One Word Means More Than You Think

Said identifies Orientalism as dependent on "this positional superiority" (80) in which Westerners maintain the upper hand in the majority of their relationships with the Orient. History books have utilized the language of old westerners reporting from a perspective wholly identified by the Westerner alone. The issue in the situation is the lack of agency attributed to the "Orient". Edward Said criticizes the idea that these texts are written with Western Culture as the subject and "the Orient" as the dependent result. In fact, diction and syntax are very powerful tools in the communication of stories or lessons.

Behind the words and paragraphs of every text, there is an author. If you're reading a history book, the author is expectedly "unbiased" in his or her writing. However, every US History book has significantly more information on white male Americans than any other demographic. Although many attribute that to the lack of information on other demographics at the time, I believe it is rather a more evident reflection of the values of the people in that time period. If that makes any sense, I mean to say that it is showing what was most popular for Americans at that time, or even who had access to a pen and paper. In the majority of America's past, white males have dominated US society, thus being the storytellers. With storytellers from only one demographic, it is no doubt that we would have an uneven representation of the American constituency in our textbooks. One person's point of view can be entirely different after the same event, merely because he/she is another being with other experiences.

In the same way, Said believes Orientalism has developed as a means of being "acted upon" rather than acting itself. The slight variance in diction and syntax seems trivial, but the difference is quite dramatic in the understanding of our and the rest of the world's history. By identifying the dangers intertwined with the idea of Orientalism, Said makes a point to show the power of words or phrases in the evolution of the world.