Orientalism

The term "Orientalism" refers to the imitation or the example of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, but also makes ref erence to the empathetic attitude towards the region by a writer or any other person . An "Orientalist" may be also the person in charge of academic Oriental Studies.

The meaning of u n turn acquired the controversial work of Edward Said of the same name, published in 1978. Said uses the term to describe two traditions, artistic and academic, hostile and contemptuous views of the East by the West, partly influenced by the era of European imperialism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Used in this sense, the "Orientalism" includes interpretations of Eastern culture marked by prejudice. Said criticized the academic tradition, custom writers such as Bernard Lewis. In contrast, the term has also been used by other scholars to refer to writers of the old imperialist attitudes favorable to Eastern culture.

Meaning of témino. Orientalism comes from the Latin word "oriens" (East) and also the Greek he'oros' (the direction of the rising sun). East West is the opposite, non-trivial issue in the old order of the known world: Western Europe was considered and the east end of the world was known East. Hence the conception of the Orient, with its Eurocentric varnish, has changed over time: for the Roman Empire "East" referred to the current Middle East. L did not know then as flourishing cultures of the Far East, just as in the Far East was unknown in Europe.

Over time, the meaning of "East" was moving east as western explorers reached new heights. The "wise men" biblical "East" came from the "East", with the probable meaning of Arabia and the Persian Empire. Europe, however, became aware that beyond this, reaching the Pacific coast, whose space was called the Far East. In the West, these changes in meaning over time add to the confusion (historical and geographical) to Oriental studies.

Are however areas where "East" and "oriental" denote definitions and outdated. The "oriental spices" come from regions between the Middle East and Indochina. Travel in the "Orient Express" just come to Istanbul in the east side of Europe.

In Spanish, "oriental" is a term referring to the peoples, cultures and gods of the areas of East and Southeast Asia populated by Mongoloid races.

The arts. Imitation oriental style. One of the meanings of Orientalism is adopting motifs, styles and arguments in art, architecture and design. The "turquerie" as they called that old fashion, began in the fifteenth century and reached the century.

Early use of motives taken from the Indian subcontinent has been sometimes called the "Indian style". In this stream there are many examples in the UK, the main actor of imperialism in the area, as Sezincote Guildhall or house, but also in Potsdam, Stuttgart and Toronto.

The term "chinoiserie", French, includes fashion by Chinese motifs in the decoration of Western art, in successive waves since the seventeenth century, with a special place during the Rococo period. Since the Renaissance, European designers were trying to imitate the technical sophistication of Chinese ceramics, with modest success. The "chinoiserie" (chinería) appears most f orce in countries with active East India Companies, as the United Kingdom, Denmark, Holland and France. In the European imagination was of particular importance china, imitated in the Dutch city of Delft or German Meissen.

Chinese-flavored appeared gardens and recreational areas in the Rococo German palaces and the tiles of the palace of Aranjuez, in Madrid. Tables for tea and Chinese toilets, sober pictures of the furniture Xing start to populate the noblest halls of Europe. There are small pagodas in the chimneys and larger parks.

For art inspired by Japan, the key date is 1860, with the arrival of Japanese woodcut prints and their influence on artists such as Monet or McNeill Whistler.

Representation of the East in art and literature. The representation of the "Moors" or "Turkish" begins in the Middle Ages and continues through the Renaissance and Baroque. The first outlines of orientalism in Western art biblical scenes appear in the first Dutch painting, where some secondary figures, such as Romans or Jews, are dressed in exotic costumes and wearing turbans include the nearby this contemporary. Renaissance Venice shows a particular interest in the Ottoman Empire in painting, with Gentille Bellini and Vittore Carpaccio to the head. At the time, were already more accurate representations, and the men were already white.

In the nineteenth century, increase oriental scenes. In many works repeats the myth of an exotic and decadent East, dominated by corruption. These works focus on the Middle Eastern Islamic cultures. Artists such as Delacroix, Gérôme or Roubtzoff Islam reflected in his paintings, often collect odalisques. Ingres, director of the French Academy of Painting, painted a Turkish bath in which generalized the Eastern eroticism and became socially acceptable in the eyes of France. Although all bodies probably belonged to the same model, had called the play "A brothel in Paris", this would have been controversial. The sensuality and was considered an integral part of the East, and this view persisted in the early twentieth century, as seen in Matisse's nudes. In these works, the "east" is often a mirror of Western culture itself, even as a way to express their faces hidden or illegal.

The use of exotic East and went back into the world of cinema, particularly in some successes of Rudolph Valentino. Later, the rich Arabic became a popular resort, especially during the oil crisis of the 70. In the nineties, that image gave way to a more negative: the terrorist villain common in western movies.

Edward Said, "Orientalism." A central idea is that Edward Said on the Middle Western knowledge is not built on facts but on imagined constructs that see Eastern societies as fundamentally similar and different characteristics shared crucial to the West. There is thus a priori knowledge that sets a opposite East West. Knowledge of the East is built with literary texts and historical data that often have a limited understanding of the facts of the Middle East.

