Reorienting Edward Said’s Orientalism: Multiple Perspectives

Edward Said remained a little-known scholar both in the West and in the Arab World until the publication of his major work, Orientalism , in 1978


Introduction
The impact of Said is obvious in the considerable and prolonged discussions created by Orientalism (1978), The Question of Palestine (1980), Covering Islam (1981), The World, The Text and Critique (1983), Culture and Imperialism (1993), and many other works.
In Orientalism, Said examines the array of different kinds of scholarship, institutions, approaches and styles of thought by which the Europeans formed their views and stereotypes about the Orient over a long period of time. The aim of Orientalism, argue Ashcroft and Ahluwalia (2002: 54), ''is to reverse the 'gaze' of the discourse, to analyse it from the point of view of an 'Orient''', or as Said himself puts it (1978/2003: 25), ''to inventory the traces upon me, the Oriental subject, of the culture whose domination has been so powerful a fact in the life of all Orientals''. Furthermore, the relationship between knowledge and power is a main theme in Orientalism.
The success that Said's works received in the Arab world is evident in the large number of works dedicated to his ideas, such as  Edward Said]. Thus, we can say that Said's Arab presence equals his West presence. Many of his own works were rendered in Arabic; some were rendered twice, and some three times. His works also have been translated into many other languages.
Said's most controversial book, Orientalism, was published in 1978 and translated into Arabic twice, by Kamal Abu Deeb, in 1981, and by Mohammed Enani, in 2006. The book has caused serious arguments in the Arab world, and the debate sparked as it took place in book reviews, articles and books in which writers put forth their views regarding the theses advanced by Edward Said. His discussion of the relationship between knowledge and power, his study of Orientalism as a discourse of power and his treatment of many other topics led to Said facing extensive critiques for a long period of more than twenty-five years. The translation of Orientalism into Arabic by Kamal Abu Deeb in 1981 has elicited critical responses to the book. However, not all critics who received Orientalism in the Arab world used the Arabic translation. Competent in English, most of them read it in its original language. The paper's body is divided into two sections. These sections provide a thorough and complete analysis of Said's theories and discourses from an Arabic perspective. Through this examination, I hope to give a rationale for a thorough examination of Said's work, which will cover a wide range of topics. The idea of reversed 'Orientalism' and 're-orientalism' is considered in my analysis. I apply and assess a basis for researching the validity of interpretations and an improved understanding of Said's theoretical stances and discourses, and I also consider whether Said himself has been affected by residues of orientalist power and essentialisms from different approaches to scoring interpretation. The goal of reviewing and analyzing Orientalism and its consequences is not just to look at Said's viewpoints and discourses, while that is important.

Orientalism as the Canon
In his education and career, Edward Said was a famous critic and writer, as well as an avid reader, insightful analyst and commentator. Moreover, his education in comparative literature gave him a holistic view of the texts that he read, the experiences that he faced and the literary criticism that he exercised. He began working as a critic because he rejected the idea that art is for art; he disagreed with the concept that says literature is a separate product from our life. His first and last aim was to give the reader enjoyment. Edward Said insisted on combining literature with current events in the world.
It is worth noting here that Said wrote two books before writing his most controversial book Orientalism. In his first book, Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography, Edward Said sought to find links between Conrad's discourses (1966) and his short novels as a prelude to monitoring the major divisions in his personality and the tension that dominated his self-consciousness, to overcome the problem of "the other" individually and linguistically in the English language.
In his second book, Beginnings: the Purpose and Approach (1975), Said raised the problem of "the idea of beginning" when individual selves are replaced with power, which leads to change. He discussed this problem in three stages: in the classic novel, in modernist literature and in the structural concepts of language. Said discussed the model style for beginnings, as expressed by the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico (eighteenth century) and how beginnings cannot be discovered but are created. They also interact and develop according to the controversial relationship between traditional knowledge and cultural boundaries.
Edward Said's next book was Orientalism which received wide acclaim from various cultural perspectives. It expressed the realization of what the book represents regarding developments in awareness of the mechanisms of domination and how to resist them. In his book, Edward Said presents a criticism of the West's discourse on the East. This is called "Orientalism". This criticism is based on confirming two main features: first, the East, which in this discourse is only representative of Western ideas of the East, which is far from reality. Secondly, this discourse, despite its historical assets, was produced under the colonial domination of the West over the East and aimed at the same time to consolidate and re-produce it. Edward Said had a great effect on universal thought through his book Orientalism, which is closely tied to the tumultuous dynamics of contemporary history. This discussion penetrates different cultures in order to open a new door to freedom; this door is the door to intellectual production in the field of humanities. (see the preface of the book Orientalism, 2003 edition).
