Orientalism
Edward W. Said
The landmark study of how the West constructed 'the Orient' as its inferior other — the book that founded postcolonial studies and reshaped how scholarship understands power and representation.
Orientalism examines the centuries-long Western tradition of scholarship, literature, and administration that defined “the Orient” — and above all the Arab and Islamic world — as Europe’s negative mirror image. Drawing on Foucault’s notion of discourse, Said shows that Orientalism was never neutral knowledge but a corporate institution for dealing with the East: a way of dominating it, restructuring it, and having authority over it. The book traces this tradition from Napoleon in Egypt through the British and French empires to the American era.
Though broader than Palestine, the book is inseparable from Said’s biography as a Palestinian in the West; he wrote in the introduction that his own life was shaped by the very web of stereotypes his study dissects. It remains one of the most cited works in the humanities.
About the author
Edward W. Said (1935–2003), born in Jerusalem, taught comparative literature at Columbia University for four decades. Beyond his scholarship, he was the most visible Palestinian intellectual in the United States, writing and lecturing tirelessly on the question of Palestine until his death in 2003.
Details
- Originally published by Pantheon Books, New York, 1978
- Vintage Books paperback edition, 1979; Penguin Modern Classics edition in the UK