Before Said's book, "Oriental" was used as opposed to "Western". Comparisons between the two entities were often unfavorable to the East, although the term was used by respectable institutions. But the word "Orient" fell into dispute with the birth of the term "Orientalism". Following ideas of Michel Foucault, Said emphasized the relationship between power and knowledge in the field of thought-both academic and popular-especially with the European vision of the Islamic world. For Said, East and West acted like two sides of the coin, in which East was only a negative complement Western culture. The work of another thinker, Antonio Gramsci, also influenced the perception of Said. In particular, Said used the concept of hegemony to analyze the pervasiveness of Orientalist constructs and representations among Western scholars.

Said limited his academic discussion to the study of Middle East culture and history of Africa and Asia, but also said that Orientalism is a significant dimension of modern political and intellectual culture. His perspective of the late nineteenth century, when the departments in the area had left the colonial paradigm. Still, this paradigm continued in works such as Bernard Lewis as late as 1977. The idea of an East is key to define the West. Therefore, the study of Greco-Persian wars affect the comparison between the democratic tradition of Athens and the Persian Empire's authoritarian system, but as a way to extrapolate to a more general comparison between Greeks and Persians, and also between East and West, between Europe and Asia, without reference to the many Greek cities also were governed by authoritarian regimes.

Said tries to unravel the power relations colonizer - colonized latent in the texts of writers and academics in Europe. His work has implications beyond the Middle East, particularly on attitudes towards China or India. "Orientalism" is one of the foundational texts of postcolonial studies. Later, Said developed and modified his ideas in the 1993 book "Culture and Imperialism."

Many scholars now use Said's work to try to alleviate Western ideological bases, often taken for granted without critical discussion. Some have come to maintain the idea that the West's self was constructed from the difference with others. If Europe is left of Christianity as non-Byzantium, modern Europe from the end of the late sixteenth century defined itself as the "not-Turkey."

Said sets out some definitions of "Orientalism" in the introduction to his work. Some have been more influential than others.

• "A way of approaching East based on the special place it occupies in the Middle Western European experience.
• "A style of thought based on ontological or epistemological distinction made ​​between" East "and" West. "
• "Western style for dominating, restructuring and show his authority over the Orient".
• "Orientalism is particularly valuable as a sign of power on the East Atlantic-European rather than true speech of the East ".
• "Distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic texts, academic, economic, sociological, historical and philological.

In his preface to the 2003 edition, Said made ​​a warning against "falsely unifying rubrics that invent collective identities" with terms such as America, the West and Islam, "leading to what he considers a" clash of civilizations "prefabricated .

Positions contrary to Said. Critics Said's theory, as the historian Bernard Lewis, argue that the review contains errors conceptual, methodological and factual. Said ignores many genuine contributions to the study of Eastern cultures made ​​by Westerners during the Enlightenment and the Victorian era. Said's theory does not explain why the French and English studied Islam in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, long before that will control the Middle East. And he was criticized for having ignored the contributions of Italian scholars, Dutch, and especially Germans. For Lewis, the intellectuals of these countries are more important in European Orientalism than the French or the English, despite the disconnect between the studies and their colonial presence. And Said's theory, says Lewis, does not explain why studies failed Orientalists advance the causes of imperialism.

"What purpose served imperial deciphering the ancient Egyptian, for example, and the restoration of knowledge and pride Egyptians for its old and forgotten past" (B. Lewis).

Lewis argued that Orientalism is born of humanism. A different ideology of imperialism, and sometimes opposed to it. The Orientalist study of Islam born of rejection of religious dogma, and served to spur awareness of alternative cultures. Lewis calls "intellectual protectionism" the argument that only those beyond a culture can usefully discuss its components.

Said Lewis responds to the arguments by saying that this should be placed in context. One of the main arguments is that Orientalism Said was used as an instrument of the Empire, and the author claims that criticism of Lewis is not disinterested, but part of the neo-imperialist positions of Lewis, sometimes masked.

Lewis is aligned with schools of thought that promote neocon vision for U.S. policy in the Middle East. Most intellectuals are lined with Said, which is criticized by supporters of Lewis as a bias that has led to funding cuts in those academic departments. The website www.campuswatch.org , for example, encourages students to report the prejudices of their teachers.

Bryan Turner criticizes the work of Said saying that there are multiple ways and traditions of Orientalism. So Said criticizes attempts to place them all under the same light. Other critics point out that, despite the fantasies and distortions, the notion of "East" as a negative mirror of the West is not usually because the view changes according to different cultures. In any case, it is a logical necessity that other cultures are identified as "different". And there are some who maintain that Said criticizes the "essentialism" of Orientalists in categorizing the East, but he falls into the stereotype of the characteristics of the West.

The West viewed from the east. In contrast, many of the concepts associated with the derogatory "Orientalism" short-western but with a reverse direction, in the epilogue of "Chapter of the Western Regions" of Hou Hanshu. This is the official history of the Han Dynasty (25-221 years). The book is compiled by Fan Ye (d. 445) and succinctly expresses the Han opinion "Western" culture Hu, in the current western China.

Hu Westerners are far

They live in an area outside.

