ORIENTALISM Edward Said & the Rhetorics of Otherness “British citizens traveling throughout the Oriental world did so not simply because they were motivated by adventure, economic exploitation, or cultural objectiication, but actually for much more complex and reciprocal reasons. They were not seeking some “Oriental Other” to appropriate or control (as Edward Said has claimed in Orientalism). They were doing something much more interesting and complex...” The primary aim of this course is to revisit an old question: what is Orientalism? In addressing this question the intention is to build critical knowledge of the multiple issues that Edward Said has thrashed-out in his seminal text, Orientalism. Said’s strategy makes a general reconstruction of Michel Foucault’s peculiar philosophical thought about the abuse of power and knowledge which runs through the whole of Orientalism. The pedagogy of “otherness” is also folded into the discourse on Orientalism--despite the vitriol of Said’s critics---as an ontological possibility and a historical reality. Today there is hardly an issue of political, cultural or social concern, which does not involve complex entanglements of the way we use language, which is a categorical manifestation of “otherness.” Above all this analysis on Orientalism allows us to grasp the relationship between the orient and occident; it will also provide a discursive strategy to construct possible permeations of meaning that frame the discourse. Akel Ismail Kahera Ph.D. Spring 2015 Editor: Karyn Campbell Cover Art: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Arabs siriens. Aveugl portent un paralitique by Tan- crède R Dumas, 1889 (LOT 13551, no. 53 [P&P]) This document is a compilation of inal student essays; it is not for sale, trade or any form of commercial transaction.