A New Perspective in Orientalism

Abstract

In his introduction to the term “Orientalism,” Edward Said begins by paraphrasing the writing of a French journalist’s view of the present-day Orient in order to express the major common Western misconception about the East. This misconception exists in the Western mind, according to Said, as if it were irrelevant that the Orient itself was actually sociologically affected. He then goes on to describe the basis of Orientalism, as it is rooted in the Western consciousness. Said uses the phrase “The Other” to describe the Western fascination with the Orient. This is a reference to Jacques Lacan’s terminology, which describes the mirror stage of development. This is the stage in growth during which children supposedly learn their own identity by successfully separating their own being from a mirror image of themselves. In this context, someone only finds an idea of themselves through a contrast with an “Other.” It is in this circumstance that our desires and expectations of being complete are projected onto this entity. This is a fitting comparison to Said’s topic, considering the emphasis he puts on “the Orient’s special place in the Western experience.” Said suggests that the Orient does not mean the same to American as it does to the European countries, which fits logically into the equation (Europe as the analog of the child that derives its feeling of self from an “Other”). This makes historical sense, since the Orient was adjacent to Europe’s earliest civilizations and the cultural exchange has always existed.

Keywords: Otherness, Insatiability, Complex, Western Perception, Oriental and Occidental, contradiction.