Characterization Of Oriental Society From Two Perspectives

Could you take a guess and tell from what culture a person is from by just listening to their voice? Could you also tell by looking to their appearance; The way they dress, the color of their skin, facial features? What about the way they carry their selves? Just like “The Chinese in All of Us” by Richard Rodriguez where he explains that he feels connected to all the cultures around America, with its “culture, a sound, an accent, a walk.” (Rodriguez 730). It does not mean and require that you must look a certain way to belong to a certain culture.

Europeans tend to have a prejudiced view on the Middle East called “orientalism”. This view tends to have a negative perspective on Arabs thinking that they are sly, lazy, erotic, poor, exotic, and not as advanced as Europeans. However, Montagu explains that the Grand Vizier’s lady and her husband are “entirely given up to devotion”. The husband never takes on bribes and they donate money to charity (Turkish Pg. 87). If Arabs were sly, poor, and lazy they would not be donating their hard earned money and would be taking on bets to earn more. This couple is rich and gives there all to their god through worship, faith, and good

Moreover, this construction as the foreign eastern country as feminine is the typical western view of the orient. This view of the Orient is connected to Edward Said's concept of

As people experience events in their life, their events help shape and form their opinions, beliefs, and values. Between the 1760’s and 1910’s, when analyzed, it was shown that European’s views on non-European peoples and cultures reflected the intellectual changes of the period. Europeans learned to accept the non-Europeans mainly due to the Enlightened Absolutism that had occurred where enlightened absolute monarchs allowed freedom of speech, religious toleration, and right to hold property. Some causes that resulted in the intellectual change could’ve been the Europeans were influenced by the way a person lived/lifestyles of the non-Europeans, Nationalism, and superiority.

The United States of America is commonly known as a melting pot of different cultures and groups. Due to extensive immigration from numerous countries since the 1800’s, American society is characterized to be culturally diverse. Asian-Americans, who have a rich history in the United States, have positively blended into the American society with their inborn cultures. Asian-Americans have been identified as the largest group of immigrants with high levels of income and proper education. However, American society has traditionally been conservative and didn’t have particular interests for Asian-Americans. Instead, Asian-Americans were secluded from the activities of white conservatives and were labeled as a separate group altogether. Thus, in

My cultural profile is Black or African-American to pull in the ancestral heritage. Black culture has given more than afros, cool dance moves, and music to the world. Unfortunately, the media and mainstream continue to highlight this with generalizations and stereotypes. Black culture has values, traditions, and unique communication styles that have developed the platform for other cultures, such as, Mexicans and Asian cultures to strive from despite our differences. Understanding my cultural profile has allowed me to proudly identify myself as a Black woman in American.

Montagu’s Turkish letters, which read as an anthropologic examination of Turkish culture, seem to attempt to dispel prejudices and myths surrounding Eastern culture. While her project is inherently misguided to this end, it nonetheless provides insight on British ideology.

The ground breaking text Orientalism written by Edward Said widened the arena for the post-colonial thinkers to consider the text with a new mechanism in Third World context. Orientalism has developed a purported approach of binary opposition to dismantling the East/West dualism in relation to Eurocentric edifice. The focal point of Said’s study is the ‘West’ and its observation of the ‘East’. The former having all positive traits: white, brave, dynamic, civilized, cultured, educated, rich of the ‘Empire’ identifies the ‘Eastern countries’ as the ‘Other’ with all the negative attributes: black, coward, static, barbaric, natural, uneducated poor people of the ‘Colony’-subjected to their contempt. The post –colonial

He also brings up the topic about orientalism and how things can exaggerate and distort the culture or the people where it isn’t how it seems. “Ideas, cultures, and histories cannot seriously be understood or studied without their force, or more precisely their configurations of power, also being studied” (Said 62). This is saying that culture cannot be “just” studied without understanding what it means. Also have to know the basics and what makes up that culture without the stereotyping. Edward Said’s Orientalism has used the term “orientalism” in reference to a patronizing Western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian and North African societies. In result, a false dichotomy occurs when an argument presents two options and ignores, either purposefully or out of ignorance, other

Because Montagu chooses to describe the Turkish women’s agency rather than their passivity, her depiction of Eastern women drastically differs from the predominantly reproduced notion of the exaggerated sensuality, submissiveness, mysteriousness, and sexual availability of Oriental women. “Unlike most Orientalist travel writers who emphasize the oppression of Islamic

The Near East or the Orient was a “place of Europe’s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other.”[1] Edward Said describes the Orient as not an inert fact of nature but both Orient and Occident as man made.[2] The argument Said presents is that the Orient is an “idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West.”[3]

The Orient refers to the space occupied by the Middle East and Northern Africa which exists in connection and opposition to the Occident--Europe (Said 5). It exists in Western eyes as the prime subject of domination and control (Said 3) as "the Oriental" is viewed as less-than-human, purely for study and academia (Said 27); it is he who is also "gullible", lazy and unmotivated, and lacks European morals such as compassion for animal welfare (Said 38). It is the "bad" Orient and must be corrected and taught proper morals (Said 99). Its women are submissive and to be spoken for by the Orientalist foreigner (Said 6), who visits not to learn about or appreciate culture but to be spectator and to gaze upon what he sees as "exotic" (Said 21), she has no temperament or lived experience beyond what is assigned to her by this outsider (Said 6). The Orient is not a real place

The themes of cultural representations between East and West in post-colonial studies have been most explored by Edward Said. Said’s notion of Orientalism maintains that the Orient is the "Other" to the West, imagined and created by the West to be the "contrasting image" which only existed within a system of representations framed by political and ideological forces that brought the Orient into Western consciousness. The relation of the Occident to the

The European’s view of the orient was not flattering. As a group, they understood that their culture was different from many of the cultures present in the Oriental world. Unfortunately, the people of the west did not appreciate the differences between themselves and the people of the East. Consequently, they were unable to fully relate to the people of the orient in a meaningful or sympathetic way. Their inability to empathize with the East limited their understanding of the oriental nations as a whole. These limits revealed themselves in the form of the Europeans’ negative characterization of Eastern people. They viewed Easterners as uneducated, lazy, and merciless individuals. Eventually, these negative classifications led to the belief in the superiority of the Western society over the people of the orient. However, there were some who attempted to characterize the people of the orient from a less limited perspective. Lady Mary Wortley Montague’s The Turkish Embassy Letters (1763) attempt to create a flattering and sympathetic view of the oriental person is greatly overshadowed by some of the inherently oriental ideas in her characterization of them. Therefore, even though Renault’s Summary Judgement under the Moorish Kings of Grenada does not attempt to create a positive view of the Oriental society; he does echo some of the oriental ideas present in Montagu’s letters.

Orientalism is a study of language and traditions of the people and their culture in the Middle East. These studies are mostly done by people outside of the culture that is being looked at, and mostly the studies are being performed by white western men. Edward Said believed that there was a problem with the way in which other people were studying and writing about his culture. He was upset and spoke up when he wrote a booked called “Orientalism,” in his book he points out many reasons why the study of orientalism is hurting the cultures in which they are studying. The study of other cultures and countries better known as the Orient has become a popular discussion since Said’s book on orientalism was published. This paper will take a look