Olivia: Alright Jackson, before we dive in, what's the first image that pops into your head when I say 'The Orient'? Jackson: Oh, easy. Magic carpets, sprawling deserts, maybe a wise old man with a long beard selling spices in a bazaar. Basically, the first 10 minutes of Disney's Aladdin. Olivia: Perfect. And that's exactly the problem we're dissecting today. That collection of images, that feeling, is at the very heart of what Edward Said critiques in his groundbreaking, and honestly, quite controversial book, Orientalism. Jackson: Edward Said... I know he was a huge literary critic, but wasn't his background also really important to this work? He was Palestinian, right? Olivia: Exactly. He was born in Jerusalem and educated in Jerusalem, Cairo, and the US. He grew up experiencing that cultural divide firsthand, which gave him this powerful, personal lens to critique how the West has historically viewed the East. This wasn't just an academic exercise for him; it was lived reality. Jackson: Huh. So he’s not just an outsider looking in; he’s an insider looking at how outsiders have been looking at him his whole life. Olivia: That’s a great way to put it. He argues this 'Aladdin' version of the East isn't a harmless fantasy. It's a deliberate invention, a kind of stage set created by the West, for the West.

Jackson: Okay, a stage set. What do you mean by that? It sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory. Are you saying none of it is real? Olivia: It’s less of a conspiracy and more of a deeply ingrained cultural habit. Said's point is that for centuries, the West has defined itself by creating a contrast. To be 'Western'—rational, democratic, modern—it needed an 'Other.' And that 'Other' became the Orient: mystical, despotic, and timeless. The Orient became Europe's surrogate self, a place to project its own fantasies and fears. Jackson: It's like creating a villain in a movie just to make the hero look better. The West is the hero, so the East has to be this strange, exotic, and slightly dangerous character. Olivia: Precisely. And this has real, heartbreaking consequences. Said tells this incredible story about a French journalist visiting Beirut during the civil war in the 1970s. The city's downtown was completely gutted by fighting. Jackson: That sounds awful. I can only imagine the human tragedy. Olivia: You would think. But the journalist wrote about it with a strange kind of regret. He wasn't primarily mourning the dead or the suffering of the Lebanese people. He was mourning the loss of the 'Orient of his imagination.' He wrote that the city had once seemed to belong to the Orient of famous French writers, a place of romance and literary memory. Jackson: Wait, hold on. The city is in ruins, people are suffering, and he's sad because it doesn't look like a 19th-century novel anymore? That's... incredibly self-centered. Olivia: It’s the perfect example of what Said calls 'exteriority.' The Orientalist is always on the outside, looking in, and what they see is a reflection of their own culture, their own books, their own ideas. The actual people living there are just props in a play that was written in Paris or London. Their reality is secondary to the Western fantasy. Jackson: Wow. Once you see it that way, it's hard to unsee. It’s not about them at all. It’s about us. Olivia: And it gets even more insidious when you look at the power dynamics. Think of the famous 19th-century French writer Gustave Flaubert. He travels to Egypt and has an encounter with a courtesan, a woman named Kuchuk Hanem. Jackson: I have a feeling this story doesn't end with a respectful exchange of ideas. Olivia: Not at all. He was a wealthy, white, European man. She was a working Egyptian woman. He had all the power. He possesses her physically, and then he goes home and possesses her in his writing. He writes about her, describes her, and tells his readers in Europe what she is like. He defines her as 'typically Oriental.' Jackson: And she never gets to speak for herself, right? Her thoughts, her history, her feelings—they don't matter. She's just an object for him to describe. Olivia: Exactly. She is silenced. Her entire existence is filtered through his gaze and his power. Karl Marx had a famous line that Said quotes, which sums it up perfectly: "They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented." And the person doing the representing holds all the cards. Jackson: That’s chilling. So the West creates this fantasy stage, populates it with silent characters it gets to define, and then calls it 'knowledge' about the East. Olivia: You've got it. It’s a closed loop. The West writes the books, creates the images, and then visits the 'Orient' to confirm that the things it wrote are true.

