FREE: Orientalism by Edward Said

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Orientalism (1978), by Edward W. Saïd, is a foundational text for the academic field of Post-colonial Studies, wherein the denotations and connotations of the term “Orientalism” are expanded to describe what Saïd sees as the false cultural assumptions of the “Western World”, facilitating the cultural misrepresentation of the “The Orient”, in general, and of the Middle East, in particular. For Saïd, the term Orientalism describes the “subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo–Islamic peoples and their culture”; cultural prejudices that are derived from a long tradition of romanticized images of Asia and of the Middle East, and which, in practice, functioned as implicit justifications for the colonial and the imperial ambitions of the European powers and the U.S. Moreover, in Orientalism, Saïd further described, criticized, and denounced the social, economic, and cultural practices of the ruling Arab élites who, Saïd claims, as imperial satraps, have internalized the romanticized “Arabic Culture” created by British and American Orientalists.