It was a late night last night so I was only able to get through Orientalism and most of that there “The Arabian Nights.” But seeing as how some other intellectual minds have covered “Nights” I’ll just move on to Orientalism.
Overall I thought that Said did a wonderful anthropological analysis of what the “Orient” is with regard to how man perceives it. The west is a geographical area, the Orient is a man-made concept. I didn’t realize before this work that as Americans we have a completely different concept of what the Orient entitles. But for both Europe and the United States the Orient is a way for people to dominate a seemingly harmless and exotic culture without feeling like jerks. It made me think of our reasoning for having slavery back in the day here in the US of A. We decided that Africans LIKED the hard labor. So […]
Original post by badspellar