Orientalism

December 14: Student presentations on contemporary Orientalism in Japan and elsewhere. The final examination mentioned in the December 7 note will be held January 18 during the regular seminar time.

December 7: Discussion of the McVeigh chapter would have been better if more than one student had read it before the class. I’ll save comment on the irony of this in a week when the reading was from a book called Japanese Higher Education as Myth (!). Thanks to Taka for his summary for other students. Informal lecture following this on the ideas of “self-orientalism” and “self-colonization” (remember Yoshioka?) in a Japanese context.

Homework: We’ve now had two weeks of discussion of very specific and very contemporary understandings of Orientalism (implicit in Arundhati Roy’s “Public Power in the Age of Empire,” explicit in Brian McVeigh’s “Self-Orientalism Through Occidentalism”). With these as examples of the viability of the concept in the contemporary world, students are each to find another example or examples—in the news media, in a book, in a film or films, in daily experience, anywhere—and to offer to the class a ten-minute discussion of how the idea of Orientalism informs whatever it is the student has chosen. If you have any confusion about what I’m requesting—the assignment is purposefully open-ended—please send me an e-mail with a specific query and I’ll respond quickly.

Note: I do not usually plan an exam for a course such as this and so of course have not announced one, but it seems to me at this stage that one is necessary to ensure that students have at least read the material assigned in the course, all of which is noted on this page. I should therefore like to schedule an open book one-hour in-class short-answer / essay examination in January, date to be announced next week. “Open book” means that during the exam you may consult any materials you have brought with you to class, including the assigned texts themselves. Don’t panic. If you have read the texts you’ll do well on the exam. It’s being scheduled only to ensure that credit-earning students have at the very least read the material that has provided the textual center of the course.

November 30: Excellent student responses to Arundhati Roy’s “Public Power in the Age of Empire” and its relation to Edward Said’s understanding of Orientalism and Michel Foucault’s concept of discourse.

Homework: Chapter 7 of Brian McVeigh’s Japanese Higher Education as Myth (Sharpe, 2002): “Self-Orientalism Through Occidentalism: How ‘English’ and ‘Foreigners’ Nationalize Japanese Students.” Aside from the obvious connection in the title I’ll be interested once again in discussing the relation of this work to Said and Foucault.

November 16: More on discourse. Sorry to keep on about it, but a sound understanding of the concept is critical to the aims of the course. Remember Said himself, Introduction to Orientalism, p. 3: “I have found it useful here to employ Michel Foucault’s notion of a discourse, as described by him in The Archaeology of Knowledge and in Discipline and Punish, to identify Orientalism. My contention is that without examining Orientalism as a discourse one cannot possibly understand the enormously systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manage—and even produce—the Orient . . . .”

Homework: Read and watch Arundhati Roy’s talk to the American Sociological Association in San Francisco, August 16, 2004, “Public Power in the Age of Empire.” The text is here, the video here (click the “Watch 128k stream” [slow connection] or “Watch 256k stream” [broadband] below the title.) Apologies for the dullness of the Amy Goodman introduction and interruptions.

How is what Arundhati Roy says related to Orientalism? To discourse? To other matters we have discussed in the seminar? What do you think of her analysis? Is she right? Wrong? In between? I’ll ask you to take a stand in the November 30 seminar.

Finally, a reminder: no seminar meeting November 23 because of the national holiday.

November 9: History, positive knowledge, and representation. Attempt to demonstrate that any analysis, including historical analysis, must take into account the inevitable gap between representation and that which is represented. Continued consideration of the nature of discourse in Foucaultian terms. Homework: complete the phrases in as many ways as possible: “The discourse of ___________”; “the ___________ discourse.”

Image from dusan.satori.sk.

November 2: University festival, no seminar.

October 25: Attempts to come to terms with contemporary Japanese manifestations of the “style of thought” that is Said’s second “meaning” of Orientalism.

October 19: Discussion of the relation of Said’s understanding of Orientalism and Michel Foucault’s concept of discourse. Discussion of the importance of this and related concepts in recent work in the social and human sciences.

Homework: 1) As you watch television, read newspapers or popular magazines, or look at news on the internet this week, keep Said’s second meaning of Orientalism in mind. What examples of this “style of thought” do you find in the Japanese media? We’ll begin the October 26 seminar with one example from each student, and so you should be prepared to offer one, if possible with copies of the example for other students and me. 2) Read Hiroshi Yoshioka’s “Samurai and Self-Colonization in Japan,” which is now available online (here). A notice of Professor Yoshioka’s upcoming address to the Cultural Studies Open Seminar may be found here.

October 12: Discussion of Said’s three “meanings” of Orientalism, with particular focus on the second: Orientalism is “a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the time) ‘the Occident.’”

Next week we’ll turn to Orientalism as an example of a discourse, and try to get clear about the meaning of that important term.

Students are reminded that because of Akitoshi Miyashita’s 4:35 lecture on October 19, this Orientalism seminar will take place from 6:10 to 7:40 instead of the usual time.

October 5: Joint meeting with the Policy Studies Forum Oct. 5 lecture by Akira Iriye.

September 28: Discussion of the first five questions on the first Orientalism worksheet. I was pleased with the nature of your engagement, and with your preparation. Please read the remainder of Said’s introduction and have a look at the second Orientalism worksheet in advance of the October 12 seminar. I would also be pleased if you would continue reading around in Said’s work available online (see the links at September 21 below).

Students are reminded that the October 5 seminar will be a joint meeting with the Policy Studies Forum, 6:10 ~ 7:40, in which we will be joined by Akira Iriye for a lecture on “Cultural Globalization in East Asia.” I hope you will agree with me that while Professor Iriye’s topic is not directly related to Orientalism, it may help contextualize our upcoming considerations of a post-Orientalist discourse.

We’ll continue with the worksheets in the October 12 meeting of the seminar.

September 21: Introduction to the seminar and to Edward Said’s life and work. Homework: 1) read the first two sections (pp. 1~9) of the Introduction to Orientalism and respond in writing to the questions on this worksheet; 2) read at least one of Said’s essays that appeared online in the last five years of his life, and be prepared to offer comment on it in the September 28 seminar.

The largest archive of Said’s online writing is at Al-Ahram Weekly in Cairo, here. The largest archive in Arabic is at the Arab Media Internet Network (AMIN), here. The largest archive in Japanese translation is at RUR-55, here. The fullest bibliography of Said’s writing online is here at themargins.net. Said’s last “Preface to Orientalism,” written for the twenty-fifth anniversary edition, may be found in the Al-Ahram archive in English, the AMIN archive in Arabic, and in Japanese translation here.