Self-Orientalism

Gao Xingjian’s高行健2000 Nobel Prize win is a commonly cited example of the global literary market’s “technologies of recognition,” where the West acts as an “agent of recognition,” which recognizes the other according to its own standards, while the non-West is an “object of recognition,” that desires to be recognized. Rather than presuming the passivity of Gao’s reproduction of Western cultural dominance, I am more interested in exploring how he actively reconstructs Chinese culture with Orientalist
elements. For example, Of Mountains and Seas (Shanhaijing zhuan 山海經傳1989) and Snow in August (Bayuexue 八月雪 1997) are two plays which Gao completed in France and which appropriates ancient Chinese cultures. With reference to Gao’s “cold” (leng 冷) theatrical techniques of suppositionality (jiadingxing 假定性) and tripartite acting (biaoyan de sanchongxing 表演的三重性), I argue that these two plays address feminist
and religious limitations in ancient Chinese cultures by strategically appropriating Orientalist stereotypes in their portrayals of the Chinese mythology of Chang E escaping to the moon (Chang E benyue 嫦娥奔月) and Zen Buddhism respectively. Overall, this paper contributes a more nuanced understanding of Gao’s negotiations with Orientalism:
Gao’s “escape” from Orientalism is less about the avoidance of Orientalism than a theatrical staging of Orientalism.

How can designers depict a national identity when the national identity itself is in question? It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that the Arab world seems to be dealing with an ‘optional’ identity; one that churns and morphs to the whim of the moment. But what is Arab identity? Shaped by Orientalism, moulded by colonialism and impacted by globalism, a unified Arab identity does not exist. As this paper traces the evolution of Self-Orientalism across a variety of communication channels, a prism of individual distorted representations emerge, squeezed by ‘othering’ into a collective dynamic, which Arab designers themselves, seemingly unaware, are nurturing.

The research focuses on the designer’s role and responsibility in depicting a cultural identity, in a world where Hyper-Nationalism is finding new roots in politics and media. Visual communicators have played an extensive role in the identity portrayal of the Arab world, that mirrors in many ways what Orientalists previously did in literature, cinema and academia. The paper highlights problematic design approaches visualizing the Arab world as an exotic place of mystery, erotica and stereotypes. Productions as such are leading a self-Orientalist reductionist wave in design and altering contextual realities.

The article analyzes the novelistic representations of the Assassins, originally a nickname for the Islamic sect of Nizari Ismailis that gained an almost independent currency in Western popular culture. The analysis will be based on a the following selection of past and contemporary Western historical-fiction literature: Vladimir Bartol’s Alamut from 1938, translated into French in 1988 and into English in 2004; Judith Tarr’s Alamut from 1989; James Boschert’s Assassins of Alamut from 2010, the first book of his Talon trilogy; and, finally, Scott Oden’s Lion of Cairo from 2010. The scope of the article is to demonstrate a double-bind re-orientalization of the Assassins in this selection of novels that significantly changes their traditional representations: on one side, they reshape the Assassins in forerunners of modern Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism, while on the other side, the Assassin is gradually transformed from an orientalized villain into an occidentalized hero, thus enabling a self-othering of the Western subject and an identification, rather than disqualification, with this specific Arabo-Islamic Other. The article’s highlighting of this double-bind re-orientalization therefore challenges Orientalism’s binary dichotomy of Occident/Orient and its ideological implications through the concept of self-Orientalism as a self-othering process.

This article,  part of an edited volume on the transnational history of Kemalism, analyzes how late Ottoman and early Kemalist literati perceived the Orientalist gaze directed upon them, how they reflected on the ways in which they were perceived through the eyes of others (in this case, Europeans, Orientalists), and how they aimed to create their own representations in constant interaction with – and in response to – it.

Ece Zerman, « Reappropriating the Orientalist Gaze in the Material Culture of Kemalist Turkey: The Formation of an “Aesthetic Nationalism” » in Nathalie Clayer, Fabio Giomi, Emmanuel Szurek (eds.), Kemalism: transnational politics in the post-Ottoman world, London, New York : I.B. Tauris, 2019, p. 217‑263.

