american orientalism
TRANSCRIPT
“American Orientalism”
Name : Gausvami Surbhi A.
SEM : 3
Paper no : 11, Post-colonial Literature
Submitted to: Dr. Dilip Barad,Department of English, MKBU university.
Roll No: 23
Enrollment No: 2069108420170008
Email id: [email protected]
Batch-year: 2016-18
What is “Orientalism?”
• "Orientalism” is a way of seeing that imagines, emphasizes, exaggerates and distorts differences of Arab peoples and cultures as compared to that of Europe and the U.S.
• According to Edward Said, Orientalism dates from the period of European Enlightenment and colonization of the Arab World.
• Arab culture as exotic, backward, uncivilized, and at times dangerous.
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• “Ideology, a set of prejudices that bolster a sense of European superiority over the East and thus implicitly or explicitly legitimate imperialism and colonialism, the exploitation of subjugated people deemed culturally or racially inferior to the dominant culture”
• Said states that “Orientalism is the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient -dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient”
Essential Questions
• US relations with the Middle East.
• Why have relations between these two regions been so difficult?
• Why have they been marked so consistently by failure?
• What needs to change?
United States is
• Qualitatively Different Nation.
• “The first new nation“
• “Exceptional“
• “Occident”
• Developed, rational, flexible, and superior
• "white man's burden”
American Orientalism
• It starts from 11th September, 2001 Al Qaeda attack on the World Trade center
• Sikh, Muslim, and “Muslim-looking” immigrants and citizens all are suspicious and culprits following the 9/11 attack.
• In schools, Muslim and South Asian American children and youth were harassed and bullied.
• Thousands of men and women who were deemed “suspicious” by authorities were arrested, detained, and deported.
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• American media, Television, Hollywood films, News, Popular video games spread “Islamo-phobia” throughout the country and world.
• September, 1907 , Bellingham, Washington. The Indians, also workers, were predominantly from Punjab; most were turbaned Sikh men. The rioters saw the Indians as aliens, outsiders, and racial inferiors who were taking away American jobs, jobs that should go to white men.
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• The paintings, created by American artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, depict the Arab World as an exotic and mysterious place of sand.
• 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, and “Egyptian Girl in Street of Cairo”
• Camel, Balley dancers, Snake charmer
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• Due to American intervention in China, Orientalism become more progressive as China was converted into more Christian society. Prejudices caused by the growth of the ideas of Orientalism in the United States were caused by China’s humiliation
• Orient is characterized as a “fantasy space”
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• According to historians, the United States entered Orientalism in 1850s-1860s by means of literature, painting, and music. Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad (1869) highlights the new development associated with Orientalism.
Middle Eastern Images Covered in
• Chicago World fair (1893)• Songs• CDs and DVDs covers • Novels• Comic books• Cartoons• Films• Video games• Cigarettes• Exhibition
Novels
Paintings
• Sanford Robinson Gifford, an American landscape painter
• (1) The Desert at Assouan
• (2) Long Branch Beach
Music
• The Orient found in American music can be characterized as fantasy developed by the civilized world. For example, Jerome and Schwartz’s song demonstrates the theme of Orientalism through the representation of local Chinatowns as “foreign entities within the U.S. borders”
Cartoons
Movie
• Hollywood films portray the eastern culture as Alien, Exotic, uncivilized, and Undeveloped.
• “The president’s Man: A Line In The Sand”
