“Orientalist scholarship makes the Orient speak, describes the Orient, renders its mysteries plain for and to the West” -Edward Said, "Orientalism"
Today post-colonial societies are generally considered the 'other', something foreign, exotic, enticing. In my experience Americans often idealize someone who has traveled beyond America or Europe. Yet we often expect certain characteristics, like Indian spirituality or creative impulse in music and dance.
Edward Said, a Palestinian Jew and academic, introduced a new set of questions into my approach to studying the Post-colonial world. He questions European and American scholars' fascination with the Middle East, Far East, South Asia, and generally the rest of the colonized world, with a backdrop of imperialism that gained strength by acquiring knowledge.
Many of the notions we hold are rooted in knowledge-gathering expeditions that supported colonial powers. In India, Orientalist scholars researched India's history of majestic kingdoms. The British presented this history to Indians and British citizens to rationalize the colonial presence to raise India from its fallen glory. The vocabulary British orientalist scholars introduced surrounding Indian culture and history largely remains in academic rhetoric in American and Indian schools.
My interest in India was undoubtedly sparked by a curiosity of a land that produces tasty food, lyrical prose, and boasts a deep connection between body, mind and spirit. After studying Orientalism, I realize that while India boasts a rich culture in those ways, it is a dynamic society that exceeds that historical orientalist notion that has become popular in contemporary American culture's fascination with yoga and the mind/body/spirit connection, or the glamour of Indian harems. Dropping orientalist notions about what India should be allows Indians and Americans to see how India is changing.
How does tourism accept changes in a post-colonial nation?
Why am I so concerned with Orientalism?