Counter-hegemony

Edward Said defined “orientalism” as a “social construction based on fantasized perception.” Due to their orientalist ideologies, Europeans hold a heightened sense of superiority. Rule over the Orient plays a huge role in the discussion of orientalism. Orientalism is an attitude sculpted by hierarchies where the “other” is viewed as inferior. Before the West possessed the East, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote of the culture, people, and surroundings of places foreign to her. During her travels, she composed all her observations in letters in what would come to be The Turkish Embassy Letters. Lady Mary’s letters are important as she opposes and breaks free from patriarchal and gender stereotypes composed by European men. Many misconceptions surrounding Muslims are found in western society. Through her letters, Montagu introduced truthful illustrations of Turks rather than the assumptions fabricated by orientalism. Likewise, the line between “self” and “other” fades. Lady Mary’s letters contradict prior male-dominated accounts of the Ottoman empire. With the use of the letters, orientalist ideas are demonstrated and how damaging they are to Muslims. 

Maya Carranza

Feminism, Orientalist, Gender Equality

By: Suki Kaur

The top 2 topics that I have found interesting in this class this semester, are Feminism and Orientalism. These two topics have been portrayed in multiple ways and perspectives through the assigned texts and lectures. From Lady Mary to Abu Taleb Khan, women are presented in many cultural and traditional ways. I would say cultural because women in Asian countries have different roles than women of European countries. Some examples would be Asian females are not seen as partners but status symbols. While on the other hand, European females are seen as partners or objects of competition (such as lower class women versus higher class women) prostitutes versus aristocratic women which group of men are “praised” and seen as  “honorable” men amongst society (aristocratic women) and which group of men are brought to the attention of the justice system to be fined and punished for their actions towards other women, in this case the story of Captain Williamson’s affair with a working woman (prostitutes aka lower class women). Why does Lady Mary not mention the women she encounters in such classes, whether they are working women (maids), housewives (the wife of a laborer), or queens/princesses. She seems to classify them just as they identify themselves when introducing themselves to Lady Mary, yet there seems to be something missing which has been deliberately cut off or hidden from the eyes of the reader. Traditionally, Lady Mary’s observation and her records of Greece/Istanbul/Persian nations was a huge success and a once in a lifetime achievement for females. The publication of her book was quite revolutionary and a turning point for those who carried a mindset that women would never be able to do the things that men would do. When looking at the gender stereotypes today and during the times of Lady Mary, it seems that there has been changes, but still the fight for equality for gender roles and stereotypes in society seems never-ending. 

Leeches in the Orient

By: Enrique Aguilar

Humans will try to define one another based solely on stereotypes. People are categorized by color more than race. Orientalism and many of its views are seen from the different writers who traveled to new land and wrote about it. Much information was withheld from each writer, requiring to dive deeper, so a person who read the book in that time would not be interpreting the same way one would in the 21st century. Pitts, Byron and Lady Montague Europeans voyage out and find new cultures to explore and in a way steal from.   Whenever the person telling the tale sets out to explore they find a new group of people to leech off of, take all the good from their cultures and implement it in theirs. – Revised

(original)

As humans take first glances and stereotypes as ways to define people, we judge based on preconceived notions of what people are. Why do we look different? Skin pigmentation is one of the primary physical features one will note, and that is how people are categorized in groups in Western science.  When entire cultures are being masked by naive portrayals of people, the issues of stereotyping really start to become apparent. The concept of race has always been connected to skin color. I did not know much of Orientalism, so this concept I’ve come to learn about is bringing light to different issues. ​​The orientalist views from separate writers and experiences give us a first hand look at their perspective. 

Oriental Orientalism: Mahomet’s Willing Participation in the English East India Company Propaganda

For this paper, I will be looking at Edward Said’s Intro to Orientalism and Sake Dean Mahomet’s The Travels of Dean Mahomet. Said provides the theoretical framework in which this essay can function and Mahomet will provide the complicated mess that shows that a subject of Orientalism can both participate in and push back against Orientalism. I argue that Mahomet uses nostalgia and idealization as propaganda for British military intervention and minimizing yet conceding the human cost of said intervention; through this argument, I will qualify Said’s position on Orientalism, showing that the reality of Orientalism is yet more complicated than Said would hope it is.

