Said Says

Edward Said says that Orientalism is the way the Western culture perceives the Eastern cultures. According to him, Orientalism puts a difference between us(the West), and them(the East). He argues that this difference arose from imperialism, which started a power binary between the colonizing and the colonized. When a territory was taken by a foreign power, especially when the territory was populated with a race that was different from the foreign power, a feeling of us vs. them was sure to arise. An example of this is when the European nations vied for colonies in Africa after the Berlin Conference in 1884.

Views like this are almost always disputed, especially in the dominated territory. Orientalism is similar to this binary. I agree with Said on its existence. The binary was hardened when artists brought their depictions of the East to the West, creating a further gap between the two cultures. The pictures they made solidified the position of power the West had by depicting the Eastern person as vastly different from the Western Person. Said's argument seems to be valid.