Academic literature on the topic 'Orientalist discourse constructions'

Edward Saids Orientalism blev kendt som en anvendt udgave af Michel Foucaults diskursteori. Said hævdede at være inspireret af især Foucaults Archaeology of Knowledge og Discipline and Punish i sine analyser af det essentialiserede islambillede i orientalistikken. Med udgangspunkt i Saids hævdede inspiration fra Foucault kritiserer denne artikel Orientalism’s teoretiske ramme fra et sociologisk perspektiv. Dermed følger artiklen Sadik al-Azm’s argument, at Said ikke havde øje for det fænomen, som al-Azm kaldte ”orientalism in reverse”: Islamistiske og arabisk-nationalistiske tænkeres anvendelse af orientalistiske begreber i deres egne ideologiske konstruktioner. Artiklen argumenterer for, at Said som selv-erklæret foucaultianer burde have været opmærksom på diskursers reciprokke magt. Efterfølgende vises hvordan orientalister og islamister var tæt forbundne i den diskursformation, hvorfra det essentialiserede islambillede opstod.
 
 ENGELSK ABSTRACT:
 Dietrich Jung: Edward Said, Michel Foucault and the Essentialist Image of Islam 
 
 Edward Said’s Orientalism became known as an applied version of Michel Foucault’s discourse theory. In analyzing the essentialist image of Islam as a core feature in Orientalist scholarship, Said claimed to be inspired by the work of Foucault, in particular by his Archaeology of Knowledge and Discipline and Punish. In using Said’s claim as a point of departure, this article criticizes the theoretical framework of Orientalism from a sociological perspective. Doing so, it examines Sadik al-Azm’s argument that Said had a blind eye to a phenomenon which al-Azm called “Orientalism in reverse”: the self-applications of Orientalist concepts in the ideological constructions of both Islamist and Arab Nationalist thinkers. The article argues that taking Foucault’s theoretical position seriously, Said should have been aware of the reciprocal power of discourses in shaping this essentialist image of Islam. The article then analyzes the phenomenon of “Orientalism in reverse” from a Foucauldian perspective, and shows the ways in which Orientalists and Islamists were closely knit together in a discursive formation from which the essentialist image of Islam emerged.
 
 Key words: Michel Foucault, Edward Said, Orientalism in Reverse, Ernest Renan, Islamic Reform.

Purpose: This article aims to engage in a meaningful discussion of Occidentalism as a discourse that draws its roots from Orientalism. It scrutinizes the limitations of Occidentalism in investigating the East-West encounter from the perspective of Orientals (Arab intellectuals) and the multifarious ways the latter relate to and imagine the Occident. It will cast a critical eye on the multiple and diverse constructions of Occidentalism as a discourse, arguing that unlike Orientalism, which homogenizes the Orient, Occidentalism does not Occidentalize/homogenize the Occident. Methodology: We take as a starting point Edward Said’s definition of Orientalism as a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and ‘the Occident’, and we explore the limitations and the possibilities of Occidentalism as a method to construe the colonial mechanisms of misrepresentation of the Other as everything different from the Self. This article compares and contrasts a plethora of existing definitions of Occidentalism as formulated by scholars from both the Arab world and the Occident. Findings: This paper concludes that the Oriental’s encounter with the Occident cannot, and should not, be projected as a reverse relationship, or, as some claim, as an ‘Orientalism in reverse’. Instead, it should be projected as a diverse set of relationships of Orientals who have experienced the Occident in a variety of manners. Furthermore, while Orientalism derives from a particular closeness experienced between the Occident and its Orient, often through real or imagined encounters, Occidentalism is also the outcome of a long cultural relationship between the Orient and its Occident. What differs between the Orient and Occident, however, is the position of power and hegemony, which characterizes the Occident’s encounter with the Orient. Originality: This article takes an all-inclusive view to discuss the term Occidentalism from the perspectives of both the Orient and the Occident. It teases out the limitations of this term. It challenges Orientalist methods of misrepresentation, which continues to blemish the Arab world and its discourse of Occidentalism as a discourse of hatred of the Occident. Furthermore, through the discussion of Alloula’s Oriental Harem, it offers insight into the suggested Occidentalism method, which emphasizes the disfigurations of the Orient while tactfully writing back to the Occident.