Religion’s Ties to Orientalism

Rhiannon Badgett

In Joseph Pitts’ A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of Mohammetans, with an Account of the Author’s Being Taken Captive and The Wonders of Vilayet by Bengali diplomat L’tesamuddin, they illustrate that religion has always been perceived as contemporary and is a recurring literary element of both works. While some may consider these authors enlightened due to how the prove to their audience that they’re capable of pushing their limits when it comes to religious faith and identity, they are critical of others’ beliefs at times and tend to address their views through an orientalist lens . In these novels, religion functions as a testament to the fact that many sanctimonious people throughout history have used it to justify their panorama, such as orientalist, racist, or ethnocentric views.

Feminism

Paana Zamani

In this modern era, where we have history at our fingertips, there are chances where trolls and misinformed people can write on blog posts and have their writing go unchecked. When I first googled Lady Mary, I saw the words ‘feminist’ and ‘pioneer’ when it came to her stance on women’s right and vaccinations; I disagree. Feminism is advocating equality for both men and women, but how can she advocate for women when she only sees color and class; she only pays attention to women in higher rank and fair skin complexion. Many blogs have accredited her as the person who created vaccines, when in reality she took knowledge from the Ottoman women about vaccinations, and she just spoke on vaccines in Europe, it never originated with her so she should not have any credit for it. Her orientalist, racist, and classist takes portrayed in her essay makes me wonder why there is so much praise when speaking about Lady Mary.

The Shadow of Mount Olympus

How Greek Mythology In Montagu and Byron Fortifies Occidental Culture

By Will Darpinian

The concept of Orientalism as we most commonly discuss it focuses upon the creation of an external European identity for “the East” and the people living there, but a similar (albeit inverted) phenomenon simultaneously emerges in Europe. For this essay, I will be discussing “Occidentalism”, that is, the creation of a coherent European identity in the first place that elevates militarized masculinity, ethnic homogeny, and imperial conquest. Europe at this period of time was a place with dozens of official languages for its various countries and over one hundred languages (roughly) spoken on its continent, even in the 18th and 19th centuries. While Catholicism was the dominant religion, it was by no means the only one, and even the Catholic church was beset by internal religious struggles and splinter sects (Martin Luther, etc). It was not a foregone conclusion that this extremely varied mix of cultures, religions, and peoples would transform into the imperial, colonizing identity that we observe in history, and the process of achieving this identity was carried out quietly alongside the more widely accepted phenomenon of Orientalism. Occidentalism, then, is the process of creating a European “self” which is strongly reinforced by the existence of the Oriental “other”, for without some kind of internal reference point, an “other” cannot exist. Who, exactly, is meant to be looking at the Orient in the first place? Forging together a unified European gaze in this era is perhaps as significant of an accomplishment as creating an Oriental other to be fancied and objectified, as far as cultural turning points go.

One of the central foundations uniting The Giaour by Lord Byron (published 1813) and Turkish Embassy Letters by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (published 1763) is their embrace of Greek mythology as a cornerstone of classical literary studies and, indeed, as a key component of the collective European cosmology fundamental to regarding the entire world. This essay will examine the ways in which Greek mythology is used as a sort of universal, cultural navigation system among European elites, literati, and academics as a way to bridge cultural differences and create a more unified feeling of “Europe” as a tangible Occidental entity across various national and cultural boundaries within the continent. At that time in European history (especially the 18th century), of course, the most common shared system of beliefs was anchored in Christianity’s various incarnations and the lore thereof. But given the pervasiveness of Greek literature, stories, and theater in the general academic consciousness of the time, it can be clearly seen that the influence of Greek culture stretched far beyond the Mediterranean Sea and out into the whole of European scholastic thought. Greek history, culture, and mythology here can be seen as a category of intellectual and historical landmarks shared by those educated enough to be initiated into it (as are the two authors which this essay examines).