This investigation offers an etymological overview of the genealogy and history of the national name “Nippon/Nihon” (日本), as well as of the debates regarding its original meanings. These contested views play an important role that is not merely historiographical, since they represent strategic aspects of the question of the definition of national identity. Firstly, this study focuses on the more general issue of the negotiation of collective identity in contemporary Japan, which is still to a large degree divided between sustainers of a 'strong' identity founded on essentialist paradigms of homogeneity, harmony and exclusiveness, and advocates of a 'weak' identity based on constructionist paradigms of heterogeneity, conflict, and inclusiveness. Secondly, this study sets out to confront the complex relation between the dimension of auto-representation in Japan and hetero-representation of Japan, especially in European and American contexts.

The article delivers an analysis of the first of Ubisoft’s long and popular franchise Assassin’s Creed (2007–) in order to show how it conforms as well as how it distinguishes itself from similar cases of Orientalism in video games. If Orientalism traditionally depicted a negative picture of the Oriental Other in general and the so-called Assassins in particular (seldom associ- ated with extremism and terrorism), then in Assassin’s Creed we find at work a certain self-orientalistic sub- version that mediates a positive identification, rather then disqualification of this privileged Arabo-Islamic Other. Thus, the article proposes a close examination of the orientalistic and self-orientalistic elements in the selected video game from a cultural studies approach in order to answer the question of how is it possible that the Assassins, traditionally understood as forerunners of modern terrorism, became the heroic protagonists of a western video game.

This study explores the elements of Orientalism in German-Turkish director Fatih Akin's films Head-On (2004) and The Edge of Heaven (2007). Utilizing Homi Bhabha's theory of "third spaces," which immigrants often inhabit, and Edward Said's lens of the postcolonial gaze, I analyze the degree to which the bodies of immigrants willingly embody the mysterious "oriental," and how and when it is projected upon male and female characters in these two films. Akin's characters dwell between a perceived and imaginary Occident and Orient, while living and traveling in the soil of both Germany and Turkey.

Şiddetin salt fiziksel anlamından sıyrılarak daha geniş olan bu bağlama kavuşmasının modernleşmenin önemli sonuçlarından biri olduğundan yola çıkarak, bu makale, halen süregelen bir devamlılık arz eden Osmanlı-Türk oryantalizmi kavramını ‘şiddet’ diskuru içinde ele alma amacındadır. Makalenin iddiası, fiziksel şiddeti meşrulaştıran ve geniş anlamda şiddeti içkin olan oryantalizmin Cumhuriyet Türkiyesi’nde Osmanlı’dan bir söylem olarak sınırlı da olsa miras alındığıdır. Bu bağlamda, Osmanlı medeniyetçiliğinin ‘çevre’ olarak gördüğü Arap bölgeleri ile erken Cumhuriyet döneminde üretilen Türk medeniyetçiliği ve tarihçiliğinin özgün eserlerinde Arap imgesinin ele alınışı konu edilecektir.

Batı, Doğu’yu konumlandırırken kendi gelişme çizgisine göre sınıflandırma gayretine girmiştir. Bu sınıflandırmada Edward Said’in geliştirdiği oryantalizm kavramı anahtar bir kavram olarak karşımıza çıkmaktadır. Oryantalizm kavramı bugün Doğu’nun içinde bulunduğu durumu daha ayrıntılı açıklayabilmek için çeşitli alt kategorilere de ayrılmaktadır. En etkili biçimi Doğulu toplumların kendilerini Batı gelişme çizgisine göre sınıflandırdıkları self oryantalizm bağlamında ortaya çıkar. Oryantalizm projesinin hammaddesi olan Doğu, Batı’nın kategorizasyonu içerisinde “öteki” rolünü benimsemek durumunda bırakılmıştır. Bu rolün benimsetilmesi için oryantalist bakış açısının Doğu içerisinde de içselleştirilmiş olması önem arz etmektedir. Bu çalışmada öncelikle Edward Said’in ortaya çıkarmış olduğu oryantalizm kavramı derinlemesine incelenecektir. İkinci başlıkta oryantalizmin self oryantalizm biçimine dönüşmesini sağlayan unsurlar ve Batı’nın oryantalizm projesinin Doğu’nun kendisi tarafından da içselleştirilmesini sağlayan self oryantalizm kavramı ele alınacaktır. Self oryantalist paradigmanın Doğulu toplumlarda sürerliliğini sağlayan temas bölgeleri, taşıyıcı elitler gibi unsurlar da bu bağlamda ele alınacaktır. Bu başlık altında ayrıca Türkiye’nin tarihsel süreçte self oryantalist paradigmayı benimsemesini sağlayan temel faktörler de ele alınacaktır. Üçüncü başlıkta ise çalışmanın örneklemini oluşturan Arap Baharı süreci ve Türk Medyası’nın self oryantalizm bağlamında Ortadoğu’daki toplumsal hareketlere bakış açısı incelenecek ve Teun A.Van Dijk’in eleştirel söylem analizi bağlamında haber çözümlemeleri yapılacaktır.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Oryantalizm, Self-oryantalizm, Ortadoğu, Arap Baharı

