Week 7 RAT

Said, "Orientalism"

1.Which is FALSE? Said's analysis


 * focuses on east Asia (principally China and Japan)

focuses on the middle east

focuses on the academic field of Orientalist studies

focuses on European colonial domination of the 18th and 19th centuries

2.Which is FALSE? According to Said, the 'Orient'

is supported and reflected by the Occident (the West)

marks a willed, imaginative and geographical division

is constructed or man-made, both created and maintained through texts


 * is essentially an idea with no corresponding reality, a European fantasy

3.Orientalism is


 * all are true

a collective notion identifying an 'us' against a 'them' in order to mark European superiority

a discourse/relationship of power and domination, governed by desires, repressions and projections

a fundamentally political doctrine willed over the Orient because it was weaker

4.According to Said, Orientalism

is how the West defines itself, in binary opposition to the Orient

has less to do with the Orient than 'our' world (i.e. the West)


 * all are true

derives from a sense of confrontation felt by the West in its encounters with the Orient

5.Which is FALSE? According to Said, academic knowledge


 * is non-political, impartial and objectively valid

is involved in a dynamic and productive exchange with socio-economic and political institutions

cannot be detached from the circumstances of life

is limited, constrained and acted upon by society, culture and worldly circumstances

6.In relation to knowledge/power, Orientalism

is a discourse which is produced and exists in uneven exchange with various kinds of power

is a product of various political forces and activities

involves both an evaluative judgement and a program of action, requiring Western redemption, civilising and colonisation


 * all are true

7.Which is FALSE? According to Said, imperialism/colonialism,

is a long process by which European interest in the Orient was transformed from textual to administrative, economic and military

employs a binary typology of advanced versus backwards

none are false


 * demonstrates that knowledge and power are unrelated

Clarke, “Orientalism: Some Conjectures”

8.Which is FALSE? Clarke commends Said's argument because it

none are false

exposes the historical origins and ideological agendas of Orientalist thought


 * simplistically associates Orientalism with colonialism and domination

correctly argues that no knowledge is apolitical

9.Which is FALSE? Clarke, in counter to Said's argument, argues


 * the East has played no role in the formation and transformation of European thought since the 18th and 19th centuries

if all truth is about mastery and control then Said's thesis itself is undermined

global expansion facilitated the passage of alternative world views, the active importation of East into West

none are false

10.Clarke argues that interest in the Orient

reveals deep intellectual and spiritual uncertainty and anxiety in the West, and the encounter with the East sustained and exacerbated these doubts


 * all are true

plays a counter-cultural and counter-hegemonic role, not to reinforce Western hegemony but to undermine it and engage in self-criticism

is inextricably bound up with Western problems and concerns, the search for diagnoses and cures for cultural instability and self-doubt