History House

Orientalism is the distinction between the East and West pertaining to depictions of the Orient. Said describes that Western culture thrives off of its portrayal of the the East as inferior, and as a place that is in need of rescue and perhaps Western intervention. The West describes the East as "an ideal and unchanging abstraction," which represents not only their distortion and inaccuracy of reality, but the failure to mutually recognize these "different" people as fully human. The Occident has no full context or appropriate perspective to theorize and romanticize the East in this way. Orientalist imagery is reinforced throughout Western culture as a way to further otherize, exotify, and dehumanize Eastern culture.

 

I see the manifestation of Orientalism in most of our American culture, especially in our acceptance of Eastern culture as everything except for fully humanized. In The God of Small Things, Roy uses Chacko's, History House to describe the connection between Orientalism and the Orient. The Orient is locked out of their own culture because the Occident controls and owns the creation of Eastern culture itself. The Easterner is pushed outside of their own history because its ownership lies in the hands of the Westerner. Roy writes, "Pointed in the wrong direction, trapped outside their own history and unable to retrace their steps because their footprints had been swept away. He explained that history was like an old house at night. With all the lamps lit. And ancestors whispering inside" (90).