The Invention of Orientalism and the Myth of Objective Knowledge

An Interview with Prof. Ivo Hristov—Sociologist, University Lecturer, and Public Analyst

Let us start with this: Who was Edward Said?

He was a Palestinian born in Jerusalem with a very fascinating, even dramatic, life story. He lived in Egypt and Lebanon, but spent the greater part of his adult life in the United States as a professor of literature at Columbia University. Edward Said is an exceptionally prominent figure in literary criticism and the humanities, but his most influential book, which brought him worldwide fame, is Orientalism.

Why does the West stereotype the Orient—constructing its own image of it and imposing it on the world?

This book had the impact of a nuclear bomb in the humanities and social sciences because the author revealed something that Marxism, and later Neo-Marxism through Gramsci in the 1920s, had already clearly postulated. Namely: there is no such thing as politically, socially, or class-neutral social knowledge. A refrain particularly characteristic of today's liberal and post-liberal era is that knowledge in itself can be apolitical, that it can be detached from its social context, and that different viewpoints are all equally valid. In a sense, this leads to a form of relativism—a complete absence of any coordinate system for "good" and "bad." Through the thoroughly developed theme of Orientalism and the invention of the East by the West, Edward Said demonstrates that this is not merely an innocent social narrative or a peculiar discourse resulting from scientific inquiry into a given subject. It is a political construct for domination and hegemony.

The book analyzes works by Western European writers, scholars, and travelers. How did fiction and travelogues help "structure" the Orient in the Western mind?

We must note that Orientalism as a term is historically linked to Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. In the late 18th century, Napoleon launched his famous expedition into those lands, accompanied not only by his army but also by a massive entourage of scholars. Among them were pioneers of nascent disciplines such as ethnography, literary studies, history, anthropology, and archaeology—the famous Rosetta Stone was discovered during this campaign. It was during this period that Orientalism was invented as a field of study (it is no coincidence that the term itself is closely tied to France).

On the surface, it appeared to be a purely academic pursuit. However, through a meticulous and critical archaeology of knowledge, Edward Said exposed how the very constructs of "West" and "East," "Orient" and "Occident," were in fact ideologically, politically, and even militarily loaded complexes created for the purpose of domination.

There is a renowned British scholar, author of the fascinating book After Tamerlane, who observes that prior to European military, economic, and political hegemony, there existed another form of control which he calls the "hegemony of taxonomy." That is, the division of the world into East and West, North and South; the creation of a coordinate system that relegated non-Europeans to the periphery while positioning Europe—specifically Western Europe—as the center. Eastern and Central Europe, after all, constituted the exact same periphery for the West as the rest of the world.

What appears on the surface to be scientific inquiry is, de facto, an exercise in power and domination. The act of naming things is never innocent; it is not a neutral reflection or a term that merely mirrors the object. It is a term that creates the object—turning it into an object of domination relative to the subject.

In other words, the West crafted an exotic, backward image of the Orient while portraying and defining itself as "civilized," "rational," and "progressive"?

Precisely; that is the official narrative. Throughout the 18th, 19th, and even 20th centuries, this ideological image possessed a degree of objective truth. However, two very subtle processes were concealed behind it.

The first was objective lagging—though the very concepts of "progress" and "lagging," of "modern" and "non-modern," are themselves Western European inventions. This phenomenon is known as the "simultaneity of the nonsimultaneous" (Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen). Geographical discoveries, globalization, and expanding transport, communication, military, political, and economic networks connected different parts of the world that existed at vastly different stages of "lagging" or "progress" for the first time.

And guess who determined what qualified as "backward" and what counted as "advanced"? Western Europe, of course—specifically the colonial powers: primarily France and Britain, and to a lesser extent, the Netherlands and Spain. Consequently, once this complex coordinate system was invented—seemingly describing an objective reality while actually serving subjective control—the second stage began: exploitation.

