Orientalism and Knowledge in the Postcolonial World
13th March 2019
This essay revisits the idea of Orientalism, in an attempt to investigate the role of the West in shaping knowledge in post-colonial societies. It finds that it is largely due to the transfer of knowledge, rather than an active form of ‘cultural imperialism’, that post-colonial societies are viewed as an extension of colonial powers and their knowledge systems.
By 1945 foreign policy in the United States was shaking off slumber from decades in political isolationism. At the same time, powers like the United Kingdom had retreated to Europe after nearly two centuries of colonialism. Particularly, former colonies in India and Africa experienced a power vacuum as local groups sought to gain authority or then legitimise control in spaces previously occupied by colonial powers like the Great Britain and France. This essay will seek to revisit Said’s (1979) idea of Orientalism in the post-colonial world. It suggests that the role of the West, primarily Euro-American ideologies or what Said (1979) calls the ‘Occident’, has been critical in shaping knowledge and how it is received by populations in former colonies, particularly India. However, this is not the result of an active cultural imperialism that seeks to impose ideas on the the ‘Orient’, nor is it the result of an underlying Western ideology and culture that is homogenous in its influence on knowledge as Said’s (1979) conception of Orientalism suggests. Instead, the role of the West in shaping knowledge in post-colonial societies is largely due to the transfer of knowledge, that is simply a result of the historical fact that post-colonial societies were an extension of colonial powers and their knowledge systems at one point.
1. Introduction
By 1949 World War Two concluded with the atomic- bombing of Japan, giving rise to the threat of devastating global consequences through the use of nuclear technology. It was in this post-war context, that a bipolar power structure appeared to shape global affairs as the USA and USSR raced to develop more technology. However, these new developments ushered in an era of soft power rather than hard military power, where the countries endowed with superior resources such as economic and sociocultural conditions, were engaging in indirect forms of intervention in post colonial societies (Nye, 1990; Gould, 1981). These interventions have been recounted by Orientalist historians like Edward Said (1979) as “cultural imperialism”, in which power in the form of Western cultural and economic interests is exercised on the “Orient” or the “other” through the creation of knowledge, rather than through direct territorial intervention.
The first section of this essay will seek to define Orientalism, particularly as seen in relation to other theorists who address key concepts within the terminology such as those of knowledge and power. The second section will build on the argument propelled by Orientalism within post colonial countries by investigating the creation of knowledge through institutions as illustrated by references to education and popular culture in some post-colonial societies. It must be said that the purpose of this example is to elucidate the aforementioned argument rather than to contextualise it to all post colonial societies, and so it by no means claims to be entirely exhaustive of all countries that are Eastern or post-colonial. This section of this essay will explore the limitations of Said’s (1979) idea of Orientalism as an overarching and deliberate means of exerting power on post-colonial cultures.
2. Orientalism
Orientalism does appear to refer to everything East of the West in the form of “arts, languages, sciences, histories, faiths, cultures and people”, however a precise definition does not seem to appear within academic literature on the subject (Chua, 2008, p. 1180). As a terminology references, to the ‘Orient’ as a particular geographical and cultural entity that is separate from the West appears in scholarship by Christian theologists as early as 1500 (Chua, 2008). However, as an academic term, Orientalism as it is described after 1978 refers to the projection of power by the West onto cultures in the East as defined by Edward Said. In this sense, it is closely related to ethnocentrism or a Western-based perception, as a concept that is either situated in or guided by Western ideologies. However, unlike ethnocentrism, Orientalism implies a strong link to political motivations aimed at imposing Western ideas on the East or the ‘Orient’ (Said, 1993).
The term ‘Western’ in itself broadly hints at Europe and America, and situates Orientalism as ideologies and thoughts that are presented as ‘Western’ within the English language (e.g. neoliberalism, first world and third world, democracy). Since the West and particular Euro-American thought is mostly articulated in the English language, the conception of Orientalism is conceived within the English language even though it may be translated into local languages. This implies that while the attractiveness of ideas or values from the West may be transferred to the East through mechanisms like education, it is not absolutely pervasive in altering behaviour or shaping preferences due to the existence of local knowledge and languages that are impermeable to translation. Furthermore, it is presented with the difficult problem of being unable to move beyond this Western and Orientalist dichotomy that equates what is not Western to being Oriental.
