Orientalism

Content Warning: The source text uses terms that are now considered outdated and offensive such as “the Orient,” “Orientalism,” and “oriental.” Said uses these terms to critique these concepts, and this study guide reproduces them in that critical context.

Said expresses the relationship between the Orient and the Occident as one of binary opposition. The concept of binary opposition originated with Ferdinand de Saussure, a seminal figure in structuralist theory, who defined it as two ideas that depend on one another for definition but are theoretically opposed. This dependency and opposition articulate the historical and theoretical bind in the relationship between the Orient (the East) and the Occident (the West). Said argues that this bind is maintained by the dominant Occidental powers that have always relied on the Orient to fortify its own identity. In other words, Britain and France’s colonial projects in the Orient bolstered their identities as imperialist nations, in part because these European nations defined themselves in opposition to the conquered Other.

By creating and maintaining a binary opposition between the Orient and the Occident, the West defined itself through its distinctions from the values of the East. In a 1972 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, US government official Harold W.