Respectively, Edward Said defined Orientalism in three interdependent ways:

•
Anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient -and this applies whether the person is an anthropologist, sociologist, historian, or philologist -either in its specific or its general aspects, is an Orientalist and what he or she does is Orientalism.
• Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between "the Orient" and (most of the time) "the Occident".
• Orientalism is a Western method of dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient (see Said 1978Said / 2003. All three of the above definitions contribute to one larger whole, that of Orientalism as a discourse of power whose authority is invoked every time the Orient is in question. Thus, according to Said (1978Said ( /2003, "because of Orientalism, the Orient was not (and is not) a free subject of thought or action". The relationship between the Orient and the Occident exists within a situation of power of the Occident. The very presence of the Orientalist relegates to silence the Oriental who is there in the Orientalist text as silence, a trace or simply as an occasion for the elaboration of the theories of the Orientalist. Thus, for an Orientalist like Ernest Renan, Islam is a good example of 'arrested development'; for Marx, it is an illustration of "the Asian mode of production." Moreover, the Orient is used by the West as a surrogate or subterranean self on which the West projects its negative qualities. The West thus defines itself as advanced, human and civilized as against the Orient, which is barbaric, underdeveloped, violent and inhuman.
Furthermore, Orientalism is a critical shift for Edward Said towards the analysis of the relationship between power and knowledge. The performance of Orientalist discourse as a tactical, political and imaginative function served the colonial policies and formed an integral part of the rise of imperialist climates. If Said's methodology in the analysis of texts does not ignore the fingerprints left behind by the argument of willful individual intention, which was discussed in his book Beginning, it is still a rigorous methodology for following the extent and influence of Orientalist discourse and its ability to reduce this intention. Therefore, the individual writers whose works Said discusses in the book produce this ordered pattern from the general discourse, which guides the individual writer and the reader into a misleading knowledge trap. So, Orientalism is both very serious and original for critical analysis and, at the same time, a series of deep epistemological reflections on the plight of cultures in relation to the general methods and procedures of cultural discourse.
Edward Said's writing continued to face objections from different directions. These objections increased after the publication of his book Orientalism in 1978, which was surrounded by much controversy. In this respect, Malcolm Kerr, in his article which appeared in The International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (1980: 544), states that ''this book reminds me of the television program "Athletes in Action," in which professional football players compete in swimming, and so forth. Edward Said, a literary critic loaded with talent, has certainly made a splash, but with this sort of effort, he is not going to win any major race. This is a great pity, for it is a book that, in principle, needed to be written and for which the author possessed rich material. In the end, however, the effort misfired. The book contains many excellent sections and scores many telling points, but it is spoiled by an overzealous prosecutorial argument in which Professor Said, in his eagerness to spin too large a web, leaps at conclusions and tries to throw everything but the kitchen sink into a preconceived frame of analysis. In charging the entire tradition of European and American Oriental studies with the sins of reductionism and caricature, he commits precisely the same error.'' In the afterword to Orientalism, which examined the fate of Orientalist ideas, Edward Said confirmed that the book had attracted a great deal of attention, some opposing it as expected, others misunderstanding it, but most of it positive and enthusiastic. Moreover, a series of translations into many languages led, in his view, to debates and discussions which went far beyond anything that he was thinking at the time of writing. Edward Said (1978Said ( /2003 states that ''The result of all this is that Orientalism, in almost a Borgesian way [Borges's Fantasy], has become several different books''.

Critical Views on Said and Orientalism
Edward Said is one of the most prolific critics whose work covers a wide spectrum of fields of study, including comparative literature, political science and anthropology. As indicated previously, Orientalism, considered Said's most famous work, has been the subject of much critical debate since its publication in 1978. Some scholars have praised Said's analysis of the ways in which Western representations of the East have been distorted and oversimplified, arguing that it has had a significant impact on the field of postcolonial studies and has helped to shed light on the ways in which power and knowledge are interconnected.