Set within the era of post-structuralism, the Orient itself is described both abstractly and vaguely by Said, who calls it a less a place than “a topos, a set of references” (1979, p. 177). Instead, he alludes to Orientalism as a “style of thought” that essentially is based on the “distinction made between the Orient and the Occident” (Said, 1991, p.3). In contrast to the Orient, the Occident’s position is one of power and thus implies control over the spread of knowledge in non-Western societies like postcolonial ones. Hence, the Orient creates a political image of truth that is essentially “a highly artificial enactment of what a non-Oriental has made into a symbol for the whole Orient” (Harrison, 2001, p. 46).
Orientalism suggests a conscious effort to shape preferences in a way that is hierarchal and complimentary to existing status quo of power in the West. It emphasizes the production and circulation of knowledge in post-colonial institutions like mass media but with a Western agenda. Thus, the role of knowledge as a means to create norms and values that either create conceptions or shift ideas about identity are central to the definition of Orientalism. For purposes of discursive clarity, this essay will refer to the Orient broadly to societies and institutions in the Middle East, Africa and Asia that essentially represent the “other” from an Occidental perspective as Said (1991) implies, and will focus on the characteristics of these societies in post-colonial times.
Power
While no formal definition for the terminology exists, another core characteristic of Orientalism that is central its definition is the premise that behaviour within social structures can be changed by means of knowledge. It is in this premise that the link between knowledge and power offers a more wholesome explanation of Orientalism. In contrast to more overt ideas about power as an end or an imposition of will in order to achieve certain aims, the latent characteristic of knowledge (and its transfer) is seen as a means to inform decision-making in societies (Sadan, 1997). Therefore, the relationship between knowledge and power is critical to understanding the role of Orientalism in post-colonial societies. To further understand the position of Orientalism and its relevance to post-colonial societies Clegg’s (1989) idea about circuits of power creates an interesting framework.
Like Clegg’s (1989) idea about circuits of power, contextual circumstances such as systemic economic and social conditions are critical for establishing the role of knowledge as a form of power in the Orient. However, rather than being able to mobilize resources in a way that may allow an outflanking of authority as power relations shift, Said (1979) suggests that Orientalists create a “culture in which the ruled” operate within “psychological limits set by” the West (p.3). Hence, even if countries are no longer governed by former colonial powers and organized themselves to outflanked Western powers collectively as follows from Clegg’s (1989) circuits of power, ideas facilitated by the transfer of knowledge from Euro-American contexts to former colonies linger within the consciousness of the Orient. Nandy (1974) illustrates this by drawing upon examples such as feelings of subversiveness within Indian culture, that may have originated from colonial times but are still prominent in Indian culture today. This is particularly true amongst wealthier segments of the population that have easy access to Western popular culture, follow a Western system of education in India and often are educated at the university level in Western countries.
Knowledge
As illustrated in the previous section, the definition of Orientalism within post-colonial societies is essentially based on the relationship between imperial power and colonial knowledge through the transfer of such knowledge. It operates in such a way this transfer of knowledge creates norms and values to shape awareness, perceptions and behaviour in a way that makes these values culturally attractive to more people. Essentially, these norms are routinized in a way that they become part of the structure of society, and are hence institutionalized. Said traces the production of knowledge back to how European colonial administrators generated an “archive of information” that fed into existing conceptions of about Orient and is propelled by a “presentation of order, stability, authority and regulatory power” (Said, 2000, p.239).
Following a Max Weber’s (as cited in Sadan, 1997) ideas about power, the Orientalist conception points to the prominence of language as a mechanism to shape normative frameworks within institutions as a mechanism that shapes preferences by creating appeal rather than through exerting force or will through authority. Like Nye (1990), Orientalism draws upon the same post-war context that considers soft power as way of altering behaviours by transcending the structures of society. However, for Said (1979), power essentially shapes the structures of society because it is located in the West and “brought into the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness” and is negative in its way of “disregarding, essentialising, denuding the humanity of another culture, people or geographical region” (p.108).