After 9/11, Afghan women gained much visibility across the globe. The popular images in fiction represent them as passive victims of war, patriarchy, and oppression. The purpose of this paper was to analyze Atiq Rahimi's The Patience Stone for the representation of Afghan women and to find out what representational strategies have been employed and what politics is involved in them. Feminist standpoint theory was applied to the analysis of the text which pointed out that Rahimi has employed imagining, political efficacy, and privileged location as strategies for his representation of Afghan women which are not devoid of their representational politics and the resulting stereotypical images have been used for political purposes (e.g. a justification for the US invasion). He has taken advantage of his privileged location and has reinforced the popular images of Afghan women. Moreover, he has under-represented Afghan women by ignoring the less problematic strategies of representation (e.g. confessional tales) and as such has contributed to the orientalist discourse.

This M.A thesis is an ethnographic study of an inter-cultural encounter between Japanese and Israelis in a Japanese start-up incubator in Tel Aviv. It explores the ways in which the Japanese form their cultural self in light of this encounter. The fieldwork of this study took place in the years 2015 and 2016, allowing me to uncover the ongoing interactions of the Japanese employees of “Samurai House” with Israelis, and with what they perceived as “Israeliness”. 
“Samurai House” is an arena in which the Japanese perform and introduce representations of Japanese culture, while processing the - and reacting to - the impressions of Israelis they encounter and of “Israeliness”. They become closer to the Israeli “Other”, while at the same time establish their own, self-difference from it. Focusing on the interactions between the Japanese and Israelis, I have witnessed the process of cultural imagination, which combines the notion of “Imagined Communities”, forming a cultural identity based on an imagined idea, along with the will to both understand and construct the “Other”, as a point of reference to the construction of the cultural self. In those interactions, the Japanese apply a two folded cultural imagination; first, they perform cultural imagination on themselves, hence on the Japanese cultural self, and second on the Israelis in Israel. The cultural imagination that takes place in the encounters of Japanese and Israelis in “Samurai House” is essential to the Japanese own cultural understanding, and the understanding of the cultural Israeli “Other”. The process in which the Japanese employ cultural imagination on themselves and on the Israelis, sheds light on the various ways that interactions with cultural “Other” take place, and enables a broader knowledge concerning the influences of cultural interactions with “Others” on the understanding of one’s own cultural self.

Bu kitapta, 'Batılı olmayan' sanat yapıtlarındaki kültürel temsillerin karakteristiklerinin, Batı kontrolündeki küreselleşme süreci sonucunda kendi toplumuna adım adım nasıl yabancılaştığı incelenmektedir. Kültür-sanat yapıtlarında görülen ve kendisini 'evrensel' olarak konumlandıran Batılı perspektifin kendisini nasıl üstün kıldığı da tarihsel materyalist bir bağlamda ele alınmaktadır. Bu çalışmada, Kültürel Hegemonya, Şarkiyatçılık ve Varoluşçuluk felsefesi düşünceleri ekseninde 'Batılı olmayan' coğrafyalardaki kültür-sanat yapıtlarında sürdürülebilir Şarkiyatçılık anlayışının ekonomi politik dinamikleri "Şarkdöngü" kavramı ile açıklanmaya çalışılmaktadır. Kitap kapsamında kültür-sanat yapıtlarına örnek olarak sinema filmleri ele alınmakta olup, Şarkdöngü'nün film dili üzerinde nasıl yaratıldığı da tartışılarak film dili ve kültür arasındaki ilişkilerin oluşumu yönetmenler, festivaller ve film fonları üzerinden irdelenmektedir. Filmlerdeki anlatıların Şarkdöngü ekseninde nasıl şekillendiğini detaylı bir biçimde çözümlemek adına, Türk sinemasında Batılı bir fon olan Eurimages'dan destek almış, 1990 yılı sonrasında çekilen ve çeşitli Batılı festivaller tarafından uluslararası çapta ödüllendirilmiş on film örneklem olarak alınmış ve filmler üzerinde göstergebilimsel analizler ve eleştirel söylem analizi gerçekleştirilmiştir. Kitap, 1990 yılı sonrasında 'gişe sineması' ve 'sanat sineması' olarak giderek ayrılan film anlayışlarını da sorgularken, kültürel olduğu düşünülen bu ayrımın ekonomi politik boyutunu da ortaya koymayı amaçlamaktadır.

