Racism? Please!
My professor made the following comment on an essay I wrote:
The word "Orientals" was certainly in common currency prior to the 1970s, but its use has been politicized since that time (if not earlier). (Edward Said certainly has plenty to say on this score.) Using the word without care in a historical essay now -- that is, outside of quotation marks -- is comparable to bandying about words like "Negro" or "Indian."
According to Edward Said, Oriental cannot be separated from "exotic" and "other." As long as we think of people as "other," whatever we have to say about them will be coloured by racial prejudice. Besides, the Orient cannot exist without the Occident, and who is to say that Asia is east and not west, since it's west of some places? Why the Europeans, of course, so it's Eurocentric!
I'm sorry, but that's rabbit raisins. If I can't say Oriental, what am I to say? Asian? But I was dealing specifically with those of Chinese and Japanese descent, not with the whole mass of people included under the umbrella of "Asian". And Eurocentric? Hardly, since Europe is the occident, and therefore, the centre is somewhere in between. Turkey, I think, since it's between the Middle East and Europe. And I don't think Turkey-centricism is a particularly threatening historical prejudice.
Besides, as far as I know, it's still OK to refer to "westerners," and "western civilization." Hell, Chinese academics do it all the time! And they explicitly add that the west is inferior, which is worse, I think, than any subconscious implication of exoticness! (I'm not pulling that western inferiority bit out of my pants: one of the papers I have to summarize in Montreal is written by a Chinese professor, an expert in Chinese-Western relations, and he very clearly equates “western” with “worse.”)
Respectfully, I think Edward Said is a well-meaning moron.
The word "Orientals" was certainly in common currency prior to the 1970s, but its use has been politicized since that time (if not earlier). (Edward Said certainly has plenty to say on this score.) Using the word without care in a historical essay now -- that is, outside of quotation marks -- is comparable to bandying about words like "Negro" or "Indian."
According to Edward Said, Oriental cannot be separated from "exotic" and "other." As long as we think of people as "other," whatever we have to say about them will be coloured by racial prejudice. Besides, the Orient cannot exist without the Occident, and who is to say that Asia is east and not west, since it's west of some places? Why the Europeans, of course, so it's Eurocentric!
I'm sorry, but that's rabbit raisins. If I can't say Oriental, what am I to say? Asian? But I was dealing specifically with those of Chinese and Japanese descent, not with the whole mass of people included under the umbrella of "Asian". And Eurocentric? Hardly, since Europe is the occident, and therefore, the centre is somewhere in between. Turkey, I think, since it's between the Middle East and Europe. And I don't think Turkey-centricism is a particularly threatening historical prejudice.
Besides, as far as I know, it's still OK to refer to "westerners," and "western civilization." Hell, Chinese academics do it all the time! And they explicitly add that the west is inferior, which is worse, I think, than any subconscious implication of exoticness! (I'm not pulling that western inferiority bit out of my pants: one of the papers I have to summarize in Montreal is written by a Chinese professor, an expert in Chinese-Western relations, and he very clearly equates “western” with “worse.”)
Respectfully, I think Edward Said is a well-meaning moron.