Week 7 Seminar Notes Gp2

Seminar Outline
1. HOUSEKEEPING (17.30-17.45)

- CRITICAL CASE STUDY & PARTICIPATION 2. INDIVIDUAL RAT (17.45-18.00)

3. TEAM RAT (18.00-18.20)

4. CHALLENGES (18.20-18.25) - ONLY IF REQUIRED

5. LECTURE INPUT & "WHY" QUESTIONS (18.25-19.10)

6. ACTIVITY/APPLICATIONS (19.20-20.00)

7. DEVELOP TEAM PROJECT QUESTION/STATEMENT (20.00-20.15)

Important Information, Ideas & Questions
Orientalism: 1) Body of theories and field of academic study, 2) a book by Edward Said and 3) tool to map out what is orient is and its relation to the west (occident).

Orientalism is a discourse of power, a network of orientalist discourse; it is a racial or culture discourse. (jaysheel)

Said's analysis focuses on the European colonial domination of the 18th and 19th centuries, Middle East and on the academic field of Orientalist studies.

Orientalism is how the West defines itself, in binary opposition to the Orient, has less to do with the Orient than the West, and it derives from a sense of confrontation felt by the West in its encounters with the Orient. In relation to knowledge/power it involves an evaluative judgement and a program of action, requiring Western redemption, civilising and colonisation. It is a discourse which is produced and exists in uneven exchange with various kinds of power and a product of certain political forces and activities. In relation to imperialism/colonialism, Orientalism employs a binary typology of advanced versus backwards, and a long process by which European interest in the Orient was transformed from textual to administrative, economic and military.

The Orient is constructed through text, supported and reflected by the Occident and marks an imaginative and geographical division.

The Orient is a European invention, an essentially political construction.

Clarke's commends Said's argument because it exposes the historical origins and ideological agendas of Orientalist thought and correctly argues that no knowledge is apolotical.

Clarke argues based on Said argument that global expansion facilitated the passage of alternative world views, the active importation of East into West.

Glossary
The Occident : the West; the countries of Europe and America; the Western Hemisphere