A Review on Culture and Imperialism - Introduction by Edward Said.
Edward W. Said, one of the prominent post
colonialist scholars was born in Jerusalem, Palestine. He is very famous for
his par excellent work Orientalism.
He delivered his speech Culture and Imperialism at York University, Toronto in
February 10, 1993. In his great work Orientalism, he had mentioned the
Eurocentric concepts and Europe’s stereotypical notions about the East. Culture
and Imperialism is actually a lecture Imperialism is a system in which one
country controls the other countries; often after defeating them in war. There
are various kinds of imperialism such as cultural imperialism and economic
imperialism prevail in the world. When one country controls the political,
economic, or cultural life of another country, there the imperialism takes place.
Edward Said in his book Culture and
Imperialism elaborately depicts the connection of these two terms. Said has
his own perspective about the imperialism and culture.
There are three general categories of the
definition of the term culture. First, the ‘ideal’, in which culture is a state
of process of human perfection, in terms of certain absolute or universal
values. The second is the ‘documentary’, in which culture is the body of
intellectual and imaginative work in which, in a detailed way; human thought
and experience are variously recorded. The third category is the ‘social’, in
which culture is a description of particular way of life, which expresses
certain meanings and values not only in art and learning but also in
institutions and ordinary behavior. ()
According to Oxford English Dictionary, imperialism
is an aggressive expansion of people at the expense of the neighbors. It implies some kind of premeditation which
means a policy formed at home by the imperialistic force before launching an offense
against another nation.
To talk about the book Culture and Imperialism, it is an important document. Said explains
his own concepts of culture and imperialism. He explains imperialism as the “the practice, the theory and the attitudes
of a dominating metropolitan center that rules a distant territory.” The
origin of Imperialism was with the industrial revolution in 19th century.
The British and the French held sway over a large part of the globe. During the fifteenth century the old
imperialists dominated the world. The imperialists were Spain and Portugal. The
old imperialists were motivated by the three Gs; that is to say, Gold, Glory
and God. These three Gs are indicating the wealth, popularity and expansion of
religion respectively. During the century 1700, the imperialism became vast and
expanded. The new imperialist powers are Britain, Italy, France, Germany,
Belgium and America. The motives of new
imperialist powers can be summed up like this; they are militarism, industrialization,
nationalism, religion and social Darwinism.
According to Said, the nineteenth century is
the rise of the west for its dominating posture. He regards the
industrialization as the root cause of the imperialism. America was a victim of
the old imperialist power. Then, it became the strongest imperial power in the
world. So, imperialism could circulate its hidden policies and agendas through
the culture.
This book as Said had mentioned deals
with the general relationship between imperialism and culture. The intention of
exposing these ideas was formed right from the moment of his groundbreaking
book Orientalism. As a result of
this, numerous lectures on this topic were held in different universities.
Though the stimulus of composing this book is Orientalism, this is not a sequence to it. A general worldwide
pattern of imperial culture and a historical experience of the resistance of
the empire, these two factors differ this book from the previous one. By the
word ‘culture’ Said means two things. Firstly, culture includes all those
practices which have relative autonomy from the economic, social and political
realms. Secondly, culture as Arnold talked a concept that includes a refining
and elevating element, each society’s reservoir of the best that has been known
and thought. And then, he denotes the trouble with the concept of culture. In
his own words, the idea of culture is that it entails not only venerating one's
own culture but also thinking of it as somehow divorced from, because
transcending, the everyday world.
As we know, novel is an important
cultural form which can exert an indefinable influence on the readers. Said,
gives an immense attention to the genre of novel. And he brings out the
flip side of the novels of imperialist intentions. He gives some illustrations
as well. Particularly, he considers the novel of Charles Dickens, Great Expectations. According to him,
Dickens's Great Expectations (1861) is primarily a novel about
self-delusion, about Pip's vain attempts to become a gentleman with neither the
hard work nor the aristocratic source of income required for such a role. Furthermore, he talked about the novel of
Conrad, Nostromo. He explains it in a
detailed way. Conrad's novel embodies the same paternalistic arrogance of
imperialism that it mocks in characters like Gould and Holroyd. Conrad seems to
be saying, "We Westerners will decide who is a good native or a bad,
because all natives have sufficient existence by virtue of our recognition. We
created them, we taught them to speak and think, and when they rebel they
simply confirm our views of them as silly children, duped by some of their
Western masters." This is in effect' what Americans have felt about their
southern neighbors: that independence is to be wished for them so long as it is
the kind of independence we approve of anything else is unacceptable
and, worse, unthinkable.
In this introduction part of the book
Said concisely make clear his point. So to say, in his own words: ‘The point of
my book is that such populations and voices have been there for some time,
thanks to the globalized process set in motion by modern imperialism; to ignore
or otherwise discount the overlapping experience of Westerners and Orientals,
the interdependence of cultural terrains in which colonizer and colonized
co-existed and battled each other through projections as well as rival
geographies, narratives, and histories, is to miss what is essential about the
world in the past century’.
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