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Taj Taher
HONORS 394 B
27 January 2016
Response Paper 2
Orientalism is an art style and an attitudinal prison. Tim Sharps blunt beginning to his
article Orientalism despite its brevity captures the key elements of a process that has
existed for centuries and bears significant sociopolitical ramifications to this day. Rooted in a
romanticism surrounding The Orient, the ill-defined region came to be popularly characterized
by a sense of mystery that emphasized the exotic (Said 164). However, this exoticism has a
particularly negative bent with regards to the similarly ill-defined Oriental people, in that it
highlights elements of physical barbarism and sexual savagery. In what Sharp calls the products
of fantasy and wish-fulfillment, we see realistically rendered visual manifestations of color,
dresses, and architecture in artwork just as exotically titled The Slave Market or The Narghile
Lighter by artists who never actually visited the Orient.
And it is this latter point which distinguishes Orientalism as something beyond mere
romanticism or stereotype, revealing it to be an attitudinal prison. In my previous Response
Paper, I continuously referred to Orientalism as a phenomenon. However, this implies that the
misrepresentation of the East is a natural occurrence that man (whether he be from the East or
the West) inadvertently succumbs to. In truth, Orientalism is a process: a systematic
marginalization of Arabs and Muslims by way of the misinformed exoticism presented
throughout history and popular culture as a means to attain a political agenda.
As Edward Said reports, when scholars of the Orient visited the region, it was always
with abstract unshakeable maximsrarely were Orientalists interested in anything except
proving the validity of these musty truths (Said 165). That Orientalism does not arise naturally
becomes evident in the fact that the West jails itself in this attitudinal prison. Their
unshakeable insistence upon preexisting beliefs precludes the possibility of acknowledging the

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incorrectness of their opinion. In fact, that they consider their perception of the East as maxims
illustrates that to them, these are objective facts of reality. To suggest to a Westerner their
interpretation of the Orient is flawed would produce the same scoff of disbelief as suggesting to
them their interpretation of gravity is flawed; the suggestion of subjectivity interpretation
denotes is incongruous with a concept taken as scientific truth.
What reveals this process to be even more of a directed rather than passive process is that
the Wests obstinacy upon ignorance is not a matter of simply being unable to unlearn, but one
intentionally perpetuated in order to validate their identity and agenda. Tariq Amin-Khan outlines
the establishment of a superior/inferior dynamic to justify civilizing missions when he writes
the portrayal of Asia as despotic laid the basis for a flawed imperial historiography that was
designed to serve Western European imperial interests, (Amin-Khan 1597). In short, the West
sees what it wants to see. It is this feature which distinguishes Orientalism as a process and a tool
rather than a phenomenon.
However, due to its manner of manifestation, one might be forgiven for considering
Orientalism a phenomenon. As Said himself states, it is predicated by abstract notions of the
Orient, a region and whose inhabitants have as mentioned earlier been ill-defined. The
characterization of it in broad strokes creates a vague impression of the Other, a lack of
specificity which allows the Western audience to take its misconceptions as gut feelings
extrapolated into immutable truths of nature. There is a certain degree of subtlety to it and the
way in which it is exploited which gives it a phenomenal quality.
Such cannot be said of Samuel Huntingtons Clash of Civilizations. Inspired by
Bernard Lewis, the Clash details a world in which conflict is generated by cultural differences
rather than ideological ones, where civilizations coalesce based on language, customs, history,
and most important to Huntington religion (Bajpai 170). It is still very much the child of
Orientalism in the sense that the distinctions it draws between civilizations are based on the

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superior/inferior power dynamic implicit to Orientalism, and retains the homogenization or
marginalization of the people falling under each category. But by establishing such bold
boundaries on cultural terms, Huntington goes a step further and suggests that these civilizations
are fundamentally incompatible.
This refinement introduces a charged sense of hostile imperative to the way these
civilizations are perceived. If Orientalism is an opaque lens through which the Wests vision of
the East is distorted, then the Clash is the telescopic lens of a sniper rifle trained on a detail
blown into obscene proportion. At the heart of this evolution is a shift in the political agenda of
modernity. Orientalism allows for the assimilation of the Other into the ways of the superior
civilization as a means to justify the physical assimilation of foreign lands. In a postcolonial
world, however, political agendas are achieved through the establishment of allies or adversaries
(Amin-Khan 1599). This produces and encourages a dynamic not of us and them but us
versus them. Beyond this intrinsic hostility that was not overtly apparent in Orientalism, it also
prevents the possibility of any kind of mutual understanding or common ground to be formed. It
is ironic that Huntington sought to avoid creating binaries by forming a model with multiple
civilizations, but his insistence upon rigidity and his intrinsically narrow-minded ideology fosters
extreme and absolute binaries of good versus bad and modern versus anti-modern.
The radical definitiveness in ideology that the Clash elicits fosters a culture of hatred,
paranoia, and cynicism. This in turn reveals an impending horror that is as deeply unsettling as
the demonization of the Arab and Muslim people. For as much as Orientalism and the Clash
are instruments of identifying the Other, it serves to define the West as well. As a civilization,
it has prided itself on being more civilized than the rest of the world with respect to its
idealization of rationalism, progressiveness, and the universal rights of man. While there is no

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doubt that its achievement of those ideals have been tenuous at best, at the very least the West
had these good and noble ambitions by which to guide its sense of identity and purpose.
So for the West to now be drawing its sense of self from the irrationalism, intolerance,
and the conditional rights of man that Huntingtons framework entails is frightening: if the
institutions of imperialism and slavery were conceived and carried out by a West identifying
itself upon nobility, what then can we expect from a West fueled by madness? The West has
demonstrated its powerful potential to shape the world, both constructively and destructively,
more so than any other civilization. Its ideological influence is felt to some degree in almost
every country and culture in the world.
To this final point, some may counter that these ideals were never just the Wests to begin
with, but qualities which existed in all. And to that, I would say that how these qualities have
been transmuted are irrelevant; what is of value in the contention, however, is the recognition
that we all have a right to claim these qualities as a way to identify ourselves. This right is
indicative of the truly global community we now live in. The previous forms of identification are
now obsolete, for there is no longer (if there ever was) simply a West or an East. We can no
longer ascribe mutually exclusive terminology to describe a global population of people which,
with every passing day, becomes increasingly and inevitably intra-connected. The world will
only become smaller, and who We are can no longer be defined by who we are not.
Works Cited
Amin-Khan, Tariq. New Orientalism, Securitisation and the Western Media's Incendiary
Racism. Third World Quarterly 33.9 (2012): 1595-1610. Web. 26 Jan. 2016.
Bajpai, Kanti. Samuel P. Huntingtons Clash of Civilizations Reconsidered. International
Studies 36.2 (1999): 165-189. Web. 26 Jan. 2016.
Said, Edward W.. ORIENTALISM. The Georgia Review 31.1 (1977): 162206. Web. 26 Jan.
2016.
Sharp, Tim. "ORIENTALISM." West Coast Line Spring 2010: 94,97,146. ProQuest. Web. 26
Jan. 2016.