Importance of Edward Said's Discussion of Orientalism to the Study of Art History
Introduction
Art history is one of the academic fields that entails studying the development of the history of sculpture, paintings and other visual arts in their historical and stylist contexts. The discussion of Orientalism by Edward Said is considered to have significantly impacted the study of art history. Orientalism is deemed to be one of the numerous disciplines that have over the years expanded to include structures of power, imperialism, political systems of hegemony and relationships in the literature, philosophy, arts and other fields which makes it a seminal foundational text for postcolonial studies. This essay aims ta critically evaluating the importance of the discussion of orientalism as put forward by Edward Said to the study of Art History.
Analysis of the Significance of Edward Said's Discussion of Orientalism to the Study of Art History
Edward Said published the book, "Orientalism" in 1978 which developed widely to become one of the leading canonical text for studies of the Middle East, critical post-modern and post-colonial studies and cultural studies (Shah, 2017, pp.44). European scholars and scientists had seen the late sixteenth century been producing the idea and imaginative geography of the Orient which is also known as the East as being dangerous, exotic and strange. That was opposite to the civilizational superiority that was associated with the Occident also known as the West (Kent, 2015, pp. 54). However, over time, this discourse of the Orient has extensively been manifested in the colonial styles, imagery, institutions and scholarship into the existing academic discipline of orientalism which is completely formal with a set of rational justifications, epistemologies and scientific explanations that seem to perpetuate significantly a binary between the East and the West (Black, 2015, pp.2).
Literature is one of the forms of arts that Said extensively discusses in his book whereby he provides significant evidence of how the Europeans had little regards for the East as exhibited in the way they wrote documents and made speeches regarding issues related to the people from the West (Black, 2015, pp.3). According to Said, the Europeans mainly the French and the British who were considered as the Orients played a significant role in defining the Western or Europeans as individuals with personality, ideas, experience and image which was contrary to that of the people in the East who were thought of being less civilized (Mabilat, 2017, pp.14).
That is substantial evidence that most of the existing literature that was written by European scholars and scientists regarding various aspects of the East and its dominants. The European political documents, literature and scientific studies on the East are significant evidence of the positional superiority of the West over the East (Broude, 2018, pp.46). In his book, Said extensively examines the classic texts such as travel literature, speeches, letters and Voltaire's Candide and most of the literary examples that he uses reveal how the Europeans had the belief that the Arab world was standing as a provocation to Christianity (Said, 2017, pp.28).
For instance, the designs in which the Muslins and the Arabs were using to build their mosques and temples portrayed them as being less civilised. Said even suggests that some Westerns considered the Arabs as being idle worshippers given the fact that they placed various sculptures of the Buddhist and goddesses which they viewed as their source of power (Mabilat, 2017, pp.17). That only confirmed the fact that most of the people from the East were yet to get civilised. Said argues that the romanticised images of both Asia and the Middle East in the Western culture were significant indicators that helped in enhancing the implicit justification of the colonial and imperial ambitions of the Americans and British (Broude, 2018, pp.49).
Said claims that the orient was constructed by most of the European scholars as a negative inversion of the Western culture (Thompson, 2018, pp.102). The writings of Said are considered to have had far-reaching implications that went beyond the different study areas within the context of Middle East to include the various studies of the Western imperialist attitudes to India, China and elsewhere. In his discussion of Orientalism, Said extensively addresses the European views of the Islamic Arab world by comparing their arts to that of the Westerns (Broude, 2018, pp.54). For instance, the practice of tattooing their bodies which were and is still very common amongst the Arabs was seen as been outdated and was highly associated with those people who were yet to get civilised.
Said demonstrates how linguistics, anthropology race theory and the various arguments that were raised by Darwinian mutually reinforced the different categories of racial and cultural hierarchy by examining various nineteenth-century European writers such as Alphonse de Lamartine, Edward William Lane, Ernest Renan and Gustave Flaubert (Black, 2015, pp.4). Most of the writings made by these European writers demonstrated how the East was inferior to the West. In his book, Said extensively contributes to the existing knowledge about the art history by discussing the characteristics of post-World War II Arab Muslim figure and the interwar Islamic Orientalism in the American political interests and popular culture (Mabilat, 2017, pp.19). According to Said, the only way in which a substantial research can be put into place is only when scholars and writers start questioning and pushing against the ideas that have over many decades now been handed down through the various constructed categories of the geography of the East and the academic canon as it has in the past been portrayed by majority of the European scholars (Broude, 2018, pp.59).
