Orientalists Views

• Books

Orientalism is more widely used to refer to the works of the many 19th century artists, who specialized in Oriental subjects, often drawing on their travels to North Africa and Western Asia. Artists as well as scholars were already described as Orientalists in the 19th century, especially in France, where the term, with a rather dismissive sense, was largely popularized by the critic Jules Castagnary.[4] Such distain did not prevent the Societé des Peintres Orientalistes ( Society of Orientalist Painters ) being founded in 1893, with Jean-Léon Gérôme as honorary president;[5] the word was less often used as a term for artists in 19th century England.[6]

Orientalism is book of 1978 by Edward Said that has been highly influential and also controversial in postcolonial studies and other fields. In the book, Said effectively redefined the term Orientalism to mean a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the Middle East. This body of scholarship is marked by a subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture. [1] He argued that a long tradition of romanticized images of Asia and the Middle East in Western culture had served as an implicit justification for European and the American colonial and imperial ambitions. Just as fiercely, he denounced the practice of Arab elites who internalized the US and British orientalists' ideas of Arabic culture.

In his book For Lust of Knowing, British historian Robert Irwin criticizes what he claims to be Said's thesis that throughout Europe’s history, “every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.” Irwin points out that long before notions like third-worldism and post-colonialism entered academia, many Orientalists were committed advocates for Arab and Islamic political causes.

Orientalism is more widely used to refer to the works of the many 19th century artists, who specialized in Oriental subjects, often drawing on their travels to North Africa and Western Asia. Artists as well as scholars were already described as Orientalists in the 19th century, especially in France, where the term, with a rather dismissive sense, was largely popularized by the critic Jules Castagnary.[4] Such distain did not prevent the Societé des Peintres Orientalistes ( Society of Orientalist Painters ) being founded in 1893, with Jean-Léon Gérôme as honorary president;[5] the word was less often used as a term for artists in 19th century England.[6]