01/27/23 | Orientalism & Racial Formations - Edward Said; Michael Omi & Howard Winant

Feb 15, 20234 min read

During our last meeting, we discussed Edward Said’s Orientalism. First, we generally defined the term itself as the framework through which the Western world views the Orient, or the Middle East and Asia. More specifically, how the European view of the Orient is a more realistic view than the United States’s view. We went over some of the problems that come with Orientalism, such as Orientalist notions being used to the advantage of colonialism/imperialism. In these cases, Orientalism over-dramatizes the mysticism around Oriental cultures. The Orient, in the historic study of Orientalism, becomes a group of peoples who are strange, backward-facing, and impoverished. As in, they are less-developed and barbaric people who are meant to be gawked at by Western society. Within his novel, Said defines how Orientalism should be used to understand the West’s viewpoint on external peoples instead of a commentary on the Orient. The discussion started with an analysis of the book’s cover; a painting depicting a “Middle-Eastern” scene by French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme.

As Gérôme was a French artist, we discussed the reasoning for why Said might have chosen this painting, especially since his novel calls out the historic and derogatory uses of Orientalism to define a variety of peoples in the East. By choosing this painting, Said is depicting how negative the East is put into perspective for Western peoples. For example, the painting has a ruined building in the background with chipped tiles and wonderful Arabic calligraphy. In this case, the painter is commenting on how the “glory days” of the East and Orient have passed and now, they are nothing more than backwards people. Not only that, the crowd watching the snake charmer in the foreground is a mix of peoples with not one specific ethnic group targeted–painting the Orient as a mix of peoples with no different customs, histories, and communities–creating the East to be a singular non-complicated mass of peoples. The group, dressed in ripped and dirty clothing only invigorated the impoverished view of Eastern peoples. Altogether, this popular painting during the time, defines the mindset of the West towards the Orient.

After Orientalism, we moved on to examine Racial Formations in the United States by Michael Omi and Howard Winant. The authors define racial formation as the socio-historical process by which racial identities are created, lived out, transformed, and destroyed. In other words, the racialization of ethnic groups is constantly being defined by the ever-changing culture and politics we live in today. Not only this, the authors determined that institutions impact the everyday lives of racial groups such as census categories of ethnic groups and races and the way in which races interact with each other from the results of different laws put into practice. We considered the differences between racial projects and racist projects and drew connections between racial formations and Orientalism. In this case, a racial project can become racist but racist projects can never be a racial project. Specifically, using the language of Omi and Winant, we could understand Orientalism as a long-lasting racial project that has resulted in the violent misidentification of Asian people. This misidentification has led to many violent and non-violent issues. For example, there is a historic mistreatment of Asian people (i.e., anti-Asian racism) coming from all walks of life such as the Chinese Immigration Act, Japanese Incarcerations, the World Fair, and even today anti-Asian rhetoric due to COVID-19.

And based on these historical moments, they can be postulated to be contingent on Orientalism as a long-lasting racial project. And so, these racist projects all give distance between Asians and their non-Asian neighbors, further enriching the divide between peoples. Specifically, these racial projects reveal how white supremacy has historically subjected Asian people into the discourse of Orientalism and Other so they can capitalize off of their labor while treating them as inferior. And today, we see anti-Asian rhetoric being perpetuated through colorblindness, coded words (e.g., other marginalized groups can be racist so there is no such thing as white supremacy), and/or neoliberalism (i.e., where institutions use words like “equity” and “inclusion” to follow the status quo but not actually address racism and discrimination).

The last topic we briefly discussed was the prominence and fetishization of East Asia and East Asian culture, especially in recent Western media as a way to consider both Orientalism and racialization are in conversation with each other. This topic was prompted by @olisunvia’ s video essay, “ the self-fetishization of east-asia: koreaboos & weebs aren’t the only problem.” Based on her introduction to her video essay, we considered the increase in popularity of these types of media shows the commodification of Asian peoples, not only for their culture, but also for their bodies. From there, we also considered why other Asian countries do not receive nearly as much attention as Japan and South Korea; who have both increased their media attention with the emergence of anime and Kpop within the Western consciousness. For example, when considering Southeast Asia, these countries within this area are seen as impoverished, 3rd World Countries, in part due to their history of colonization and use of labor to benefit Western Countries. Even now, production-based labor within the United States has been outsourced to China and yet, the country as a whole is defined by that economic aspect (which disregards the advances China has made throughout history in terms of technology, art, and media). The same stands for other countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

This Friday, we will be reading and discussing Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner. Hope to see you all then!