The book, "Orientalism" by Edward Said has numerous reliable information and facts that significantly change the way art was looked at by people particularly the scholars (Said, 2017, pp.22). Said shows the inferior position of the East by demonstrating them as the subjects of colonisation while the West is the colonisers (Hallisey, 2016, pp.121). He also provides a comprehensive analysis of the consequences of the many centuries of orientalism and how they influence the Western perceptions of the East. Said describes the great translations, reception and interpretations of orientalism within the postcolonial studies and literary (Thompson, 2018, pp.105).
He advocates for the use of a humanistic approach to the societies as one of the strategies of using one's mind both rationally and historically with the aim of undertaking a reflective understanding and genuine disclosure (Mabilat, 2017, pp.22). By having grown up in British colonies of both Egypt and Palestine, Said extensively conducts an in-depth investigation of various ways in which orientalism has over the years been constituted in his own life. Said claims that most of the scholars and activists have over the years been instrumentalising orientalism in such a way that it appears to be a testimonial to subaltern status and a weapon of identity instead of providing a multicultural critique of power through using the available knowledge (Black, 2015, pp.5).
There exists a central idea about orientalism that the Western knowledge is generated from the preconceived archetypes that envision all the societies in the East as being similar to one another and lack the required civic standards rather than from facts and reality. The East is established as being antithetical to the West by this priori knowledge which is extensively constructed with historical records and literary texts that mostly have a limited understanding of the various facts of life in the Middle East (Said, 2016, pp.8). By concentrating on the different ideas that had been raised by Michael Foucault, Said places more emphasis on the existing relationship between knowledge and power that is present in most of the popular thinking and scholarly materials especially those that focus on the views that the Europeans had on the Islamic Arab world (Thompson, 2018, pp.112).
Said sought to lay bare the existing relations of power between those individuals that were colonized (the East) and their colonizers (the West) by taking a comparative and historical literary review of European scholars and writers specifically those from France and Britain on how they looked at, thought and talked about the people of the Middle East (Thompson, 2018, pp.118). The information that Said reveals from this analysis adds to the available knowledge of the history. Majority of the scholars have been using the work of Edward Said in their scholarly sources to try and overturn the long-held Western ideological biases that the Western people have towards the non-Westerners (Black, 2015, pp.6).
Conclusion
Conclusively, this paper extensively evaluates the significance of the discussion of Orientalism by Edward Said and its contributions to the study of art history by focusing on various aspects of art history particularly the writings that were made by the European scholars and researchers. The paper demonstrates how the work of Edward Said his book, "Orientalism" has significantly changed the way in which art was looked at and perceived. It has been discovered that most of the literature and reviews that were made by the European scholars showed how the Westerns viewed the people from the east as being inferior and uncivilised unlike them.
References
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Hallisey, C., 2016. My title alludes to an essay by Edward Said in which he engaged “in a useful exercise, by which one delineates the critical field in order to propose changes in it or lacks in it”(Said 1983, 140). In a fundamental way, Said’s Orien-talism (1978) was a similar exercise concerned as it was with the necessity for members of an academic community to struggle constantly for critical distance on their own work. As Said warned at the end of Orientalism,“Trouble sets in when the guild tradition of Orientalism .... Defining Buddhism (s): A Reader, p.92-127.
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Said, E., 2016. I n order to make a point about alternative energy sources for Americans, Consolidated Edison of New York (Con Ed) ran a striking television advertisement in the summer of 1980. Film clips of various immediately recognizable OPEC [Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries] personalities¦ Yamani, Qaddafi, lesser-known robed Arab figures¦ alternated with stills as well as clips of other people associated with oil and Islam: Khomeini, Arafat, Hafez al-Assad. None of these figures was mentioned by .... Defining Islam: A Reader, p.3-26.
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