Orientalism

In 1978 Edward Said published a book that changed how the humanities understood the relationship between knowledge and power. Its argument was both simple and radical: that the academic discipline of ‘Oriental studies’ — the Western study of Eastern cultures and peoples — was not a neutral body of scholarship but a system of representation shaped by, and in service of, Western imperial power. The ‘Orient’ that Orientalism described was not the East as it was but the East as the West needed it to be: passive, exotic, irrational, and in need of Western governance.

Drawing on Foucault’s concept of discourse and on meticulous close reading of literary, academic, and political texts, Said built a case that was immediately controversial and immediately influential. It is still both. Orientalism inaugurated the field of postcolonial studies, generated hundreds of books in response, and permanently changed how scholars think about the relationship between representation and power.

Whether you agree with Said’s argument or find it overstated, this book is essential. One of the most important works of the twentieth-century humanities — still being argued about, and for good reason. Published by Penguin Modern Classics.