![]() ![]() ![]() By turning the study of Islam into a science of observation and description of objective reality, Western scholars and writers propogated the idea of a known Islam that was available to general Western imagination. He describes how philology and anthropology played a large role in encouraging Orientalist views of Islam. In the second chapter, Said deepens his discussion of Orientalism by analyzing several cultural texts with an emphasis on Western studies of Islam. This effort is motivated by a self-perpetuating crisis: the more the West involves itself with the Orient and professes to contain it, the more complicated the Orient becomes to the West. However, as the Orient is a culturally-diverse, politically-nuanced, and highly-expansivegeographical space, the West constantly returns to it through their scholarship and political intervention in a persistent effort to contain it. ![]() ![]() While Orientalism is a force that has shaped different intellectual and political activities across the West and the Orient, its impacts could always be traced back to its consolidating tendency. In the first chapter, Said addresses the scope of Orientalism as a historical practice of consolidating knowledge about the Orient into forms that can be studied and conveyed to a Western audience. Across three chapters, each with four topical sections, Said moves through the discussion of Orientalism, addressing first its scope, then its various structures, and, finally, its most recent iterations. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |