Essay on Orientalism and the media PDF

Preview

Summary

What is ‘Orientalism’? Outline and evaluate Edward Said’s argument. What
implications does his line of argument have? Discussed with reference to media coverage of Middle East issues...

Description

What is ‘Orientalism’? Outline and evaluate Edward Said’s argument. What implications does his line of argument have? (Discuss with reference to

EITHER

media coverage of Middle East issues, government policies towards a Middle Eastern state, OR to the application of IR theories to the region.)

1. Introduction Orientalism is a key concept that provides a new perspective on the study of the impact of colonialism in the Middle East and the relationship of the region with the rest of the world (mainly Europe and North America). When he wrote about his definition of Orientalism, Said’s aim was to shed light on the array of false assumptions built by western scholars when talking about ‘the Orient’. Although not all the literature he discusses has apparently a political motive, the author believes that virtually everything that has been written about ‘the Orient’ conceals a political motive of dominance. The process of domination, post-Colonialism, might not be direct, but it permeates in the orientalist ‘hegemonic discourse’, which is initiated by expert and then perpetuated in public discourse (Said, 1978). Firstly, this essay will analyse Said’s line of argument and its main critiques. Then, it will proceed to present a few examples of how Orientalism has impacted experts’ and non-experts’ analysis of Middle Eastern issues in the past. Finally, it will evaluate current media coverage of recent events and the position of current scholars in order to show the extent to which orientalist discourse is still perpetuated today. 2. Said’s Orientalism

In the book published in 1978, Edward W. Said presented his perspective on ‘Orientalism’ and formulated a new interpretation of the term that would become popular amongst academics in the decades to come. Said’s definition of Orientalism is far from being univocal, although he considers the different meanings to be ‘interdependent’ (1978: 2). On a general level, the author defines Orientalist ‘anyone

who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient’ (Said, 1978: 2). Nevertheless, this practice does not come without further implications. Firstly, the perspective of the scholars in regard to the Orient is essentialist, as they do not take into account the differences within the Middle Eastern region and they present it as a homogeneous block (Milton-Edwards, 2000: 7). According to Said, the Orientalists’ viewpoint is based upon an ‘ontological and epistemological’ distinction between “the Orient” and “the Occident” (1978: 2). Thus, these two categories, that only superficially indicate geographical areas, are used to differentiate a certain type of society from another (e.g. the ‘developed’ West from the ‘underdeveloped’ Orient), regardless of their geographical position (Hall, 1996: 185). This distinction is essentialist as it does not take into account socio-historical factors, and it constructs the two categories ‘as being in a fundamental or primary sense a sort of cultural disposition’ (Lazarus, 2004: 45). Paradigmatic of this position is ‘The clash of civilizations?’ anticipated by Samuel Huntington in his homonymous work. The author sets forth the argument that in the post-Cold War period conflict will not stem from economic, political or ideological issues, but from cultural divergences. He focuses greatly on two specific ‘civilisations’: ‘Islam’ and ‘the West’, pinpointing as the root of their major differences their ‘cultural identity’ (1993). Nevertheless, Huntington fails to recognise ‘the specific historical processes and particular power relations that have given rise to the phenomenon of radical religious expression’, but also the multiplicity of views on Islam amongst Muslims and the instances of solidarity and cross-fertilization of ideas between Muslims and Non-Muslims (Wedeen, 2003: 54). Said also presents Orientalism as a ‘Western style for dominating, restructuring and having authority over the Orient’ (1978: 3). Therefore, Orientalist scholars must be read bearing in mind the relationship of power, dominance and hegemony that exists between the Orient and the Occident (1978: 5). Said suggests that literature written about the Orient is not ‘veridic discourse’, but rather ‘a sign of the European-Atlantic power’ (1978: 6). The way the Orient is talked about is filtered through the idea that the European identity is superior, idea that Said considers ‘hegemonic’, in the sense

that Gramsci intended it. The orientalist discourse influences the civil society through ‘cultural leadership’ (1978: 7). Therefore, the orientalist style of thought not only implies that the Orient is the ‘other’ against which Western identity is produced, but it also suggests that the ‘identity of the Orient’ is inferior. Furthermore, the ‘truth’ produced by Orientalists has been able to permeate the western common-sense language and the media to a point that it has been defined as ‘authoritarian’ (MiltonEdwards, 2000: 7). In fact, generations of scholars have criticised Said for ‘inventing’ Orientalism and for condemning figures that had advanced the region through industrialisation and technology (Gellner, 1993). Another type of critique regards the fact that while criticising the abstract and purely ideological category of ‘the West’, Said uses terms such as ‘European culture’ and ‘the West’ as agents, making the same mistake as Orientalist scholars in perpetuating the process of polarisation, abstraction and ‘otherisation’. (Lazarus, 2004: 55). Nevertheless, Said’s argument undoubtedly provided scholars with a new way of studying the Middle Eastern region. Said’s analysis of orientalist discourse is still useful today to understand the way experts and the media talk about the Middle Eastern region and the implications that this style of thought has on government policies.

3. ‘Islam as News’

In his book ‘Covering Islam’, Said argues that Europeans, throughout modern history, have regarded Islam as mysterious and exotic, but also corrupted and powerful. Nevertheless, this perspective was almost never the result of direct and objective research, but rather the product of imagination and often a sense of hostility perceived between the ‘Western/Christian world’ and ‘Islam’. European scholars have widely expressed what ‘Islam’ meant to them, and their opinions, concealed as veridic representations, have permeated European culture from literature to public discourse. It can be said that the patronising attitude in regard to the level of ‘modernisation’ of the countries in question was only a pretext in order to maintain

dominance over profitable countries (1997: 13-15). Thus, at the end of the nineteenth century, experts and non-experts alike claimed that Muslim colonies in Africa and Asia should remain under European tutelage because they were ‘underdeveloped’ (Said, 1997). Similarly, by theorising that the influence of Islam in certain societies was the reason why autocratic governments remained in power in Muslim countries, scholars have often failed in the attempt to analyse their societal and political order: before the revolution of 1979, most scholars believed that the influence of Islamic religion had the power of maintaining the autocratic government in Iran. After the revolution, their perspective shifted in favour of one that saw a strong society prevailing over a weak state. Furthermore, when the first ‘Islamic movements’ that challenged state authority appeared in the 1980’s, Orientalist scholars interpreted them as a consequence of the Islamic doctrine influence on believers, encouraged to form militant groups and revolt (Sadowski, 1997: 16). These examples clearly show the bias underlying the discourse about the region. In fact, analysis that were presented by experts as ‘objective’ and ‘impartial’, were actually deeply influenced by assumptions about a generalised ‘Islamic mind-set’ and ‘culture’ (Said, 1997). The next section will look at more recent examples of news coverage of Middle Eastern issues in order to evaluate the extent to which orientalist discourse still persists in today’s media and which aspects of Orientalism are more prominent in the public discourse.

4. Orientalism today

Almost forty years after the publication of Said’s ‘Orientalism’, scholarship on the Middle Eastern region seems to be more aware of the hegemony of the orientalist discourse in regard to the Middle East (Milton-Edwards, 2000: 8). Nevertheless, it has been argued that scholars still share the idea that the Middle East is exceptional in its nature and therefore cannot develop and progress within the same ‘order of existence’ as the West (Sharabi, 1990: 4).

An interesting debate to analyse in this respect regards the likelihood that democracy will work in the Middle East. A new generation of Orientalists believes that the reasons why democratic systems did not develop in the majority of the Middle Eastern countries are entirely internal and have not changed at any time during history (Sadowski, 1997: 20). Nevertheless, by doing so, they disregard the impact that western imperialism had on the political and economic systems, but also on the societies of the region. After the anti-government, revolutionary wave spread through the Middle East and North Africa in the form of both violent and peaceful revolts in 2011, some news outlets did not hesitate to point out why ‘Western democracy’ was incompatible with the ‘Arab culture’. Through the analysis of two articles published respectively in 2013 and 2014 (West, 2013; Green, 2014), it appears that the most blatant reason why democracy could not work in the Middle East is that most countries in the region do not have a sense of ‘nationhood’ and they function through a system of family, tribe and personal friendships. While Green’s of the articles maintains a ‘neutral’ language, the other uses terms that suggest a clear ideological perspective, such as ‘Liberal democracy’ and ‘western mind-set’. It is interesting to notice that West uses the term ‘liberal’ to signify ‘economic freedom’, associating an economical structure traditionally belonging to the ‘Western world’ with a political system such as democracy. Therefore, the capitalistic system associated to ‘the West’, becomes a prerequisite for democracy to work. Moreover, it emerges that from West’s point of view, Orientalism might not be the hegemonic discourse in today’s society, as he believes that ‘liberal media’ and ‘western governments’ are turning against objective research in pursuit of values such as equality and justice. Conversely, scholars argue that post-Orientalism is just a pretence (Behdad and Williams, 2010). The authors set forth the idea that a new form of Orientalism, neo-Orientalism, is now prevalent among experts of the region. An example of what constitutes neo-Orientalism is the representation of the veil. According to the authors, ‘the veil sanctions a paternalistic and neo-imperial relation

