Bascially Absent

— Asked by gaysubplot

No problem! I totally get you, postcolonialism was my college concentration and since orientalism is an essential pillar of the subject I was glad that I was able to share sources that I studied and used previously in papers to talk about atla. I do wish Said’s language was more accessible, hes a brilliant writer but his use of academic jargon can make his work often inaccessible and difficult to focus on and read. I do find it unfortunate that a lot of major players in postcolonial academia use excessively difficult language (Gayatri Spivak callout post), but since Said’s work is a key text of the entire theory I would definitely recommend trying to read his book with online study guide websites helping with processing the information, that’s how I got through it, haha!

This video explains the base of the theory very quickly and concisely, and Al Jazeera and BBC have their own useful videos as well.

This guy also has a pretty good video on postcolonialism as a whole with an explanation of orientalism, along with a great postcolonial analysis of Black Panther :0

I have not read this book but I was looking at the syllabi of university courses about orientalism and Orientalism: A Reader often popped up as containing many key works and explanations about the evolution of the theory and the discourses surrounding it. I’m definitely going to check it out, but since it mentions analysis of other complex academics like Foucault, it might not be the best recommendation…

Also in Virtual Orientalism Iwamura gives her own rundown of Said’s theory so that she can expand upon how it applies to the modern-day Western perceptions of Asia!

— Answered by kurtwagners