scholarly journals Exploring the Postcolonial Concept through the Eye of European Expansionism and Imperialism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Waleed Hamad
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Cultural Hybridity ◽  
Edward Said ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Independence ◽  
Postcolonial Study ◽  
Social Orders ◽  
Significant Attention

The Postcolonial study has become very popular—it deals with colonial issues, cultural hegemony, imperialist subjects, and subservient topics. The postcolonial analysis mainly mostly involves Africa, America, Asia, and the Middle East. The imperial forces like England and France were the prominent actors in this venture. Thus, the postcolonial began after these imperial forces had left their former colonies. The formerly colonized countries were given political independence, and they began to govern themselves. However, the postcolonial study began to gain significant attention from Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), in which he explains how Africa, the Middle East, and Asia were established on the western Imperialist structure. Edward Said explains exclusively that Orientalism vehemently accentuates the disparity between the west, their theories, social orders, literary pieces, the orient political history, tradition, norms, ideology, religion, and destiny. It dramatically reflects how the colonized adapted the cultural identity of their colonizers. The postcolonialism has been used to remember a set of conjectures and practices—and it also explains how colonialism has become a prominent and constant record. This article explores the postcolonial study, delineates the available resources that present the idea of postcolonialism, colonialism, and the effect of the Western imperialist system on the former colonies. The article also reflects Homi Bhabha’s cultural hybridity; he explains how mimicry plays a significant role in making the colonized adopt the culture of their colonizers.

scholarly journals Exploring the Postcolonial Concept through the Eye of European Expansionism and Imperialism

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 153-161
Author(s):  
Waleed Hamad
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Cultural Hybridity ◽  
Edward Said ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Independence ◽  
Postcolonial Study ◽  
Social Orders ◽  
Significant Attention

The Postcolonial study has become very popular—it deals with colonial issues, cultural hegemony, imperialist subjects, and subservient topics. The postcolonial analysis mainly mostly involves Africa, America, Asia, and the Middle East. The imperial forces like England and France were the prominent actors in this venture. Thus, the postcolonial began after these imperial forces had left their former colonies. The formerly colonized countries were given political independence, and they began to govern themselves. However, the postcolonial study began to gain significant attention from Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), in which he explains how Africa, the Middle East, and Asia were established on the western Imperialist structure. Edward Said explains exclusively that Orientalism vehemently accentuates the disparity between the west, their theories, social orders, literary pieces, the orient political history, tradition, norms, ideology, religion, and destiny. It dramatically reflects how the colonized adapted the cultural identity of their colonizers. The postcolonialism has been used to remember a set of conjectures and practices—and it also explains how colonialism has become a prominent and constant record. This article explores the postcolonial study, delineates the available resources that present the idea of postcolonialism, colonialism, and the effect of the Western imperialist system on the former colonies. The article also reflects Homi Bhabha’s cultural hybridity; he explains how mimicry plays a significant role in making the colonized adopt the culture of their colonizers.

scholarly journals Arab Representations of the Occident

2008 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 128-130
Author(s):  
Naama Ben-Ami
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Edward Said ◽  
The West ◽  
Western Perspective ◽  
East West

In his Orientalism (Vintage Books: 1978), literature teacher and culturalcritic Edward Said claimed that the entire corpus of academic, literary, andartistic knowledge about the Orient in general and theMuslim world in particularthat the West had accumulated and shaped was built up solely toserve its desire to conquer, control, and subjugate the Orient. His thesis waswidely discussed and influenced the study of the Middle East and the attitudesof numerous scholars.According to Said, theWest depicts the Orientas stagnant, static, exotic, submissive, and retarded, in contrast to the supposedlyenlightened and superior West. Some thirty years after the furor caused by this book, Rasheed El-Enany’s Arab Representations of the Occident: East-West Encounters inArabic Fiction challenges Said’s theory, at least with respect toArabic literature.El-Enany claims that Said only presented the western perspective andignored the Oriental resistance to it. In response, he presents the East-Westencounter through his own eyes, those of anArab intellectual who was bornand raised in Cairo and moved to Great Britain in 1977 during his twenties ...