The products of their country are beautiful

But his character is corrupt and frivolous.

They follow the rites of China

Han has the canonical books.

They do not obey the way of the gods.

What a pity!

What stubborn!

Although this quote refers to the west of China, there are plenty of stereotypical representations of Western works of Indian artists, Japanese and Chinese. But, in contrast, some Eastern artists adopted western styles. The Indian painter Ravi Varma painted works of some images indistinguishable Western Orientalists. In the late twentieth century, many Western cultural motifs and images began to appear in the Asian culture and art, especially in Japan. The English words and phrases are prominent in popular culture and advertising in Japan. Many characters, themes and mythological figures of the "anime" Japanese are derived from various Western cultural traditions.

Recently, the term "Occidentalism" has been coined to refer to the negative view of the West present at times in the current Eastern societies.

Indian Art: Where is Hussain?

"Art is a very good investment in India. Shopping in a few years now and the value is multiplied, "he has a gallery on the first International Art Fair in India. The organizers take chest by list of artists, over 200, and 35 leading galer ies that are represented in the Trade Fair in New Delhi, better known as Pragati Maidan.

The welcome given by a car made ​​with skeletons paste, to which visitors, unaccustomed to contemporary art, taking photos with smiles. After loitering for the jobs of the galleries, where abstract paintings are interspersed with experimental portraits of Gandhi and other reasons which prove the existence of an "Indian way" for contemporary art.

The artists roam sandals give visitors little more elegant to ensure their sensitivity squeals from the crowd. A fair, it seems, the most homologous with the West. "The Indian market 'says in a statement the organization-has grown by 485 percent in the last decade, making it the fourth most buoyant in the world."

And business people rush to buy Souzas of HTAs me of Burmans, new names that are slowly populating the walls busiest in India. In all but one: MF Husain, the most media coverage of the painters, who has become the center of controversy ... without being present in the sample.

"We did get a warning (to the galleries) of the real risk of including Husain" he told the Hindustan Times Sunil Gautam, director of the organization. "The exposure is worth millions of dollars and thousands of visitors."

But Husain is a dangerous man? ¿Threatens his professional colleagues, destroys their works? Far from reality: Husain, 93 and known as the "Picasso of India", lives between Dubai and London and want to return home, but can not.

What he fears the organization, in fact, is that exposure of any of his paintings attract the attention and ire of the "moral police" India, the name given in India conservative groups trying to maintain a strictly-for them and others, the tradition and standards of "decency" in the country.

T o Husain, the problems began in 1996, in his eighties, coinciding with the publication in a magazine several nude portraits of Hindu goddesses made ​​in the seventies. The article, entitled "A painter of flesh", was the presentation of eight complaints against the artist for "inciting religious hatred."

Although the charges were later dismissed by the courts, Husain received death threats and his house was attacked by a group of Hindu radicals destroyed several of his works. The painter left India and now in exile, he saw from afar a new controversy, this time a couple of years.

The painting in question, "Bharat Mata" ("Mother India"), depicting a naked woman superimposed on the map of India and the names of some parts written in your body. Was displayed in an exhibition on Kashmir, and automatically received criticism from Hindu groups like the VHP (World Hindu Organization).

The painter apologized for his work, promised to withdraw from the auction s and since then awaits his chance to return to India. "The only way is perhaps the Conservatives return to power Hindus" he said recently, hoping that they could control their own members to avoid attacks on this "old man".

But Husain is actually just one of the sights of the most radical organizations in India, as the RSS, the Shiv Sena or VHP on the Hindu and the SIMI and fundamentalist clerics at the head Muslim.

Their activities, and other groups of fast nerve-van since the sack of newspaper offices for publishing articles disadvantages to destroying movie theaters to project films considered offensive. His list includes "cheer-leaders" of cricket, the caricatur ists bold or foul-mouthed actors.

Thus, the Muslim tennis player Sania Mirza in India does not play by the criticism of the apparel, the writer Taslima Nasreen had to leave Calcutta for his criticism of Muslims, actress Khusboo threw tomatoes to break a lance in favor of sex premarital ...

A long statement, in short, of offenses against the tradition that often ends with the apologies of the characters, prior violence or court action. "I understand the organizers of the art show, is resigned Husain, aimed at reconciling or Stockholm syndrome. In India there are 2,500 complaints against me. "

Shortly before the start of the exhibition, the Ministry of Culture issued a commu nicated denial "have been consulted about the artists in the exhibition." In other words, praising the freedom of expression appropriate vechando this time the buck was from another: "We would be happy if all the great artists, including paintings by Husain, were represented."

This time, the painter has been supported by the organization of artists SAHMAT, which has organized an exhibition solidarity parallel where there are 20 of his works, but for now the champions of the moral police have issued a verdict.

By the way, in the pompous India Art Fair, where a box of cockroaches vanguard entertains visitors or where the outline of a train station marks the colorism of Indian painting, the first Indian Art Fair, I say, there many portraits of women in sari, but not a single naked.

Photographs: MF Husain, his "Bharat Mata", an untouchable flees after being stripped for protesting.