Reading Response 3 - Orientalism

The paragraph that strikes me the most is the last one on page 13, Edward W. Said touches on the idea that Orientalism and Orient qualify cultures and histories as not "understood or studied without their force, or more precisely their configurations of power, also being studied". In my opinion what Said is referring is that one can believe in their imagination as way of looking at the Orient. He calls this action as "Orientalized" - and to believe that such things happen without a reason simply by our own imagination. As he explains in the introduction of his book, the relationship between both, Orientalism and Orient is powerful and dominated in different degrees, this can be understood as critical concept because it was "Orientalized" by an average ninetieth-century European. The author uses an example of comparison in fluencial model of Oriental woman and man, where the female could not speak for herself or represent her emotions, presence or history, in the other hand, he was a male in domination to speak and do whatever he wanted. This argues that the pattern of relative strength between East and West, and the discourse about the "Orient that it enabled" . The author gives this example to explain how one can never assume that the strict of Orientalism is nothing more than the structure of lies or of the myths a society can believe.

This statue can be seen as symbol of Orientalism as the artist brings the idea the personifications of Armenia Major and Armenian Minor in a little boy's body. The reference suggests a double geographical reference, which connects to Edward Said idea that the Orientalism is the key source of the inaccurate cultural representations that form the foundations of Western perception of the Eastern world. The geographical reference is important to understand the culture and perception of both sides.