Decolonising African Cultural Identity in Es’kia Mphahlele’s Chirundu : A literary Appreciation

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 33-45
Author(s):  
Malesela Edward Montle
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Hybridity ◽  
African Culture ◽  
The West ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
African Renaissance ◽  
The World ◽  
Colonial Theory ◽  
The One

Though Africans are striving to re-define and re-construct themselves through re-asserting their eroded African cultural identity, this appears to be a mammoth, almost insurmountable task. It remains a nuanced terrain because, on the one hand, there is material benefit from being bedfellows with the neocolonial forces while on the other hand, there is hardship which is meted out against the proponents of African decolonisation, particularly the quintessential ones. Sanctions are one of the austerity measures which the neo-colonial powers use to suppress those Africans who genuinely want to advance African renaissance. This is the cause of identity crisis among many Africans, and unsavoury marriages of convenience between the West and African nations today. This paper, therefore, seeks to examine the dilemma faced by the essentialist adherents of African culture today and their supposed role in the advancement of Africa as a continent. It uses Chirundu's character in Es'kia Mphahlele's novel of the same name, as a case in point. The argument, in this paper, is grounded on Afrocentricity as a strand of Post-Colonial Theory (with or without a hyphen) with an implied suggestion that the solution to Africa's postcolonial challenges lies in forging cultural hybridity with the nations of the world.

scholarly journals Edward Said: Orientalism and Occidentalism

2007 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Lary
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Edward Said ◽  
The West

Abstract Twenty-five years after the appearance of Orientalism, Edward Said’s ideas still have great importance, both in relations between the West and the Middle East, and in settings that Said did not address directly. This paper looks at orientalism between Asian states, between Asia and the West, and within China.

scholarly journals Palestinians Born in Exile

2007 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 111-113
Author(s):  
Abbas Shiblak
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Edward Said ◽  
National Consciousness ◽  
Palestinian Authority ◽  
The West ◽  
Cultural Framework ◽  
Childhood And Youth ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Return Process

There is a striking lack of studies on the Palestinian diaspora. Undoubtedlythe pioneering work of Edward Said (“Reflections on Exile,” in Out There:Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, eds. Russell Ferguson [TheMIT Press: 1990]) on exile and Rashid Khalidi (Palestinian Identity: TheConstruction of Modern National Consciousness [Columbia UniversityPress: 1997]) both touch on many of the related issues of collective memory,cultural identity, and the relationship between the “center” (the homeland)and the diasporic communities and how these issues manifestedthemselves in the Palestinian case. More recently, Abbas Shiblak (Reflectionson Palestinian Diaspora in Europe [2000]), Sari Hanafi (Here andThere: Analyses of the Relationship between Diaspora and the Centre [2001:in Arabic]), and Helena Schulz and Juliane Hammer (The Palestinian Diaspora:Formation of Identities and Politics of Homeland [Routledge: 2003])explore different aspects of the Palestinian diaspora.Juliane Hammer’s new study examines young Palestinian returnees aspart of a larger social, historical, political, and cultural framework (p. 114).She conducted her research in the mid-1990s, a crucial period between twophases: one of peace and hope following the signing of the Declaration ofPrinciples in 1993, and another one that started in 1997 with the deteriorationand breakdown of the peace talks, and, consequently, with the eruption of thesecond Intifada in 2000. For her survey, she chose a sample of two main categoriesof young returnees: those of the Palestinian Authority strata (a`idin)and the children of Palestinian expatriates who live in the West but mainly inthe United States (Amerikans). The interviewees were mainly adolescent oryoung men and women from and around Ramalla and Jerusalem.The return process has been described chronologically, as a series offive steps or stages ranging from the decision to return to plans for the nearfuture. As the study argues, this return entails a process of the returnees’rewriting aspects of their identities. Hammer does not see, however, that thechronological approach is the only way of looking at the process of return.She sees the transformation (what she calls the “rewriting of identities”) alsoby dividing “identity” into different aspects, and then investigating how therespondents remembered these aspects from their childhood and youth in the ...