The 18^th century marked a time of great conflict in Europe, with wars, famines (exacerbated by the Little Ice Age), persecutions, and other catastrophes highlighting frequently how divided the Europeans were even among themselves. Tensions between individual countries were high, as well as among various conflicting branches of Christianity in the region (to say nothing of inter-religious conflicts). How, then, could the aristocrats and the scholars build a united mythology of Europe? Well, historically speaking, they adopted the cultures of Greece and Rome among their educated elite, as the relative neutrality of their “classical knowledge” would not aggravate further the national or religious conflicts that frequently sprang up between European nations during the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

Orientalism’s Flexibility

The concept of foreign lands has been one that has always been fascinating to authors as it opens up an infinite number of possibilities when it comes to their writing. This is because a distant land is almost akin to a whole other planet in the sense that the history, customs, and cultures of these distant places can be vastly different from those which the author is familiar with. In particular, it is the history of these places that can be inspiring to not just authors but entire populations as a whole as was the case for Europe’s fascination with Greece’s Hellenistic period. This can be seen in the works of the two authors Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Lord Byron who each wrote The Turkish Embassy Letters and “The Giaour” respectively. While their works were different as one was a travel log written in 1763 and the other an epic poem written in 1813 they share philhellenic sentiments from both the authors that we can see reflected in their writings. However, their purposes for integrating these philhellenic sentiments are different as Lady Mary seems to be more concerned with the aesthetic values of ancient Greece and on the other hand, Lord Byron seems to be more concerned with critiquing philhellenic politics. As explained by Edward Said in his 1978 book, Orientalism, the orient is a concept that is malleable to the purposes of the west which is what we see with Lady Mary and Lord Byron.

The Critiques and Paradoxes of Abu Taleb and Lady Mary on the English Patriarchy

By Liliana Silva-Vazquez

When there are different genres of racism, you know we’re failing as a society. Specifically, the Eighteenth-Nineteenth century definition of Orientalism by Edward Said is of interest to me as he states it is, “a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (3). And because Abu Taleb’s, The Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s, The Turkish Embassy Letters, take place during these centuries, it gives us more context as to how the Europeans, the English in particular, were colonizing the Orient physically as well as culturally. One of the main factors behind Orientalism, just as in racism, is the belief that the colonizers are the ones who are “civilized” and therefore must be the ones to “teach” the conquered the “right” ways to behave. However, this line is blurred through counter-hegemony in both texts as Abu Taleb and Lady Mary believe the Orient has values and virtues far superior to the West; especially when it comes to gender politics. But, this does not mean there is no fetishization, dehumanization, and misogyny expressed in the texts. In fact, there is a constant paradox of both authors using these elements in order to challenge Orientalism. Therefore, they critique the English patriarchy but also fall into the trap of Orientalism and misogyny when describing certain customs and behaviors between the West and the Orient.

Me, Myself, and the Other

Written by Caitlyn Klemm

(Title yet to change from original)
Before the early 17th century, the narrative of both the West and especially the East had been locked into narrow minded stereotypes. Hegemonic thought of the West often fell into the English representing either innovative progress or bigoted regression whereas hegemonic thought of the East became defined by a single term—orientalism. According to Edward Said, orientalism “is an integral part of European material civilization and culture” in the sense that it acts as a means “for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (2-3). Where the West is framed by their prevalent technological advances as well as their brutal history of colonization, the East’s image is structured by half truths and fantasies that serve to benefit the Western empire. Though hegemonic ideals took precedence in mainstream society, some few characters managed to shake the foundations of the rose-tinted glass; traveler Sake Dean Mahomet and diplomat Lady Mary Wortley Montagu are two primary examples of early, counter-hegemonic thought thanks to their hybrid identities. Their experiences with the other—being the occident in Mahomet’s life and the orient in Lady Mary’s case—had drastically shaped their outlook compared to the traditional narratives strung for both cultures. By sharing their tales and experiences of relating to the other via gender and familial relations, had opened a pathway for the blurring of distinct identities that were once based solely by race. Examining their epistemological and artistic interactions with the other reveals the holistic way in which both cultural entrepreneurs craft and navigate their dualistic selves against the tradition of hegemonic thought.