The article presents an analysis of everyday cosmopolitanism in constructions of Europe among young Romanian nationals living in Britain. Adopting a social representations approach, cosmopolitanism is understood as a cultural symbolic resource that is part of everyday knowledge. Through a discursively oriented analysis of focus group data, we explore the ways in which notions of cosmopolitanism intersect with images of Europeanness in the accounts of participants. We show that, for our participants, representations of Europe are anchored in an Orientalist schema of West-vs.-East, whereby the West is seen as epitomising European values of modernity and progress, while the East is seen as backward and traditional. Our findings further show that representations of cosmopolitanism reinforce this East/West dichotomy, within a discourse of ‘Occidental cosmopolitanism’. The article concludes with a critical discussion of the diverse and complex ideological foundations of these constructions of European cosmopolitanism and their implications.

The study of the Western consumption of the female captive remains central to the circulation of cultural and social constructions in the mainstream visual and literary texts. Due to the massive upsurge of such constructs, the hermeneutic study of the existing images about captivity in the East has stipulated new perspectives into the production of these substantial messages that determine genuine challenges to the preexisting canonical view of cultural representations. As many scholars have advanced critics about the female images in many narratives, Western cinema has shown significant portraits of the female which draws an orientalist design of a discursive discourse, introducing extreme exoticness of both pleasures and destruction. With the promise to deconstruct the captive portraits of the female identity, this paper discusses the circulation of such images, explaining why they exist, offering some solutions, as well as offering an analysis of their possible impact on the public. Given the damaging misperceptions that exist as a result of their circulation and consumption, this paper fills a much-needed research gap by asking the following research questions. How does the circulation of these images reproduce issues of femininity and captivity? How do visuals reinvent the literary tradition to depict the female captive in the orientalist discourse? By answering these questions, the paper attempts to examine the issue of representation by adopting a cultural studies approach, relying specifically on qualitative content analysis to reveal alternative possibilities of some of the Western perceptions. The rationale behind this approach lies in the fact that cultural studies bash to study all aspects of cultures without canonizing some artifacts at the expense of others.

Through a critical examination of European immigration policy and using the case of Afghan asylum seekers in the European continent, this article argues that the politics of labelling and the criminalisation and securitisation of migration undermine the protection framework for the globally displaced. However, the issue goes deeper than state politicking to circumvent responsibilities under international law. The construction of migrants as victims at best, and as cultural and security threats at worst, particularly in the case of Muslim refugees, not only assists in their dehumanisation, it also legitimises actions taken against them through the perpetuation of a particular discourse on the European Self and the non-European Other. At one level, such a dynamic underscores the long-standing struggle of Europe to articulate its identity within the economic, demographic and cultural anxieties produced by the dynamics of globalisation. At another, these existing constructions, which hierarchise ‘worthiness’, are limited in their reflection of the complex realities that force people to seek refuge. Simultaneously, the labels, and the discourse of which they are part, make it possible for Europe to deny asylum claims and expedite deportations while being globally accepted as a human rights champion. This process also makes it possible for Europe to categorise turbulent contexts such as Afghanistan as a ‘safe country’, even at a time when the global refugee protection regime demands creative expansion. Ultimately, the politics of European migration policy illustrates the evolution of European Orientalist discourse – utilised in the past to legitimise colonisation and domination, now used to legitimise incarceration and deportation.

Occidental discourses tend to revise orientalist images about the orient. Many authors have taken the responsibility of giving a new voice to the occident and among those is Fatima Mernissi. In this regard, this paper aims at discussing the shift that has marked the writings of Fatima Mernissi with a particular focus on her book, ‘Shehrazad Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems’. It is undeniable that Fatima Mernissi‘s thoughts have known a radical change in terms of ideology and discourse. ‘Shehrazad Goes West’ seems to promote an Occidentalist discourse that isn’t based on appropriating orientalist rhetorical images of the orient but rather on revising/ reconsidering the tropes of essentialism, dehumanization and fixity that Orientalist texts usually opt for. From an auto-orientalist discourse that Mernissi advocated in her narrative Dreams of Trespass, we move to another discourse that manifests itself in ‘Shehrazad Goes West’, which is Occidentalism. In this article, based on a postcolonial feminist approach, I argue that Fatima Mernissi uses another approach of occidentalism in her construction of Western gender relations and the space of Western Harem. Instead of constructing a counter-hegemonic discourse to orientalism that based on misrepresenting the “other” and denying their voices, Eastern representation of the West in ‘Shehrazad Goes West’ does not keep with the same rhetoric of orientalism; rather it dismantles that logic which victimized people of the East and replaces it with a humane vocabulary. Moreover, the Occidentalist approach appropriated in the book does not only target the occident but also the orient resulting on what Abdelkbir Khatibi calls “double critiques”. The significance of this paper lies in highlighting such a potentially inclusive and democratic discourse that would counterbalance the politics of othering inherent in the discourse of orientalism.

