So, what is so important about discursive formation? It, in fact, directly pertains to notions of power. The Orient is not even something that is grounded in reality - it is a creation of mankind. It is also a simplified creation, as there is no way that all the knowledge compiled can cover every single detail, nor can it do so with accuracy as not that many people can enter into the Orient from such an objective standpoint that they can record data without coloring it with bias. The entire study is thus a generalization, a canvassing of the area from a distinct point of view. The compilers of this information are less interested with truth, and are more interested in the function of power. The concern boils down to the question of how culture creates ways to empower certain peoples over others, and in this particular case, as it pertains to the ‘West’ or the ‘Occident’ over the ‘East’ or the ‘Orient‘.
The Orient and the Occident are two geographical entities that support and reflect each other, and cannot exist without the other, for “the Orient is an idea that has a history a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West.” (Said 5) As the West is the dominant power, it controls the discursive formation of Orientalism by which it has historically denied the experiences of those who lived in the Orient, to the point that it questioned the reality of there existing something essentially ‘Oriental’: “Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible positional superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the relative upper hand.” (Said 7)
The mechanism by which it asserts this power is a function of the knowledge that it compiles and disseminates into the culture. These are not metaphysical concepts; this knowledge is just a compilation of concepts that have material value as produced by humanity. ‘Orientalism essentially “invent[s] collective identities for large numbers of individuals who are actually quite diverse, cannot remain as potent as they are, and must be opposed, their murderous effectiveness vastly reduced in influence and mobilizing power.” (Said xxviii) By simplifying that area of the world and the people within it, they are brought under this umbrella of power. “It is… a certain will or intention to understand, in some cases to control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is a manifestly different world; it is, above all, a discourse that is by no means in direct, corresponding relationship with political power in the raw, but rather is produced and exists in an uneven exchange with various kinds of power.” (Said 12)
There is a general consent to the validity of these ideas, which is how a whole group of ideas can prevail over others. It has become the essence of scholarly acceptance of this mode of interpreting that region of the world, and this is particularly because most of the scholars were from the Occident. Thus, no one went about forcing others to believe that Orientalism was the dominant way of understanding the East, but it still was due to the prevalence and far-reaching nature of these ideas.
Said provides a critique of Orientalism as the basis of humanistic practice. He suggests that humanism as it has been interpreted “imprison[s] us in labels and antagonistic debate whose goal is a belligerent collective identity rather than understanding and intellectual exchange.” (Said xxii) This characterizes the study of Orientalism, which has become a generalized collection of definitions and knowledge: Said calls for the dissolving of these “mind-forg’d manacles so as to be able to use ones mind historically and rationally for the purposes of reflective understanding and genuine disclosure.” (Said xxiii) He calls for the acknowledgement of “individuality of each work without losing sight of whole (the study of all the literatures of the world).” (Said xxiv)
This brings up the issue of what constitutes true knowledge. People have been blindly accepting Orientalism at face value without looking at the origins of all this knowledge and the manner of its compilation, so Said encourages us to open our eyes a little further. True knowledge is not non-political: everything produced by society is influenced by life experiences that have informed our values; there is no way to detach ourselves from the biases of life’s circumstances. Said wants us to acknowledge this, instead of presuming that the information that forms the foundation of humanism to be inherently true as fact. For this, we need to look at the author’s writing in context of his place in society.
Strategic location is the author’s position in the text, in relationship to the discourse (in particular, the Orient) while strategic formation is the relationship between the text and other texts within the discourse. Clearly, there is much more going on in a single, individual text within the overarching context of Orientalism. At the core of this is strategy, or how one approaches the text without being overwhelmed by the numerous dimensions of the topic - as a result of Orientalism being so complex, authors tend to simplify and abstract. Due to this fact, “the things to look at are style, figures of speech, setting, narrative devices, historical and social circumstances, not the correctness of the representation nor its fidelity to some great original.” (Said 21)
The method by which the author deals with something as complex as the Orient is what must be looked at for humanistic practice, for “the real issue is whether indeed there can be a true representation of anything, or whether any and all representations, because they are representations, are embedded first in the language and then in the culture, institutions, and political ambience of the represented.” (Said 272) So, Orientalism is merely a function of representation of language and culture, and in particular, the language and culture of the dominant power - the Occident. It is not necessarily the true nature of the East, but knowledge, or who disseminates knowledge, has power. The one who determines representation is irrevocably tied to the fate of the represented, and together, they create the confines of discourse.
Works Cited:
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Print.