Is Orientalism one of the All-TIME 100 Best Nonfiction Books? TIME thinks so. Check it out.

Orientalism

By Ishaan Tharoor | August 30, 2011 | +

Author: Edward Said

Year Released: 1978

The late Edward Said, a polyglot, eclectic Palestinian-American intellectual, is the unlikely patriarch of the school of postcolonial studies, which over the past three decades has been the primary vehicle for academic study of countries in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and elsewhere. (Said, a professor at Columbia University, was a specialist in Western literature and was obsessed with classical music.) His landmark work, Orientalism, published in 1978, took to task the entire way scholars in the West approached the non-West, focusing on Said’s home terrain in the Middle East. It’s impossible, claims Said, to disassociate the subject of Western “Orientalist” inquiry from the context of imperial power; the Orient, in the eye of the Orientalist, was not a real place but a theatrical “stage annexed by Europe” where thinly veiled stereotypes of “the Other” that grew out of a false dichotomy were created and affirmed. Many latter-day Orientalists object to this typecasting, but it’s because of Said’s deeply humanist vision that we now approach the idea of distinct “cultures” and “civilizations” with the healthy dose of skepticism it deserves.

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Related Topics: Edward Said, Orientalism

Melissa

Reblogged this on Swamp of Boredom and commented:
I’m reblogging this for my own reference and also to share with my readers (all 34 of you;)). Since the release of the 1001 Books App on Tuesday, I’ve been book list crazy. Since I like non-fiction – especially non-fiction centered on historical events and people, not so much current people – and have read a couple of excellent non-fiction books in the last year (Only Yesterday, Empire of the Summer Moon) I wondered if there was a list of recommended non-fiction books. Of course there is. I found one from the Guardain (UK) that is, obviously, geared towards British readers and that, unlike Time’s list, encompasses all non-fiction ever written. This list from Time consists of books only since Time began publishing, 1923. There are a few that don’t interest me at all and the biography choices focus too heavily on women and African Americans, IMO, but overall the list is excellent.
Enjoy!