Course:WMST 307: Student Pages: 307: Rachel Nakano

There have been a few different definitions of Orientalism. The Oxford English dictionary’s first definition for Orientalism is, “Oriental style or quality; the character, customs, etc., of oriental nations; an oriental trait, feature, or idiom” (Oxford English Dictionary). While this first definition is problematic in many ways it is also confusing, “because the term ‘Orient’ has come to refer specifically to the Asian Pacific” (O'Brien and Szeman, 240) Oriental referred to the Middle Eastern, East Asian, South Asian, and other cultures. Orientalism was a term that was used by art historians, literary, and cultural scholars in order to describe what wasn't Western.

It wasn’t until Edward Said redefined the term in his 1978 book Orientalism that the word was viewed differently and with negative connotations. “Edward Said uses the term orientalism to describe a dominant form of colonial discourse in which a mythologized East or “Orient,” becomes a site for the projection of Western fantasies of otherness as well as a mechanism for Western domination of actual non-Western cultures” (240). As this definition points out Orientalism is very closely attached to mythologies and stereotypes. These mythologies and stereotypes the West surround Eastern cultures with, creates an “unchanging otherness” (240) and creates an us and them viewpoint between the West and the East. This otherness is created through stereotypes and mythologies surrounding Eastern culture. Many of these stereotypes can be found and are perpetuated in North American popular culture, “For example, the way in which North American media characterize the “Middle East” as a place of repressive government regimes and fundamentalist religion glosses over the vast cultural differences between different groups of the region and contributes to the Western assumption that domination of these “backward” nations is legitimate and necessary” (364).

O’Brien, Susie, and Imre Szeman. Popular Culture: A User’s Guide. 2nd ed. Toronto: Nelson Education, 2010. Print.

Orientalism, n “Oxford English Dictionary Additions Series. 2004. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 25 November 2012 <http://dictionary.oed.com/>.