Criticism to Edward W. Said’s Orientalism

The publication of Edward W. Said’s Orientalism marked a momentous intervention in the historiography of Western imperialism and Western representations of the Middle East. Many regarded Orientalism as “one of the most influential scholarly books published in English in the humanities in the last quarter of the twentieth century”(Lockman, 2004: 190). The book stormed up a debate in the academic world by accusing the West of having a skewed and condescending view towards the East, particularly in the several ways in which Westerners portrayed and represented non-Western cultures. While Orientalism generated sympathy and agreement, it also raised complete rejection. Alexander Lyon Macfie points out this aspect in his book Orientalism (2002) as: “Opinion regarding the validity of Said’s Orientalism was then mixed. But a pattern of sorts can be detected, based not so much on the nationality and religion of the scholars and intellectuals concerned as on their attitude to history and the modern and post-modern philosophical ideas (deconstruction, truth as illusion, intellectual hegemony, and so on) which frequently influence it” (109). The present paper tries to bring an approach to criticism made towards Edward Said, his influential theory and Said’s partial response to those criticism