WT W16 - Said and Gandhi

Global Justice, De Colonisation and Race

The “Orient” - Edward Said

• Orient was a constructed figure by the West to represent people from the East, particularly ME, SA and NA cultures - done in order to dominate and control the East

Western knowledge about the Orient was deeply shaped by power, politics and imperial threats.

Depicted as passive → (lacking agency, must be spoken for, irrational or emotional, sensual or exotic)

→ was not just an individual bias but this idea was supported by institutions

Role of knowledge in Said’s Theory

“Knowledge means rising above immediacy, beyond self, into the foreign and distant. The object of such knowledge is inherently vulnerable to scrutiny; this object is a ‘fact’ which, if it develops, changes or otherwise transforms itself in the way that civilisations frequently do”

In Said’s theory, this idea explains how Western “knowledge” of the Orient creates authority over it by turning living societies into fixed objects that can be defined, controlled, and dominated.

Said & Link to Foucalt

Orientalist knowledge functions as Foucaltian power knowledge; it produces “truths” about the East that enable surveillance, control and domination

- “Discourses” as systems for gathering, analysing and applying knowledge, which are integral to systems for dominating people and societies

“Power - knowledge”: each enables and fortifies the other.

Imaginative Geography (Said)

The West constructs geographical and cultural differences to seperate the West from the Orient → less about actual geography and more about cultural projection

• Divisions are imagined, not natural, built through language, narratives and cultural practices. The Orient becomes a symbolic space for everything the West is not, this oppositional thinking is fundamental to how the West defined itself

→ Helped justify colonial rule - Western domination framed as a civilising mission, but these ideas are also constraining for the West themselves.

Said - Ethics of Human Encounter

Ethical human encounter means engaging with others as complex, equal human beings rather than reducing them to fixed stereotypes or “Othered” identities. Said critiques Orientalism for denying this equality through dehumanising representations

Gramsci on hegemony (Said)

Gramsci:

- Power is maintained through consent and culture

- Dominant ideas become “common sense”

Said applies this to Orientalism:

→ West maintains dominance not just through colonial force. But through cultural representations (books, academia, media)

Orientalism is a hegemonic discourse - becomes accepted knowledge that supports Western power

Said uses Gramsci to show that Western dominance over the “Orient” works because cultural ideas about the East become widely accepted as common sense, not because they are objectively true

Gandhi - definition of “real civilisation”

Civilisation - “mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty,” - morality and duty are the same, and it involves “mastery over our mind and our passions” meaning self control and ethical living rather than material progress.

Gandhi on British physico - moral decrepitude

“Civilisation is irreligion” “Those who are in it appear to be half mad. They lack real physical strength or courage” “Women who should be the queues of the households, wander in the streets or they slave away in factories”

→ The quote supports Gandhi’s broader argument in Hind Swaraj that Western civilisation is not superior, but instead a form of moral and physical degeneration, which justifies resistance to colonial rule.

Gandhi - Modern Civilisation (Hind Swaraj)

Gandhi → modern (Western) civilisation is a “civilisation only in name” that is inherently destructive. Produces worker exploitation, dependency on money and luxury, and social harm.

Gandhi & Marcuse - Critique of modern civilisation

Modern civilisation enslaves people through desire - “enslaved by temptation of money and of the luxuries that money can buy”

Marcuse - consumer capitalism integrates people through satisfaction of “false needs” producing unfreedom through consumption rather than force

Gandhi - Critique of machinery and material progress

Real civilisation is opposed to over reliance on machiney → making humans “slaves and lose our moral fibre”.

Wellbeing comes from “proper use of our hands and feet” - not technological dependence