In parallel, centrality of knowledge within Orientalism as a means of legitimising power and then sustaining it at little or no overt cost implies that the role of the English language in reproducing knowledge comes from a hierarchy. This hierarchy essentially places Western institutions at a higher rank and through the English language is able to form normative images that are non-Western as homogenous. Often this legitimacy as explained by Nandy (1974) puts a high value on science and logic as “objective” knowledge that essentially make anything contrary non rational or less civilised. He compares how such feelings explain why Western degrees and training “still hold a high a premium” in post colonial societies (Nandy 1974, p.1).
Often this mainstream scientism is used to evoke arguments about non-Western or ‘Third World’ populations such as African children, face deficiencies in their reasoning and mathematical skills, however the failure may actually be on the part of an inability to localise the knowledge enterprise. Since education systems still adhere to measurements with respect to shapes, numbers and pictures, it appears that Western led research has indeed been insensitive to local contexts where non-Western language may not follow the same principles. Nevertheless, it is difficult to argue that this is entirely due to an intellectual colonization that exists in the form of American textbooks in post-colonial universities so much as it is a difficulty to redefine a whole tradition of knowledge in pockets of local contexts.
The premium placed western ideas that Nandy (1974) goes back to Darwinism (as cited in Sadan, 1997) and its influence on science in Europe as a basis of culture and race, where the primitive was seen as non-scientific, not objective or irrational. In this sense, the “inability to control the emotions, animistic thinking and an inability to reason” that may be represented through myths and traditions should be improved through civilizing primitive societies (Spenser, 1977, p.8). Though not presented in the same way in post-colonial literature, the domination of Western science as a measurable and objective paradigm that is superior to local cultural contexts and traditions is still heavily embedded within the knowledge enterprise of post-colonial societies. For example, social constructs around superiority Western medicinal tradition led to a rise in pharmaceutical companies, as opposed to herbal remedies coming from China and India. Institutions like pharmaceuticals continue to attract both human capital and financial capital far more than herbal medical facilities do, and thus the transfer of knowledge across generations is largely dictated by the resources accumulated by such institutions. When compared to pre-colonial India, herbal medical facilities were arguably in the same position as pharmaceuticals today.
3. Discussion
A more elaborate description of Orientalism and how it may be applied to post-colonial institutions by activating a relationship between knowledge and power may be found in Hall’s (1997) explanation of the idea. Firstly, Orientalism is usually evoked through symbolism such as imagery and sounds in every day life and popular culture. In this sense, Orientalism is seen as a form of social construction that is largely abstract but essentially related to power. For example, Lewis (1996) suggests that in denoting images of Asian and Muslim women from the Orient, the woman is presented as passive, conservative, traditional and powerless compared to men. He goes further to suggest that relationship between religion and gender is highly emphasised. On the other hand, Western women are shown to be more empowered and masculine.
This inherently leads to a generalisation and abstraction that ignores the diversity within local cultures of the Orient and reduces them to a homogenises body of culture that is the ‘other’. Through this imagery, knowledge then helps inform what Foucault (1980) explains through drawing on judgements of normality by establishing certain standards and codes for what is considered normal. Secondly, like the Western- other dichotomy presented above, Hall (1997) follows Said’s line of thought by suggesting that Orientalism represents cultures and traditions in the Orient as implicitly inferior or primitive when compared to European values. Such an example may exist in the routinization of popular references to practices like wearing female headscarves in Islam, though this is also practiced by Orthodox sects or celibate females in other religions like Christianity, leading the image of headscarves as a concept identified solely with Islam.
This construction is further supported by the binary construction of terms that shape knowledge within the English language as mentioned above, the ‘other’ in Orientalism usually takes binary form, as either rational or irrational, or savage or civilized. However, Orientalism fails to acknowledge that such practices or generalizations are commonplace in Western culture as well and are not tools that necessarily facilitate cultural imperialism as much as make sense of phenomenon in different contexts.