Selma Ekrem (1902-1986) is the grandchild of Namık Kemal and the daughter of Ali Ekrem, two important figures of the late Ottoman literary and political life. Certainly, the names of Namık Kemal and Ali Ekrem will be familiar to those interested in literature and history. However, it is difficult to say that Selma Ekrem’s recognition level is so high. She, who went to America and continued her life there until her death, had also a writing adventure. Her autobiographical text, which she compiled from her childhood/first youth memoirs, and wrote in English, were successively printed four times in the United States with the name of Unveiled and attracted great attention. The work has a historical value since it contains certain unique information about the socio-cultural and political atmosphere of the period. In this study, the miscellaneous questions will be addressed to the mentioned text in the frame of the concepts of “identity” and “other”, and the text will be analyzed in the context of these notions. The concepts of “self-orientalization/internalized orientalism” of Gönül Pultar and “Ottoman orientalism” of Ussama Makdisi will be the basic theoretical sources to be used in the analysis process of the text. At the end of the study, it is planned that Selma Ekrem’s self-representation, identity construction and approach to “the other” will be placed on a more transparent ground.

Although Seyed Mohammad-Ali Jamal-zadeh is known as one of the three founders of contemporary Iranian literature in the field of story, it's not the only reason for his fame. He has also published a book named Iranian's Character in 1345 (1966) which has been read and referred much more than any book written in the field of national character, in Iran. In the book, Jamal-zadeh acts like a physician, not a literary man, to diagnose the pain of Iranian society which he calls ‘decay’. But, what is that decay which holds Iran from becoming as developed as the West? Surely  it’s people character, Jamal-zadeh says. In short, it is because of our ethic that we are such undeveloped. Fortunately, western travelers, intellectuals and politicians diagnosed those ethics and told us about them. Then, the only thing we should do is admitting our weaknesses and following their instructions.
But this is not the whole story. We ask: what allows Jamal-zadeh to call Iranians with such negative and humiliating accent? Edward Said knows the answer: self-orientalism or self-orientalizing. Publishing Orientalism in late 1970's, Said created a new wave in the post-colonial studies tradition. He believes that Orientalism is not just an academic discipline, but also a discourse facilitating European countries colonization and exploitation over the East. In order to reaching this purpose, Orientalism had to create a new orient which hadn't any relationship with the real one; rather, it was something useful for colonizing purposes. It means that the Euro-centrism governing the orientalists had colonial benefits in developing the Orientalism discourse.
So, this essay aimed to test Jamal-zadeh's Iranian Character against the touchstone of Said's Orientalism and self-Orientalism. We will show that Iranian Character can be considered as a self-orientalizing book.

جوادی یگانه، محمدرضا و آرمین امیر (1394) «نگاهی به خودشرق¬شناسی در ایران مدرن: «خلقیات ما ایرانیان» سیدمحمدعلی جمالزاده» جامعه پژوهی فرهنگی. دوره 4، شماره 4. زمستان 1394. صص 1-19.

This study examines the orientalist influences in the media. Studies that determine the orientalist elements in media content in Turkey are not sufficient. In order to eliminate this deficiency, it was determined as the starting point of the research whether the orientalist stereotypes are still valid today and whether they contain epistemic violence. Based on this problem, some of the advertisements used in tourism promotion in the last 20 years within the framework of the official state policies of the Republic of Turkey are selected. Historical understanding and analytical thinking are adopted. In this direction, cultural context research is conducted using comparative case studies. It is aimed to find out whether the situation defined as self-orientalism in tourism promotion advertisements coincides with Western orientalist stereotypes. Thus, it is desired to provide a new perspective to researchers working on this subject and to present meta-analysis data.

