Why Influence Should not be Equated with Imperialism. Reflections on Said’s Concept of Orientalism

Abstract

The concept of Orientalism correlated with the name of Edward Said is a fundamental landmark for the field of International Relations. Orientalism draws the attention to the constructivist approach of world order depicted as a Western product. Yet the main critique of the notion is related to the idea that Orientalism is in fact an Occidental product that it does not address the reality, but the imagined Orient by the Western culture. This article revises the debate over the Western perspective in interpreting the Oriental space, highlighting the lack of an objective approach as the concept of Orientalism is included in the sphere of competitive cultural identities and ideologies.

Keywords

• identity
• alterity
• orientalism
• power-knoledge-relation