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with colonialism, underwriting colonial
power through two crucial operations: First, ‘the Orient’ was constructed as an
exotic and bizarre space, and at the limit
a pathological and even a monstrous space:
‘a living tableau of queerness’ (Said, 1978,
p. 103).
Second, ‘the Orient’ was constructed as a
space that had to be domesticated, discip-
lined and normalized through a forceful
projection of the order it was presumed to
lack: ‘framed by the classroom, the crim-
inal court, the prison, the illustrated man-
ual’ (Said, 1978, p. 41).It is not difficult to hear the echoes of Michel
Foucault’s archaeologies andgenealogiesin
these arguments, though Said was perplexed
(and vexed) by the French philosopher’s met-
ropolitan obsession and his disinterest in the
operations of colonial power (Gregory, 1995b).
Said’s critique of Orientalism was closely
connected to his political commitment to the
Palestinian cause, and his work has met with
vigorous criticism from Right and Left. The-
oretically, critics have been exercised by the
complicity of Said’shumanismwith the very
tradition that he criticizes (Sardar, 1999,
p. 73); by his conjunction of humanism with
Foucault’santi-humanism(Clifford, 1988);
by his complicated relationship withhistor-
ical materialism(Ahmad, 1992); and by his
seeming inability to break out from the binary
oppositions of Orientalism itself (Young,
1990b). Substantively, others have criticized
Said’s readings and substituted more affirma-
tive interpretations of some contributions to
the Orientalist canon (Livingstone, 2004;
Irwin, 2006).
Much of this discussion comprises vari-
ations on the theme ofessentialism. Said is
charged with reducing the complexity of Euro-
pean and American engagements with other
cultures to a single, totalizing essence that
projects its will to power upon them. Other
scholars, including Said himself, have sought
to meet this objection by developing a more
nuanced analysis of Orientalism. Their key
propositions include the following:(1) Orientalism is not a synonym for colonial
discourse. There are overlaps with other
colonial discourses, but different im-
aginative geographies were fashioned for
different places and periods: seeprimi-
tivismandtropicality. Indeed, Said
(1993) subsequently extended his en-quiries to the wider relations between
cultureandimperialismin the nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries.
(2) Orientalism is not cut from a single cloth:
there are different Orientalisms and different
‘Orients’. The substantive focus of Said’s
original enquiry was not ‘the Orient’ at
large but themiddle eastin general and
Egypt and Palestine in particular. It is
important to recognize other versions of
Orientalism developed in relation to (for
example) India, China and Japan.
(3) There are significant differences between the
collective authors of Orientalism. Said fo-
cused on British and French Oriental-
isms because they had such a close
connection with colonialism, but other
scholars have drawn careful distinctions
between (for example) American, Brit-
ish, French and German Orientalisms.
(4) Orientalism is not a simple projection of the
will to power. Power, including the power
ofrepresentation, did not lie entirely
with the outsider and the colonizer, and
a more nuanced view of the contact zone
is required that can recognizetranscul-
turationand the achievements of anti-
colonial struggles. Said accepted this
criticism, but Sardar (1999, pp. 74–5)
noted that his commitment to a secular
humanism allowed little space for Islam
as a counter-discourse.
(5) Orientalism is a gendered and sexualized
discourse.Saidwas more interested in
Orientalism’s feminizing metaphors
(‘the Orient as woman’), but feminist
scholars have examined how gender
andsexualityentered into the experi-
ences and practices of travellers, artists
and writers operating under its sign
(Melman, 1992; Yegenoglu, 1998).
(6) Orientalism produced other ‘natures’ as well
as other ‘cultures’. Like Orientalculture,
Orientalnaturewas often constructed as
an ‘unnatural nature’, capricious and ex-
treme, to be domesticated, disciplined
and normalized through Euro-American
cartographic, scientific and engineering
projects (Gregory, 2001b).
(7) Orientalism is not confined to texts. Said’s
field was comparative literature, so it is
scarcely surprising that he focused on the
written traces of high culture, but other
scholars have focused on other modes of
representation(including art and pho-
tography) and its involvement in mun-
dane practices such as travel and
tourism(Gregory, 1999).Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_O Final Proof page 514 30.3.2009 7:51pmORIENTALISM