Jackson: Okay, so the West creates this fantasy stage. But how does that jump from literature and travelogues to actual, real-world power? It feels like a big leap from a writer like Flaubert to, say, the British Empire. Olivia: That's the terrifying part. Said shows how this 'knowledge' became the very justification for empire. It wasn't just for entertainment; it was a tool. By 1914, Europe had colonized about 85 percent of the earth. That doesn't happen by accident. It requires an ideology, a story you tell yourself about why you have the right to do it. Jackson: And that story is 'we know best.' Olivia: Precisely. Said uses this stunning example from a speech given in the British House of Commons in 1910 by Arthur Balfour, a former Prime Minister. He's defending the ongoing British occupation of Egypt. Jackson: I'm guessing he didn't say, "We're here for the resources." Olivia: Oh, it was much more sophisticated than that. He frames the entire occupation as an issue of knowledge. He stands up in Parliament and says, and I'm quoting here: "We know the civilization of Egypt better than we know the civilization of any other country. We know it further back; we know it more intimately; we know more about it." Jackson: Whoa. That's not even subtle. He's literally saying 'Our knowledge gives us the right to rule you.' It's knowledge as a weapon. Olivia: It's the ultimate trump card. He continues by saying that Westerners have a capacity for self-government that 'Orientals' simply lack. He's not just stating an opinion; he's presenting it as a scientific, historical fact. The logic is: We know you. We know you better than you know yourselves. And our knowledge reveals that you are incapable of governing yourselves. Therefore, our rule over you is not just a right; it's a logical necessity. It's for your own good. Jackson: That is absolutely wild. And it's so clean, so... academic. It sounds so much better than just saying "might makes right." It makes imperialism sound like a form of high-minded public service. Olivia: And that's why it was so effective. This wasn't just Balfour's personal opinion. It was the dominant view, shaped by generations of Orientalist scholarship. The man who actually ran Egypt for the British for 25 years, Lord Cromer, was a perfect product of this thinking. Jackson: What was his deal? Olivia: Cromer wrote extensively about how to manage 'subject races.' He genuinely believed that the 'Oriental mind' was incapable of logic and precision. He quoted another colonial administrator who said, "Accuracy is abhorrent to the Oriental mind." Jackson: Come on... that’s just a straight-up racist stereotype dressed up as an intellectual observation. Olivia: It is. But for Cromer, it was a practical guide to governance. If you believe an entire population is fundamentally illogical, you don't give them a parliament or free institutions. You 'manage' them. You make sure they are fed and content, like children, but you never, ever give them power. He saw Egyptian nationalism not as a legitimate desire for freedom, but as a dangerous, irrational idea. Jackson: I can see why this book was so controversial. He's basically saying that an entire field of academic study was complicit in propping up brutal colonial regimes. I bet a lot of scholars didn't like hearing that. Olivia: They did not. He was famously criticized by scholars like Bernard Lewis, who argued that Said was politicizing scholarship and unfairly tarring an entire field. The debate was, and still is, incredibly fierce. But Said's point wasn't that every single Orientalist was an evil imperialist agent. His argument was that it was impossible to study the Orient in that era without being influenced by the overwhelming political reality of empire. The power imbalance was baked into the very air they breathed.

Jackson: So, this was written in the late 70s. The great European empires are gone. Is Orientalism over? Or has it just changed its clothes? Olivia: That's the million-dollar question. Said would argue it has absolutely changed its clothes. The power center shifted from Britain and France to the United States, and the methods changed, but the underlying thought patterns persist. Jackson: So it’s less about colonial administrators and more about... what? Hollywood movies and cable news? Olivia: Exactly. Think about it. The book talks about the popular caricatures that fuel policy. The Arab, for example, is often portrayed as one of two things: a fabulously wealthy, oil-rich sheikh, or a violent, irrational terrorist. Jackson: The 'Aladdin' image we started with, or the villain from a spy thriller. There's not a lot of room for a normal person in between. Olivia: There really isn't. And these images have consequences. They make it easier to support wars, to dismiss the political aspirations of millions of people, and to see entire regions as nothing more than a problem to be managed or a resource to be controlled. The dehumanizing caricature comes first, and the policy follows. Jackson: It’s the same logic as Balfour, just updated for the 21st century. 'We know who you are, and you're a problem.' Olivia: Said's ultimate point is that we can't pretend knowledge is pure. The way we describe another culture is never neutral; it's tangled up in power, history, and our own identity. Ignoring that is not just naive; it's dangerous. It allows us to be manipulated by these age-old narratives without even realizing it. Jackson: It really makes you question every movie, every news report you see. What 'Orient' is being sold to us right now? And who benefits from us buying it? Olivia: Exactly. A great question to sit with. And it’s a question we should be asking not just about the Middle East, but about how we represent any culture that isn't our own. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Find us on our socials and share an example of modern Orientalism you've spotted. Jackson: This is Aibrary, signing off.