The Fear of Distortion and Inaccuracy

Orientalism is basically another way of saying how the dominant West makes generalizations about large areas of the world that they do not fully understand, that area being the East. The West, or the Occident, views the East, or the "Orient" as strange and mysterious. The Orient does not simply refer to an area of land. It refers to the culture, the vocabulary, the doctrines, and the values of the East. Orientalism has also become a western mode for dealing with the Orient. It is a way to teach, describe, settle, and rule over the East in a way that makes it appear that the West understands, even when that seems impossible.

Edward Said wraps up his introduction by revealing his two biggest fears when it comes to talking about the topic of Orientalism. Distortion and inaccuracy. I think that fear is the embodiment of this entire topic. Everyone's view is going to be warped by their "own contemporary reality." I think that makes it difficult to get an unbiased view because one would either come from the "East" or the "West." But even that being said, I believe that Orientalism still exists in the world. The biggest example probably being the westerner's view of the Middle East. The common feeling of people in the West is one of superiority but also puzzlement. The values and ways of life are so fundamentally different in many ways that it makes it easy to view them as the mysterious East.