However, other scholars have criticized Said's work for a number of reasons. Some have argued that his analysis is overly broad and that he fails to account for the complexity and diversity of Western representations of the East. Others have criticized his use of sources and his reliance on a limited number of examples to support his arguments. Some have also argued that his critique of Orientalism is overly simplistic and fails to take into account the ways in which Eastern societies have also represented the West. Despite these criticisms, "Orientalism" remains a highly influential work in the fields of postcolonial studies and cultural criticism, and its ideas continue to be debated and discussed by scholars and students around the world. This remark serves as a starting point for Al-Yusufi. Arab critical discourse, according to him, subscribes to its own Orientalising. It has failed to find an alternative to the Orientalist vision that depicts the Arab-Islamic world as barbaric, uncivilized and underdeveloped as opposed to the civilized and developed West. He proposes to start where Said left off in his critique of modern Arab critical discourse. Edward Said describes the Arab intelligentsia's role as follows: Its role has been prescribed and set for it as a modernizing one, which means that it gives legitimacy to ideas about modernization, progress and culture that it receives from the United States for the most part. Impressive evidence for this is found in social science and, surprisingly enough, among radical intellectuals whose Marxism is taken wholesale from Marx's homogenizing view of the third world, as I discussed it earlier in this book. So if all told, there is an intellectual acquiescence in the images and doctrines of Orientalism, there is also a very powerful reinforcement of this in economic, political and social exchange: the modern Orient, in short, participates in its own Orientalizing (see Yusufi further elaborates on this idea of the Arab as a shadow of the Orientalist. According to him, Al-Shābbī, one of the Arab romantic poets, did not realize that the moment he was formulating his denigrating statements about the Orient, he was reproducing the image of the Orient invented by the Orientalist discourse at its most deprecating moments. Some critics, according to Al- According to Fathi (ibid:42), Edward Said was among the most outstanding people who exposed the complicity between the critical paradigms and theories of knowledge production on the one hand and the institutions of power on the other. His book Orientalism, asserts Fathi, was met with a hostile reception because it exposes the Orientalist discourse of Orientalists such as Bernard Lewis. He (Lewis) puts questions to Said of the sort: What are your qualifications and knowledge of Arabic dictionaries? By this, Lewis obviates the need to answer Said.
In an article in Al-Thaqāfa Al-Jadīda ‫الجديدة‬ ‫الةقافة‬ (November 2003), a monthly magazine, 'Afaf Abdel-Mu'ti introduces in an analytical way, Edward Said's project, which started after the 1967 defeat. His book Culture and Imperialism is treated as a sequel that deals with the unresolved problems of Orientalism. Here the reviewer's interest is focused on Said's connection between culture and imperial expansion. She explains that the writings of Albert Camus that are based on defending French imperialism and the fading of Algerian history continued to cast their spell on the western reader. Edward Said, she argues, has brought to the fore the imperial connection which underpins Camus' work. She also looks at Said's analyses of Jane Austen and Verdi which she says have unmasked the racist and supremacist perspectives of this writer and this composer.
In 2004, Fusūl, ‫ل‬ ‫ع‬ ‫فصع‬ a seasonal literary criticism periodical, dedicated a whole issue to take stock of Said's legacy. It has as well organised a symposium for the same purpose. Huda Wasfi, editor of Fusūl and moderator of the symposium, explains the purpose of the symposium by saying that it does not arise merely from a desire to commemorate and honour Edward Said but, more importantly, to try to stimulate and activate critical consciousness through dialogue with the achievement of Edward Said, critiquing him, reviewing the ways to which his work has led and looking into the possibility of benefiting from them (see Fusūl, Summer 2004).
Edward Said's status as an exile caused much controversy. Sami Khashabah, an Arab critic, views Said as removed from the Arab intellectual scene in more than one aspect. He agrees with Murīd Barghūthi that Said is not an Arab critic. Barghūthi (2005: 22) contends that Edward Said is not an Arab intellectual; he (Said) himself does not think that he is. He is an intellectual who writes in English and whose readings and culture are Western par excellence. She goes on to say that this, of course, is not in contradiction with his being Arab in origin or with his loyalty to the Palestinian cause in particular and the Arab causes in general.
Yet, none of these critics considered the fact that Said's identity cannot be dealt with within the narrow terms of loyalty or disloyalty to a certain origin. Said's status was that of a person who bestraddled two worlds without belonging exclusively to either. His was an act of crossing rather than maintaining barriers: I have no doubt that this was made possible because I traversed the imperial East-West divide, entered into the life of the West, and yet retained some organic connection with the place I originally came from. I would repeat that this was very much a procedure of crossing, rather than maintaining, barriers; I believe Orientalism as a book shows it, especially when I speak of humanistic study as seeking ideally to go beyond coercive limitations on thought towards the non-dominative and non-essentialist type of learning (see ''Afterword'' to Orientalism 2003:336-337) There is more that gives credence to the presence of this organic link which Said kept with his origins. In his book Orientalism, he states, "So while I would accept the overall impression that Orientalism is written out of an extremely concrete history of personal loss and national disintegration ‫عععععععععععععععع‬ only a few years before I wrote Orientalism, Golda Meir made her notorious and deeply Orientalist comment about their being no Palestinian people ‫عع‬ … did I want only to suggest a political program of restored identity and resurgent nationalism." (see Said 1978Said /2003 Said argues that Western representations of the East have historically been distorted and oversimplified and that these representations have been used to justify European imperialism and domination. Said argues that the West has constructed an "Orient" as a way to understand and control the East and that this "Orient" has been represented in Western literature, art, and scholarship as a homogenous and static entity. According to Said, these representations are not objective or neutral but rather reflect the interests and biases of the West.
