Edward W Said Orientalism

What is Orientalism?

"A way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient's special place in European Western experience."

Is there such a thing as pure knowledge? How does this relate to the authority Western powers exercise over the Orient, epistemologically?

1. Orientalists treat the Orient as an object that cannot speak for itself and that must be represented secondhand and put on display 2. Three things have contributed to making even the simplest perception of the Arabs and Islam into a highly politicized, almost raucous matter: 1. the history of popular anti-Arab and anti-Islamic prejudice in the West, which is immediately reflected in the history of Orientalism; 2. the struggle between the Arabs and Israeli Zionism, and its effects upon American Jews as well as upon both the liberal culture and the population at large; 3. the almost total absence of any cultural position making it possible either to identify with or dispassionately to discuss the Arabs or Islam

Is Orientalism rooted in reality?

Occident and Orient relationship is complex; filled with power, domination, and cultural hegemony i.e. West thinks they're the shit

Who legitimizes the arguably fanciful ideas of the Orient?

Pre WWII France and England- art Post WWII America