Orientalism

Is there any benefit or worth in reading this?

It's one of the most important books of our time.

"Orientalism," said Edward W.

oriental people are breddy cool

Yes

Why?

it's good

yes. its an interesting book that's well written.

it's one of those books that is name dropped more often than it is read, even saudi FSA jihad shills tell people to 'read orientalism' as one of their ready made knee jerk responses. The book itself its a product of its time: it pictures 'the west' and 'the east' as inconmesurable 'texts' which can only degrade each other upon contact. Said traces the origins of 'orientalism' down to ancient greece and herodotus, but didn't islam and christianity emerge from the same Semitic-neoplatonic matrix?

Utterly irrelevant, the western paper pushing establishment is reduced to apologizing for its own existence. it is in the interest of the people who make their living managing and interpreting 'texts' to believe the world is nothing but one huge text and all the world's injustices stem from its mismanagement. 'texts' no one reads anymore are inconsequential next to petrodollars, AI guided missiles and multimillion dollar arm deals.

This looks interesting.... but is there culturecucking?

Slit your wrists or fuck off to the shithole you crawled out from.

From reading the description on book websites you can see that it is.

Do you have recommendations of a similar book that is better?

haha

W.S. (well said), Edward

>DURRR WESTERN PEOPLE THINK ALL ASIANS LOOK THE SAME
>HURRR WESTERN IMPERIALISTS
>WHITES ARE EVIL FOR NOT KNOWING ABOUT EASTERN TRADITIONS
>FUCKING WHITES REEEE
>other races are totally humane and empathetic and open btw, other races are thoughtful and know everything about The Other and accept Him and try to understand Him XDDD

Said is just as much of a fraud as Derrida.

>i never read the book

summarise his points better then.
inb4
>nono user you misinterpreted him, when he called western people evil he didn't mean that!!! he meant something ELSE

I haven't read a word of what Edward W. has Said, but I've always heard that he has tremendous literary/aesthetic respect for the works onto which he reads orientalist/imperialist sentiment. Anyone care to confirm ot deny that?

Don't listen to . He is probably from /pol/ or something. It's not apologizing for anything, it's just saying that our understanding of the other is wrong. Forget that it's about the Middle East, and more about exploring others and oneself, rather, how we come to know people and oneself.

It's also short dude, just read it.

>it's just saying that our understanding of the other is wrong. Forget that it's about the Middle East, and more about exploring others and oneself, rather, how we come to know people and oneself.
so basically it's one of those new agey self help books.

I read some and got bored. It's just some Palestinian-British-American guy lashing out at his identity issues by bitching about the west

...

embarrasing post

>>>r/t_D

Yes, the book reexamining how trying to divide the world into us and not us is stupid is a new age self help book.

A fairly weak attempt at cultural revisionism by a man who didn't know the Muslim world nearly as well as many of the people he criticized (e.g. Bernard Lewis).

>it's just saying that our understanding of the other is wrong
oh wow what a cutting perspective, especially with the Middle East. Honestly though thanks for stopping me from wasting time on this

and what's his complain exactly, i mean if i were a foreigner and i had to choose i'd rather be from "the orient" from the eyes of westerners than other places that i won't mention that have a waay worse image

Read Ann Coulter, seems more up your alley.

Based on what? Or did you just amalgamate all the mean anons together into some vaguely right wing particular, and poster 1047772 got the short end of the stick

>"ya see, there is this concept of THE OTHER that FUCKING WHITE MALES use and they should be more open to dialogue with those misunderstood salafist slave traders and an apocalyptic end time religion that spreads itself through the sword"

Truly groundbreaking and nuanced.

Can't wait till we empty the non-STEM parts of academia, like the Khmer Rouge emptied the cities.

Based on his post and this part in particular:
>oh wow what a cutting perspective, especially with the Middle East
where he seems convinced that he already knows better than the author despite not having read about this "cutting perspective", which he already considers trite. Like I said, Ann Coulter seems more up his alley: an uninformed cunt that says exactly what uninformed cunt user wants to hear.

Yes. Disregard literally every post ITT.

What I expected : Post Colonialist Obscurantism

What I got: Comfy historical anecdotes, interesting observations, lots of Goethe, lots of art history, lots of meta-history

Great book imo

Confirmed. He is first and foremost a literature scholar

I've read that he even got The Persians by Aeschylos wrong so I will probably not bother with him.

Ah, yeah. And where did you read that?

Are you 18?

Great response.

>Didn't say no

Edward W. Said "Orientalism"

What did he mean by this?

It works well as a survey of western attitudes towards the Orient, but I think you'd need to read the mainly British/French writers he references first to get much out of it.