Since the first encounters between the East and the West, many Western artistic productions have been produced to introduce the Orient to the Occident. Antoine Galland’s translation of the oriental folkloric tales, known as One Thousand and One Nights marked a cultural transfer through introducing an exotic, colourful and adventurous, yet unsafe, life-threatening and mysterious image of the Orient. Scholars question the authenticity of the translation, and reject the true belonging of the tale of Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp to the oriental cultural heritage suggesting its Western construction. This fabrication suggests the existence of several discourses that are to be unfolded with the critical discourse analysis of the pictorial and textual discourse of the tale and its several filmic adaptations. The tale was fully or partially adapted in several cinematographic productions during the last century. For example, while Aladin (1906) faithfully adapted part of the original tale, the 1992 version directed by Clements and Musker is a loosely inspiration perceived through an orientalist filter. The aim of this article is to investigate the authenticity and disclose the discourses concealed in Galland’s translation and its 1992 filmic adaptation, the critical discourse analysis in addition to Edward Saïd’s Orientalism provide the theoretical framework to analyse the excerpts from the translation and scenes from the film, in order to disclose the colonial, orientalist and feminist discourses they encapsulate.

This article analyses Greek orientalism towards the Arabs from the end of the eighteenth to the late twentieth century. It examines an extensive body of texts, beginning with Adamantios Korais’ rallying call for Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt and ending with the post-Suez attacks on Nasser’s anti-colonial policies by leading post-war Greek writers. The analysis approaches the representations of the Arabs as a branch of a wider Greek orientalist discourse that, for the most part, has focused historically on the Turks. In so doing, it conceptualizes Greek orientalism as partly a ‘borrowed construction’, internalized in Greek discourse from European colonial ideology, and partly as an articulation of what Edward Said has called an imperial ‘structure of feeling’, which in the case of Greece emanates from the irredentist/neo-Byzantine expansionist vision of Megali Idea. The analysis deploys the concepts of ‘internalized’ and ‘transposed orientalism’ to denote a process whereby a particular culture, like that of modern Greece, which is itself the object of western orientalist depiction, first embraces this demeaning image of itself and then, in an attempt to mitigate it, projects it in upon other neighbouring cultures that are perceived to be inferior to or less ‘westernized’ than its own. Finally, the article examines the role of Egyptian-Greek writers in the construction of this discourse as cultural mediators who, in contrast to other Greek thinkers and artists, had a direct experience of interacting with modern Arab culture.

This article investigates how Chaucer‘s Knight‘s and Squire‘s tales critically engage with the Orientalist strategies buttressing contemporary Italian humanist discussions of visual art. Framed by references to crusading, the two tales enter into a dialogue focusing, in particular, on the relations between the classical, the scientific and the Oriental in trecento Italian discourses on painting and optics, discourses that are alluded to in the description of Theseus Theatre and the events that happen there. The Squire‘s Tale exhibits what one might call a strategic Orientalism designed to draw attention to the Orientalism implicit in his fathers narrative, a narrative that, for all its painstaking classicism, displays both remarkably Italianate and Orientalist features. Read in tandem, the two tales present a shrewd commentary on the exclusionary strategies inherent in the construction of new cultural identities, arguably making Chaucer the first postcolonial critic of the Renaissance.

This research examines chronological patterns in the social construction of violence against women in the United States and abroad as represented by coverage in the New York Times. It is found that while criminal justice–oriented discourse dominates coverage, the news is less often applying a social problem frame to violence against women occurring in the United States and increasingly linking such violence to culture when it happens in Islamic societies. Thus, coverage contributes to cultural acceptance of an Orientalist binary that juxtaposes “progressive” Western nations with “backward” Eastern ones. Such a finding is consistent with feminist scholarship on Orientalism and discourse surrounding violence against women. This article concludes by considering how such Orientalism serves contemporary neoliberal governmentality.