Written for my Middle East History class:

           Orientalism is the construction of a discrete “East” defined by its differentiation from an also discrete “West.” To make this happen, orientalism requires both erasing the internal differences within the East and West, as well as overlooking the points of commonality and connection between the East and West. It assumes that the boundary between East and West can be cleanly fixed, such that the essential characteristics of each can be clearly defined. This operation requires situating these essential characteristics within the framework of a West/East binary, such that the difference between the two is defined in terms of these characteristics. Additionally, the definition of both West and East within this binary formation ensures the sharpening of these differences into incommensurable opposites. The West/East binary is taken here to be analogous to a whole slew of others: rational/irrational, peaceful/violent, secular/religious, democratic/despotic, advanced/backward, etc., with the former taken to be superior to the latter.

            Thus established, orientalism as a frame for understanding the East profoundly prefigures the ways in which such understanding is even possible. Having demarcated an identifiable and containable East, Western scholars, policymakers, and even tourists encounter the East and proceed to study, experience, or order the East according to these already preconceived binaries. Furthermore, any aspect of the East which seems to counteract the supposed tropes and stereotypes definitive of it are not taken as refutation of orientalism as a mechanism for encountering the East, but instead merely as evidence of Eastern adoption of “superior” Western practices. Through this operation, orientalism successfully closes itself off as an interpretive framework; from within its confines, any encounter with the East can only serve to confirm its pre-conceived biases. Thus conceived, orientalism is perfectly set up as the knowledge-gathering component for the exercise of Western power over the East. Having been established as an apparatus for demarcating, defining, and understanding the East, orientalism serves as an effective tool for achieving the goals of Western actors, who reserve the authority to construct the terms and interpretation of West/East binaries such that Western control of the East is justified.