Orientalism: the foundation of the geopolitical mindset
Representations of geopolitics, with clear messages regarding personal and national
behavior, are embedded within a whole host of media that “entertain” and “inform” us,
without claiming to be overtly political. They are in movies and books etc., but the pres-
ence of these representations in readily accessible media is the product of much deeper
cultural structures that go under the title of Orientalism.
Edward Said (1979) was the driving force behind the concept of Orientalism, by
which he meant the institutionalized portrayal of non-Western cultures as “uncivilized,”
“backward,” “child-like” even “barbaric” and “primitive” in such a manner that it per-
vaded government,
academic, and popular culture circles. Said was a professor of English
Literature and analyzed novels, especially by English authors, in the nineteenth century.
However, his work is still relevant today, and is the basis for many academic works on
how “knowledge” of other cultures is created and disseminated. Furthermore, the point
of Orientalism is that such “knowledge” of, say, Arabs, or Muslims,
or Africans is a
form of power. There is power in the ability of Western countries to create particu-
lar understandings of the rest of the world, or classify weaker countries and their
inhabitants. For example, Western media portrayals of African countries are pervasive,
African representations of Europe and the United States are not. Such knowledge
becomes unquestioned because it is seen everywhere. Second, the authority of the know-
ledge, given that it is largely unquestioned or countered by alternative images, allows
for,
or demands, particular foreign policy stances toward particular countries. Oriental-
ism is the foundation of the responses to the geopolitical word game we played earlier
(Box 4.2). North Korea
is
nuclear weapons, for example.
But Said did not only point out that the West portrayed non-Westerners as barbarians
to justify their colonization. There is a double-sided nature to the process too. By por-
traying non-Westerners as “backward” and “uncivilized,” etc. Western countries and
their geopolitical practices were painted, for self-consumption, as the exact opposite:
“modern,” “the
bearers of civilization,” etc., and hence the “natural” rulers of the
globe. This self-portrayal of the West was not done just to make people feel good about
themselves: the extremely brutal acts of conquest and oppression that were necessary for
the West to establish its imperial rule over the world could then be seen as the required,
if unfortunate, acts needed to “discipline” or “civilize” the “natives.” If the competitive
colonization of Asia was known as the “Great Game” in a reference to the sports-field
escapades of the British ruling class, then the household belief that “to spare the rod is
to spoil the child” was also transferred to the global scale—in the belief that “natives”
only understood discipline. Orientalism did not die with the end of formal empire. In
fact, it has been noted that the portrayal of vast numbers of human beings as “savages”
and “barbarians” has been in resurgence in the wake of the terrorist
attacks of September
11, 2001 (Gregory, 2004).
The
profession
of Orientalism, as Edward Said called it, continues today. Academics
at respected universities write books, newspaper columns, and make television appear-
ances that combine to tell us the world out there is full of savage and irrational people
just waiting to inflict pain and suffering on the innocent West. Kaplan’s (1994) “Coming
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Anarchy” is a good example, as is, with specific focus
on Arab countries and Muslims,
the work of Bernard Lewis (2002). Increasingly, the target of Orientalism has become
Islam—a topic readily adopted by Fox News in the US, and British talk-show host
and now politician Robert Kilroy-Silk, for example. These everyday acts of portraying
a dangerous world needing US policing, with the help of other Western countries and
especially Britain, is established on the nearly 200 years
worth of cultural products
first analyzed by Said. The contemporary catalyst was Samuel Huntington’s (1993)
“The Clash of Civilizations”: epitomized by its classification of the world into eight
“civilizations”—the most problematic one being Islam with its “bloody innards and
bloodier boundaries.” Empirical analysis does not support Huntington’s bold claims
—in statistical analyses of conflicts across the world, connections to Islam does not
increase the likelihood of war (Chiozza, 2002). But who reads the academic journals?
The talking heads and op-ed pieces are the “high-brow” contributors to “common-sense”
and “Indiana Jones” the low-brow.
Scholars were quick to point out the cultural misrepresentations in Huntington’s
work, but it still, along with the work of Robert Kaplan, sowed the seeds of a post-
Cold War understanding that the world was “chaotic,” “messy,” and “dangerous” and
hence needed “order” and “stability” (Dalby, 2003; Flint, 2001). Perhaps more insid-
ious is the contemporary Orientalist practice of making whole populations invisible.
The use of biblical epics was a cultural representation
that demanded geopolitical
involvement to “save” particular countries (McAlister, 2001). In the war on Iraq,
the language has changed significantly, according to Gregory (2004). Iraqi people
are dehumanized—either by making them invisible by just not mentioning them, or
portraying them as “savages,” beyond our civilized codes and not deserving of political
or economic support.
The new media representations of satellite images, and computer simulations allow
the Western viewer to be a virtual participant in the War on Terrorism. Geographer
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