Who Said It?

Who Said It?
A writer is never alone. When an author sits down to write, they bring all of their experience and knowledge along with intended words to be put to paper. In this fashion, history ismade for all people to learn, then regurgitate back into the world with their own paradigm. Edward Said was a vocal scholar who concerned himself with how individuals are taught to see theirsurroundings. Said argues that in order to provide true knowledge one must cast off mechanized colonial education practices and instead take a more humanist approach.
The history read today is often notwritten by the people who lived it yesterday. Said speaks to this fact in his ground breaking book, Orientalism. The title of the book shows a case example of colonial education at work. The term“orientalism” is one that was developed by the colonizers of the Orient. In coining this term, colonizers were able to attach and deliver their own connotations of the Orient to the world and history books. Thisis a mechanical process of imperialism, as its gears move toward keep their best interests alive. Imperialist powers have made the act of making history that supports competitive advantage a verysuccessful strategy. In the case of the Orient, history made by Westerners has created an “us” and “them” discourse (Rizvi 296). History that is allowed to marginalize people gives greater power to theauthors and places the “other” in a position of subjugation. Said speaks that this way of forming history is detrimental because it give the world a false representation of culture. Unfortunately, thismechanized way of creating history, which aims to promote political and economic domination has caused Westerners to see the Orient in a false context. The objectification of the Orient by theOccident made it a slave to the Western perspective. An obvious example of this slavery is in the portrayal of women in the Orient. Said notes that developers of Orientalism had contact with Egyptian...