Orientalism in a Post-Colonial World
In an effort to position itself against Orientalism, the theory falls prey to the same set of limitations that it seeks to elucidate. Ultimately it propels the same kind of binary discourse that it argues against, where the Orient is implied to exist outside Western concepts of it and inherently lies outside the grasp of Western ideology. This propels the same kind of us-verses- them philosophy that Orientalism is contextualised within. Furthermore, by propelling that Orientalism imposes knowledge as a kind of cultural imperialism, there is an implicit suggestion that there lies a kind of cultural authenticity that is being stifled by Western ideas. In particular, examples like Frantz Fanon’s (2001) call for Afrocentric education implies that certain ethnicities have an absolute identity in race, religion, culture and politics, that have been tainted by education imposed by the West.
In the same breath, it suggests that the Occident is one homogenous entity much like the Orient. Here, Said (2000) fails to account for differences in Western societies and principles of knowledge when in fact in education itself, areas like psychology in Euro- American studies have been influenced by various other cultural constructions. Rosane Rocher (as Breckenridge and Veer 1993, p.215) raises this point by explaining how a “sweeping and passionate indictment of Orientalist scholarship as part and parcel” of imperialism creates a “single discourse, undifferentiated in space and time and across political, social and intellectual identities”. For example, thought in psychology can range from experimental to feminist to behavioural, and each will operate within different sets of assumptions and constraints. The fact that Euro-American ideas are heavily intertwined with post-colonial histories cannot be discounted however, even though the recounting of history in Western traditions faces its own internal disagreements (as depicted by Revisionist, Orthodox and Neo-Revisionist ideas).
Moreover, these histories that arguably shape bodies of knowledge today were often produced in Europe or American at the time of their production. It seems then that Euro-American ideas are not irrelevant in post-colonial societies and may have shaped knowledge in different ways, but that this knowledge is heavily intertwined with postcolonial histories that have in some sense become part of the ‘native’ knowledge within these societies (if there is such a thing). Arguably, the fact that colonialism has moved past several generations now lends support to the fact that local populations learning English, being educated in Western universities or exposed to popular media, are doing so because they either self-identify with Western concepts that they inherited or then have grown to know. Rather than being an ‘other’ ideology, these generations are likely to view the aforementioned as part of their own identity without disposing of the local or ‘Indian’ traditions that they have also been exposed to. Implicitly, similar to Foucalt’s (1980) ideas, this suggests post-structuralism’s conception of knowledge as a mesh or abstract intermingling of knowledge outside pre-defined structures rather than a superiority of Western ideas over Eastern ones as Orientalism implies.
Furthermore, the body of literature referring to Orientalism is partly self-identifying in that the scholarship that specifically refers to “Orientalism” tends to take the shape of discourse concerning the domination of European or American perspectives in discussions about varying types of knowledge, particularly those concerning non-European or non-American societies. However, in suggesting that post-colonial societies like India have an essence of their own that can only be understood by Indians, Orientalists like Chakrabarty (2000) face the problem of articulating their concepts in non-European terminology. There is a paradox in trying to place Indian ideas at the centre of discourse even if referring to concepts that are distinctly ‘Indian’ in their categorization or origin. This is because terminologies that have originated in the West are unavoidable when categorizing concepts in current frameworks that articulate political or cultural ideas; like the national, civil society, human rights and such (Chakrabarty 2000).
Chakrabarty (2000) also explains that if discourse in India were to follow a different language or conception of modernity then it would likely be embedded in religion as much of the local population, particularly those who are not educated in schools that teach English and hence are likely to retain more traditional knowledge. This is because religious and mythical terminologies are heavily embedded in forms of expressions and would likely be lose part of their meaning when translated into English, or would not be able to be communicated. Orientalism as conceived by Said (1978) essentially implies that those using non-religious discourse would have to learn this form of discourse in order to understand it then. With respect to education, current efforts at ethnography and research in anthropology and sociology are often directed at institutional resources to understanding local contexts within post colonial societies like India through learning local languages for discourse. Hence, efforts to gain knowledge in postcolonial societies through immersing in local contexts rather than imposing Western ideas does not follow the Ethnocentrism that is implied within cultural imperialism as it is depicted by Orientalism. It also completely ignores the dissemination of knowledge from post-colonial societies to Western societies, as observed through examples like the adoption of yoga, functional medicine or new business concepts such as ‘frugal innovation’ (Prabhu and Radjou, 2014).
