This thesis examines the impact of Edward Saids influential work Orientalism and its legacy in respect of contemporary reading and writing across cultures. It also questions the legitimacy of Saids retrospective stereotyping of early examples of cross-cultural representation in literature as uncompromisingly orientalist.
It is well known that the release of Edward Saids Orientalism in 1978 was responsible for the rise of a range of cultural and critical theories from multiculturalism to postcolonialism. It was a study that not only polarized critics and forced scholars to re-examine orientalist archives, but persuaded creative writers to re-think their ethnographic positions when it came to the literary representations of cultures other than their own. Without detracting from the enormous impact of Said, this thesis isolates gaps and silences in Said that need correcting. Furthermore, there is an element of intransigence, an uncompromising refusal to fine-tune what is essentially a binary discourse of the West and its other in Saids work, that encourages the continued interrogation of power relations but which, because of its very boldness, paradoxically disallows the extent to which the conflict of cultures indeed produced new, hybrid social and cultural formations.
In an attempt to challenge the severity of Saids claim that every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric, the thesis examines a number of different discursive contexts in which such a presumption is challenged. Thus while the second chapter discusses the traditional profession-based orientalism of nineteenth-century E. G. Browne, the third considers the anti-imperialism of colonial administrator Leonard Woolf. The fourth chapter provides a reflection on the difficulties of diasporic orientalism through the works of Michael Ondaatje while chapter five demonstrates the effects of the dialogism used by Amitav Ghosh as a defence against orientalism. The thesis concludes with an examination of contemporary writing by Andrea Levy that appositely illustrates the legacy of Saids influence.
While the restrictive parameters of Saids work make it difficult to mount a thorough-going critique of Said, this thesis shows that, indeed, it is within the restraints of these parameters and in the very discourse that Said employs that he traps himself. This study claims that even Said is susceptible to orientalist criticism in that he is as much an orientalist as those at whom he directs his polemic.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/221622 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | t.tansley@murdoch.edu.au, Tangea Tansley |
| Publisher | Murdoch University |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.murdoch.edu.au/goto/CopyrightNotice, Copyright Tangea Tansley |
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