Said also argues that the West has created a dichotomy between the "Orient" and the "Occident," with the Orient being seen as inferior and the Occident being seen as superior. He argues that this dichotomy has served to reinforce Western power and superiority and has been used to justify Western imperialism and colonization of the East.
Overall, Said's analysis of Orientalism highlights the ways in which power and knowledge are interconnected and how Western representations of the East have been used to justify and reinforce Western domination.
Said uses the term "discursive" to refer to the ways in which Western representations of the East have been constructed and transmitted through language and other forms of discourse, such as literature, art, and scholarship. According to Said, these representations are not objective or neutral but rather reflect the interests and biases of the West. He argues that the West has created an "Orient" as a way to understand and control the East and that this "Orient" has been represented in Western discourse as a homogenous and static entity.
Said also argues that the West has created a dichotomy between the "Orient" and the "Occident," with the Orient being seen as inferior and the Occident being seen as superior. He argues that this dichotomy has been constructed and maintained through discursive practices and that it has served to reinforce Western power and superiority.
Overall, Said's concept of Orientalism as a discursive practice highlights the ways in which language and other forms of discourse can be used to construct and reinforce power dynamics and systems of domination.

Concluding Remarks
The reception of Edward Said in the Arab world is very much confined to his ground breaking book Orientalism. Orientalism is, without exaggeration, the book that earned Said great fame in the West world. As has already been discussed in the previous discussion, Edward Said has his personal style, which hardly anyone can share with him, because he relied most of the time on literary and cultural texts based on academic methods of research in literary criticism. Thus, we can judge that his style is difficult not only for Arab readers but also in English-speaking countries because of his wide digressions and his awareness of the characteristics of academic writings in the field of humanities in which it is difficult to generalize and absolute sentencing. In this respect, the complexity of the source text, Orientalism; its structure, content and form, language function and style lead to other difficulties when deciding on the proper method for conveying various units of the ST in terms of the linguistic systems and cultural context. Accordingly, differences in the linguistic features of the two languages and cultures make the translation process quite complex and awkward with regard to certain expressions. This paper, therefore, attempted to get the reader acquainted with Said's Orientalism first before moving on to discuss his controversial book, Orientalism. It also sheds light on the critical views of both the book and the author. The theoretical views and discourses of Edward Said were reviewed in this paper. My research aimed to deconstruct and analyze Said's Orientalism in order to expose the limitations of Arab critiques. My goal was to go over Said's work again and appraise it in light of his critiques and analyses of Arab intellectuals. Among other things, the article aimed to bring together many of Said's ideas and discourses in the context of Arabic intertextuality. Re-reading Orientalism in order to analyze the Arab Intellectual's ability to produce non-orientalist tales, or perhaps their affinities with Orientalism, would be more constructive and intriguing, I believe. On numerous levels, I believe that such techniques could be enlightening and productive. Based on the above conclusions, the following recommendations are suggested: Firstly, translators are supposed to understand ST material, understanding its linguistic conventions along with other conventions in the cultural environment which affect the translation process.
Secondly, emphasis should be on the translator's awareness of his/her responsibility for deciding and choosing translation strategies that make target texts accessible to the target readership.
Thirdly, as a mediator, the translator should possess the ability to share the original author's interpretation of the ST topic and theme that laid down the original factors of the text. He should not superimpose his/her own interpretation of it.
To conclude, this study recommends that translators should take the needs of the readers into account when choosing a translation strategy. The main focus should be on the translator's approaches, skills, and literary and cultural background. Moreover, readers must be seen as active participants in a communicative process.
Finally, translation is not only the transferring of words from one language to another; it is a dynamic process and a final consequence of the interactions of cultures. It is hoped that the current study sheds light on key factors of how controversial translation impact on the reader and specifically from the Arabic reader's perspective, and that should be considered and investigated in future work.