Another argument made against Orientalism in education is the role of Euro American ideas in shaping Indian university systems (Gergen et al, 1996). Here, it is implied that the promise of science as framed within the rise of Western ideologies like liberalism, was in its ability to raise societies out of poverty and accelerate progress. However, by following these liberal and neoliberal lines of thought, local knowledge was ignored and the forced to become compatible with Western principles about productivity, personhood and democracy, even though the advantage of such a system still lies with the West and will continue to do so (Gergen et. at, 1996).
It does indeed seem true that Indian university systems do indeed propel Western paradigms of science, teach in English and perhaps even maintain a degree of distance from local Indian traditions such as yoga or tantra, that may be considered unscientific. Yet, this is not evidence that indigenous traditions are absent from ways of life in society where practices like continuity of life or other Hindu conceptions about personhood and temporality, are still heavily embedded in social norms. To this extent, even Western corporations like McDonald’s follow the local protocol of not selling beef due to the sacrilegious status of cows in Hinduism. Furthermore, other post-colonial societies like China still follow a local education system where even elite universities in urban centres instruct largely in Mandarin.
Therefore, it is difficult to conclusively place the legitimacy of knowledge and its dissemination in post-colonial societies in the realm of imperialist agendas. Undeniably, colonial histories have a role to play in shaping current education systems and knowledge is inherently linked to power, but as seen in India, this appears to be largely due to the context in which knowledge is transferred today. Knowledge has taken a transnational shape, is hierarchal in its production as outlined in the previous section, and often politicized in a way that is not inherently Western but global and is still highly influenced by the authority of the state.
4. Conclusion
The concept of knowledge and its profoundly political character within the post-colonial world appears to have fundamentally shifted how knowledge is both produced and disseminated in society. Firstly, Orientalism is useful in helping define this hierarchical, intertwined and inherently reciprocal relationship between knowledge and power (as see through the legitimacy given to knowledge transfers from post-colonial to Western societies, or former colonies). With particular reference to the transfer of knowledge in formal institutions like education, the politics of knowledge and its role in shaping social identities, it is difficult to justify an imperialist agenda as articulated by Orientalist literature. Particularly, when this literature is placed in the body of Said’s (1979) discourse, the terminology is neither cohesive nor entirely defined.
Secondly, arguments concerning Orientalism ignore the fact that, historically, the transfer of knowledge precedes colonialism and essentially is not inherently impermeable to outside influence as seen through simplistic but basic historical examples like the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the spread of religions like Christianity and Islam. Thus, if the eradication of all all Western knowledge from these societies were even possible, it is likely that it would take away from part of what Said (1979; 2000) may define as the cultures authenticity as well. Furthermore, as diaspora increases and post-colonial communities immerse and expand in parts of the West, they appear to fall between the cracks of (binary) Orientalist or Occidentalist discourse. Such communities are not geographically or temporally confined to either of these camps as they are likely to identify with both in different ways.
To conclude, it is the inherent power of knowledge on its own, rather than as a means of power through cultural imperialism, that adds existing bodies of local knowledge in a way that has shaped their social structures today. Arguably, this does not diminish traditions or values from pre-colonial times, as implied by Orientalism, but contributes to their evolution. This is not to deny a convergence between the West and the Orient in post-colonial societies, as seen by examples such as the adoption of the English language in India and the facilitation of transferring knowledge in a global context. Rather, discussions concerning the power of knowledge should view it as a historic consequence as opposed to a conscious and active ‘cultural imperialism’, and institutions that disseminate knowledge should be cognizant of the kind of politics that are shaping its production today.
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