! For area studies)

19. ORIENTALISM: WESTERN CONCEPT OF THE ORIENT
Said, Edward W., New York: Vintage Books, 1978, pp. 1-28
Yuri Liman

20. Edward Said's book Orientalism is a critical summary of Western conceptions and underlying thoughts commonly associated with the Orient. He highlights common misconceptions, which are now interwoven with the thought process of a "westerner" with regards to the orient. He chastises Western historical, social and religious studies of the Middle East and North Africa. Said accuses Western science of being biased; not on purpose however, but rather inherently, due to a self imposed superiority complex. A state which is perpetuated by associating technological superiority with social superiority. As a result, Oriental cultures and religions, when compared to their Western counterparts are painted as exotic, different, traditional, sensual, and fanatic...in an ignorant sort of way.

21. Said describes Orientalism, as a means through which the West comes to terms with the Orient. This is based on the Orient's special place in European Western Experience. It has helped to define the West as its opposing image, concept and personality placing it in a position where it exist as an integral part of Western material enlightenment and culture. The most common classification for Orientalism is an academic one, which still serves in a number of academic establishments. Anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient regardless of whether he/she is an anthropologist, sociologist or historian is an Orientalist, and what he/she says or does is Orientalism.

22. Said's critique lies heavily on the Western belief of 'knowledge is power'. Throughout his book references are made to the ability to study the 'Orient', and how this confers authority and dominance to the students which are predominantly western scholars (Orientalists)
"Two great themes dominate his remarks here and in what will follow: Knowledge and power, the Baconian theme. As Blafour justifies the necessity for British occupation of Egypt, supremacy in his mind is associated with "our" knowledge of Egypt and not principally with military or economic power."

23. He describes the desire for knowledge about the orient as being spawned from the desire to colonialise effectively not to decipher the complex nature of a society which is inherently different, thus bound to do things a little differently. By comprehending the Orient, the West justified a position of ownership. The Orient became the subject, the seen, the observed, the studied; Orientalist philosophers were the apprentices, the overseers, the observers. The Orient was quiescent; the West was dynamic.
This is a rather unfortunate position both for the West and the 'Orient'. The students used their position of perceived understanding to further compel 'Oriental' people into subservience while simultaneously justifying their actions. They protected their conscience by convincing themselves that the 'Orient' was incapable of running itself, thus their territory must be administered for them.
"It dose not occur to Balfour to let the Egyptian speak for himself, since presumably any Egyptian who would speak out is more likely to be the "agitator [who] wishes to raise difficulties"

24. Said makes some vivid, passionate and striking points however, he seems to be lacking of a little objectivity. The general tone of his book "Orientalism" depicts western Orientalists as persistently reinventing the near and Middle East in self-serving, eurocentric terms; as seen through Western eyes, "the Orient" emerges as a passive, backward world, monolithic in nature and exotic in its alienism, a realm ideally created to sustain the West's daydream of supremacy. Said brutally charges Western scholars for perpetuating the notion that the Orient should not be taken seriously but rather be seen as a subject of study.
It is in this line that Said builds his argument. Totally oblivious to the fact that the sheer passion in his discourse may be equated to favouritism by readers. He makes many hard hitting and vivid points, but the repetitive hammering on the same point posses the ability to transform a great piece of work into an opus which skates around a diluted form of reverse racism. As progress is made through "Orientalism" several instances are depicted which provoke negative attitudes from the reader:

25. "The European is a close reasoner; his statements of fact are devoid of any ambiguity; he is a natural logician, albeit he may not have studied logic; he is by nature very sceptical and requires proof before he can accept any proposition...the mind of the oriental on the other hand, like his picturesque streets, is eminently wanting in symmetry. His reasoning is of the most slipshod description. Although the ancient Arabs acquired in a somewhat higher degree the science of dialectics, their descendants are singularly deficient in logical faculty..."
Excerpts with similar themes are found all over Said's "Orientalism". They generate feelings which cannot be considered to be catalyst to a sound and logical comprehension. It is this model of argument, employed by Said, which reduces the effectiveness of his contention. In Said's blueprint of Orientalist discourse, the argument fell, inadvertently but ultimately, into the same binary logic it desired to criticise. He essential conveyed the impression that, there is justifiably, a "real" Orient; whose essential contrast remains incomprehensible by Occidental reasoning

26. Conclusion
Orientalism was a distinctively European enterprise. I emerged with European capitalist expansion and reached its maturnity at the point when Europe`s expansion was being consolidated with colonialism.
Area studies is distinctivey American enterprise. It emerged with WWII, which witnessed the US`s ascent to a hegemonic position in the world-system

27. The approach of Orientalism towards the non-west is inherited by area studies. This knowledge is shaped by the ontological distinction drawn between “us” and “them”.
However, contrary to Orientalism, which exclusively focused on the frozen past, area studies is an approach to the study of the contemporary non-Western world