Edward Said’s orientalism and East-West disparity

Abstract EN

In his foundational text Orientalism, Said traces Europeans’ imperial tradition in representing the Oriental “other” from ancient times till today.

This tradition Said calls “Orientalism”, and it was a politically oriented discourse based on binary oppositions that presented Eat/West as two dichotomous worlds.

Although Said’s Orientalism has been widely criticized for being a monolithic text, it was the cornerstone of the postcolonial thought and discourse.

Following the conceptual analysis method, this paper scrutenizes the term “Orientalism”, its meaning and history, in order to explain East/ West dichotomy as presented in Edward Said’s Orientalism and what makes it a rock on the road to postcolonial discourse.

The study reveals that to bypass East/ West dichotomy, the other should be empowered to speak for itself.