The challenge and promise of Christian mission to Muslims in a neocolonial era

2020 ◽  
pp. 009182962093738
Author(s):  
Michael F. Kuhn
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Edward Said ◽  
The West ◽  
Christian Mission

Christian mission initiatives towards Muslim peoples which originate from the West are often perceived as an expression of a colonialist mindset expressed through religion. This article proposes to listen attentively to that critique, first through the writings of Edward Said ( Orientalism) and Ussama Makdisi ( Artillery of Heaven). Contemporary political and military developments in the Muslim world are also observed as factors in the colonialist narrative. These include the Iraq War, the issue of Israel–Palestine and the current flight of historic Christians from the Middle East. Each of these tragic developments implicates Western Christianity, reinforcing Eastern proclivities to the accusation of colonialist mission. Though the accusation of colonialism is unlikely to disappear, Western mission efforts can take measures to soften its blow. By renouncing political affiliations and working collaboratively and holistically, Western Christians can continue to pursue mission objectives in the Muslim world.

Orientalist Speech-acts and Israeli Middle East Studies: Cautions and Criticisms of Edward Said Beyond the Battle of Ideas

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-237
Author(s):  
Eyal Clyne
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Edward Said ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Academic World ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Theories ◽  
Middle East Studies

Drawing on speech acts theory, this article discusses the illocutionary and perlocutionary forces of discursive practices with which certain academic circles seek to discredit the Saidian ‘Orientalism’ framework. Identifying the unusual value attached to Said as object of attachment or detachment, desirability and exceptionality, this analysis turns away from deliberations about ‘orientalism’ as a party in a battle of ideas, and studies common cautionary statements and other responses by peers as actions in the social (academic) world, that enculture and police expectations. Cautioning subjects about this framework, or conditioning its employment to preceding extensive pre-emptive complicating mitigations, in effect constructs this framework as undesirable and ‘risky’. While strong discursive reactions are not uncommon in academia, comparing them to treatments of less-controversial social theories reveals formulations, meanings and attentions which are arguably reserved for this ‘theory’. Conclusively, common dismissals, warnings and criticisms of Said and ‘Orientalism’ often exemplify Saidian claims, as they deploy the powerful advantage of enforcing hegemonic, and indeed Orientalist, views.

US and Russian policies and strategies in the Middle East: Iraq and Syria as a model

2019 ◽  
pp. 220
Author(s):  
Esraa Aladdin Noori ◽  
Nasser Zain AlAbidine Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Western World ◽  
International Conflicts ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
The North ◽  
East Region ◽  
Middle East Region

The Russian-American relations have undergone many stages of conflict and competition over cooperation that have left their mark on the international balance of power in the Middle East. The Iraqi and Syrian crises are a detailed development in the Middle East region. The Middle East region has allowed some regional and international conflicts to intensify, with the expansion of the geopolitical circle, which, if applied strategically to the Middle East region, covers the area between Afghanistan and East Asia, From the north to the Maghreb to the west and to the Sudan and the Greater Sahara to the south, its strategic importance will seem clear. It is the main lifeline of the Western world.

The New Islamic State

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farhad Khosrokhavar
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Imagined Community ◽  
The West ◽  
Patriarchal Family ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation

The creation of the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham (ISIS) changed the nature of jihadism worldwide. For a few years (2014–2017) it exemplified the destructive capacity of jihadism and created a new utopia aimed at restoring the past greatness and glory of the former caliphate. It also attracted tens of thousands of young wannabe combatants of faith (mujahids, those who make jihad) toward Syria and Iraq from more than 100 countries. Its utopia was dual: not only re-creating the caliphate that would spread Islam all over the world but also creating a cohesive, imagined community (the neo-umma) that would restore patriarchal family and put an end to the crisis of modern society through an inflexible interpretation of shari‘a (Islamic laws and commandments). To achieve these goals, ISIS diversified its approach. It focused, in the West, on the rancor of the Muslim migrants’ sons and daughters, on exoticism, and on an imaginary dream world and, in the Middle East, on tribes and the Sunni/Shi‘a divide, particularly in the Iraqi and Syrian societies.

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