Much of the available literature on the representation of Afghan women points that they have been depicted, in Western fiction and media alike, as passive sufferers of war, domestic violence, and political repression. There is a remarkable consensus over and reinforcement of the popular images in these two forms of representations. The purpose of this paper, firstly, was to analyze Khalid Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns for the representations of Afghan women and to provide a feminist critique of those representations. Secondly, efforts have been made to answer the question of whether Hosseini's representations conformed to the popular depictions of Afghan women. The results reveal that Hosseini used his Privileged Location for his purpose but ended up under-representing Afghan women. Instead of challenging the stereotypes dominant in the Western media regarding Afghan women, his novel reinforced them. Moreover, his emphasis on the inevitable role of the US involvement in the liberation of Afghan women is rather too much. And as such, he has contributed to the oriental discourse.

The Chino Cubano Complex: Five Artists' Strategic Self-Orientalization and Abstract This article explores how five Cubans of Chinese descent have represented their personal and collective identities through the cultural products that they have created. It also investigates how their individual backgrounds and prevailing racial politics at the time have affected their representations. The Chinese first migrated from various parts of China to Cuba in the mid-19 th century as indentured laborers in Cuba's sugar plantations, and then settled and formed a sizeable and vibrant community, participating economically, politically, and socially as Cuban citizens in Cuba. Their distinct cultural legacy lives on through Cuba's texts, art, music, and cultural practices. Using the frameworks of textual and visual analysis, as well as the theories of the politics of representation, I analyze the products of five different Chinese Cubans. While previous studies on the politics of representation of Chinese Cuban cultural production examined individual art forms, this article compares products across different mediums alongside each other to construct a broader understanding of their conditions of production to demonstrate how each producer represents their Chinese identity amidst Cuba's diverse ethnic and cultural influences.

Both the 17th Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, and the 14th Dalai Lama are revered internationally as saints and holy men. The Tibetan Buddhist masters have been preaching around the world for many years, in forms of lectures, retreats, and publications. Among these, their publications are the most far-reaching and often occupy the best-seller section of different bookstores around the world. In these bookstores an interesting phenomenon can be observed: that their books are often categorized and displayed on the shelf labeled “self-improvement” or even “psychology”. This raises some intriguing questions: What are the common grounds between modern Buddhism and popular psychology? Being Buddhist themselves, how do they bridge Buddhist teachings and popular psychology, from an emic point of view? How do they address the mainly Western audience in this secular and scientific world?

To answer these questions and analyze their attitude towards popular reception, I will select the interpretation of the distinctive Buddhist concept of compassion from the 2012 publications of the two great Tibetan teachers: The Heart is Noble by the Karmapa and Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World by the Dalai Lama respectively, contextualize it further within the various discourses of Buddhist Modernism, and thus evaluate whether the two most authoritative Buddhist teachers from Tibet are able to blaze their own unique trail.

In the last part of the article will attempt to tie all the loose together by situating this trend and presentation as a method to gain and accumulate international and intellectual presence for the Tibetan community in exile. I do not attempt to argue against the spiritual advancement of the Tibetan masters, but to unravel the practical and political reasons that determine this particular approach.

Angela Carter spent a few years in Japan, from 1969 to 1972, and though the experience apparently impacted on her creative imagination so much as to transform her writing style drastically thereafter, the details of her life in Japan have not previously been revealed. With original information drawn from interviews with Carter’s former Japanese boyfriend, combined with the examination of her unpublished journal entries, this paper attempts to bring to light the scale of the impact that Japanese society, culture, literature (especially of Tanizaki and Nosaka whose works Carter favoured), and her romantic and devastating encounter had on her literary career. Short stories compiled in Fireworks as well as the novel The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman seem to be inspired by her own emotionally draining relationship with this Japanese boyfriend, whom she calls “my friend S” in her essays. Her journal entries further suggest that Carter experienced her relationship with him as what she names “a philosophic assassination,” a loss of subjectivity in the mirror of the other, although she also confesses that she loves him “desperately.” The paper tries to suggest how Carter may have become better equipped as a postmodern feminist writer in her literary project of subverting masculine discourses, empowered by these personal ordeals she had in Japan.