between the West and Muslim societies by enabling a discourse of rescue’ (Behdad and Williams, 2010: 294). In this gendered version of Orientalism, the oppressed Muslim women are the symbol of the religious backwardness and underdevelopment of the Middle East, while Muslim men represent the stereotypical violent tendencies and fundamentalist religiosity (Behdad and Williams, 2010). In this regard, the media discourse is particularly relevant. If in 1997 Said had already pointed out that events concerning Muslims and the Middle East were only considered newsworthy by the media if they were about oil or terrorism, after 9/11 and the recent terrorist attacks in several European countries, the framing of Muslim men as terrorists is even more prominent in the media. Studies that analyse the media coverage of the terrorist events following 9/11 in the United States show how both the content and the disproportionate attention given to attacks carried out by Muslims contributed in perpetuating the stereotype of dangerous, violent Muslims and accelerate the process of ‘otherisation’. Powell finds that when reporting on terrorist attacks conducted by Christians, the media tends to ‘humanise’ the subjects by interviewing their families and talking about how the act was ‘unexpected’ and ‘unexplained’. Differently, when Muslims conduct terrorist attacks, their ‘international ties’ are highlighted and the general debate revolves around the hostility between ‘the Muslim world’ and the U.S. Moreover, Islam as a religion and thus the Muslim community as a whole, are stigmatised and surrounded by fear (2011). As a consequence, social identity becomes an indicator on whether a certain event can be considered ‘terrorism’. A recent study has shown that when perpetrators are Christian and white, the term terrorism is rarely used, while in cases where the perpetrators were Muslim, the attack is immediately labelled as terrorist (Kearns et al., 2017). Finally, it can be argued that although scholars are now more conscious about the implications of Orientalist discourse, the media is still perpetuating it through practices such as the framing of Muslims and the representation of the Middle Eastern and North African culture as static and exceptional.

5. Conclusion

This essay has attempted to analyse the impact of orientalist discourse on scholarship on the Middle East and especially on public discourse. Said identifies two main aspects through which orientalist discourse is perpetuated: an essentialist perspective and a political motive of western dominance, be they explicit or not, can in fact be always found in orientalist literature and media. From the analysis conducted, it has emerged that generalisations and stereotypes of the Middle Eastern society have led scholars to produce superficial and unreliable analysis of Middle Eastern issues (such as the political and social order of Iran before the revolution of 1979), and that very similar false assumptions lead some journalists to produce essentialist arguments on the ‘nature’ of the Middle Eastern and North American societies whose countries were involved in the Arab Uprisings. Furthermore, it appears that bias against Muslims the media is still perpetuated in a way that accentuates ‘otherisation’ and hostility towards the Islamic religion and the Muslim community. Finally, it can be said that Said’s argument is fundamental in order to analyse critically the discourse produced on the Middle Eastern region, and that his observations are still relevant today as they were forty years ago.

Bibliography

Behdad, A., Williams, J. (2010) ‘Neo-Orientalism’ in Edwards, B. and Gaonkar, D. Globalizing American studies. Chicago, Ill.: The University of Chicago Press.

Gellner, Ernest. (1993) ‘The Mightier Pen?’ Times Literary Supplement, 19 February.

Green, Andrew. (2014) Why Western democracy can never work in the Middle East [online]

available

from

<

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/11037173/Why-Westerndemocracy-can-never-work-in-the-Middle-East.html > [11 October 2017].

Hall, Stuart. (1996) ‘The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power’ in Stuart Hall, David Held, Don Hubert, and Kenneth Thompson, eds., Modernity: an Introduction to Modern Societies , Oxford: Blackwell: 184– 227.

Huntington, Samuel P. (1993) ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’ Foreign Affairs 71, 222249.

Kearns, E. M., Betus, A., Lemieux, A. (2017) ‘Why do some terrorist attacks receive more attention than others?’ (March 5).

Lazarus, Neil. (2004) “The Fetish of ‘the West’ in postcolonial theory,” in Crystal Bartolovich and Neil Lazarus (eds.) Marxism, Modernity and Postcolonial Studies, Cambridge University Press. Milton-Edwards, Beverley. (2000) Contemporary Politics of the Middle East. 3rd edition.

Powell, Kimberly A. (2011) ‘Framing Islam: An Analysis of U.S. Media Coverage of Terrorism Since 9/11’ Communication Studies, 62, (1) 90-112.

Sadowski, Yahya. (1997) ‘The New Orientalism and the Democracy Debate’, in J. Beinin and J. Stork (eds.), Political Islam, London, IB Tauris, 33-50.

Said, Edward W. (1978) Orientalism. New York, Pantheon Books.

Said, Edward W. (1997) Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts determine how we see the Rest of the World (2nd ed.). London: Vintage.

Sharabi, Hisham. (1990) Theory, Politics and the Arab World. London: Routledge.

Wedeen, Lisa (2003) ‘Beyond the Crusades: Why Huntington and Bin Laden Are Wrong’, Middle East Policy, 10, (2) 54-61.

West, Ed. (2013) There is no hope of democracy in the Middle East [online] available from

[11 October 2017]....