Once a territory was conquered—be it India or the Middle East (including Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, and all those nations dominating today's international headlines)—the concept of the Orient as "backward," "despotic," "unmodern," "Asiatic," and "inferior" in contrast to a "bright," "Renaissance," and "progressive" Europe served as the moral justification for its exploitation. This deepened the backwardness even further, while concealing the second major cause for the Orient's regress relative to Europe: European domination itself, which exploited this peripheral world by turning it into a colony.

Would it not be far more beneficial for the West, and for the development of its self-criticism, to view itself and its shortcomings through the eyes of the Orient, rather than idealizing itself?

That perspective exists in another field—or rather, a cluster of paradigms—known as postcolonial studies. This field pushed the pendulum to the opposite extreme, claiming that the West alone is responsible for every problem facing "colonial societies" across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In other words, a balanced view is still lacking. If the concept of a "backward Orient" served to legitimize control and domination over it, postcolonial studies do the exact reverse: placing sole blame for all issues in postcolonial societies on the former colonial masters. There is no objective middle ground that attempts to synthesize the merits and flaws of both approaches.

Here we must keep something crucial in mind regarding academic research: science itself, including the social sciences, is a Western European invention. The scientific framework of a subject-object relationship with the world is uniquely Western European. In that sense, the scientific method carries the "birthmarks" of the specific place, culture, and civilization that produced it—namely, Renaissance and post-Renaissance Western Europe (with its Reformation, Counter-Reformation, Early Modernity, and so forth).

Consequently, all these disciplines ultimately emerged as reflections of Western European historical, social, and political experience. For this reason, the only "true"—and I stress the quotation marks—subject of these sciences is Europe itself. Everything else is an ersatz. It is deemed good or bad, advanced or backward, regressive or progressive, solely in comparison to the ideal model—and guess what that model is? Western Europe, of course!

If not scientific, what should the approach be then?

The scientific approach is not objective. To put it bluntly, that is another grand myth. There is no such thing as "objective" knowledge; knowledge is always subjective. It was not without reason that Kant argued nature itself possesses no intrinsic human qualities or meaning. It is we, as human beings, who project characteristics upon it, draping it in concepts of "good" or "bad," "sublime," "regress," or "progress." A boulder in front of you is neither good nor bad in itself; it becomes one or the other only in light of your intentions toward it—whether it stands in your way or serves your purpose. In other words, objective nature does not possess the qualities assigned to it by the observing subject. In this context, the observing subject is Western European man, a product of the colonial era, imposing the filter of his own glasses upon the entire world.

This is precisely what Edward Said describes: the social construction of an allegedly objective scientific viewpoint that creates an artificial object—the Orient as a subject for domination and exploitation. The initial phase involves trivializing it, preemptively treating it as something exotic, as something fundamentally unequal to the studying subject. There is always a condescending, top-down gaze toward these subjects.

Incidentally, we as Bulgarians can say the same applies to us, despite claims to the contrary. Just as there is "Orientalism," there is also "Balkan Studies." But why is there no "Occidentalism"—a "science of the West"? No such discipline exists; it is not permitted. Instead, for the West, you have political economy, economics, sociology, political science, and various other social sciences. But there is no overarching "science of the West" defined in relation to the East. Why do you suppose that is?

Are you suggesting that Balkan Studies inherently carries a condescending, disdainful attitude toward the Balkans?

Of course! Using 19th-century terminology, the Balkans were viewed as nothing more than "European Turkey"—which translates to "Asia within Europe."

Who is the book Orientalism intended for, besides those with a specialized academic interest in the subject?

For anyone who wishes to transcend a provincial worldview and attempt to look at the world from above. A person can never—and I repeat, never—study a subject while remaining entirely inside it. Only when you step outside and stand apart, maintaining distance and distinction, are you able to observe it properly. It is then that you realize that talk of an objective approach to objective subjects is merely a subjective construct and a tool for control—strictly in the Gramscian sense.

Interview conducted by Svetlana Dicheva, Bulgarian National Radio (BNR)