Politics of Development Lecture 3 2023

Orientalism and Post- uPolitics of Development
uUniversity of Ghent
colonial alternatives uDr. Maria Martin de Almagro
to development u01.03.2023
Key learnings from lecture 2
Reminder:
Wednesday, 8th March, 13h-16h

Class 4 online
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Outline for today
1. Discourse: knowledge and power nexus

2. Orientalism by Edward Said
1. Discourse on Orientalism
2. Contrapuntal thinking
3. Postcolonial Feminism by Mohanty
4. Op/Ed Analysis
5. Video
Edward Said and Orientalism
Discourse about the Orient

associated with the military and
economic domination of the
Orient by Europe.
Orient = The East

Occident = The West
Binary oppositions
Scientific discourse:
power and knowledge
u Body of knowledge, produced by experts, who

belong to a prestigious institution, and therefore
who have power to create that knowledge.
u Statements are being made within a larger
scientific or societal discourse.
u Discourse is also material – produces the practices
that systematically form the objects of which they
speak
u There is nothing outside of discourse: It is a
historically contingent social system that produces
knowledge and meaning: e all exist in that
discourse because we believe it.
u In postcolonial studies, first person to use
Foucauldian understanding of discourse was Edward
Said.
u Preface in the book cites two early Foucault’s
works.
The Three Aspects
of Orientalism
u Orientalism as a
particular way of
thinking
u Orientalism as an
academic discipline
u Orientalism as a
corporate institution
for dealing with the
Orient
Knowing and Governing the Oriental
u Power and authority (p. 31) – Arthur James Balfour (UK PM, 1910)
as an authority figure in the UK (education, political positions,
trips, social capital).
u Supremacy of England -–> because of knowledge on and about
Egypt, not because of military or economic power.
u British knowledge of Egypt is Egypt for for Balbour. (p. 32)
u England knowls Egypt; Egypt is what England knows; England
knows that Egypt cannot have self-government; England
confirms that by occupying Egypt; Egypt requires, indeed
insists upon, British occupation. (p. 34)
u Balfour as speaking for ‘the civilized world, the West’ (p. 34)
u Lord Cromer --> England’s reprsentative in Egypt – the
knowledge England has have to be put to use in governing
Egypt
Governing the Oriental
The Empire must be wise and with flexible discipline:

‘each special issue should be decided mainly with reference to what, by the light of Western knowledge and
experience tempered by local considerations, we conscientiouly think it is best for the subject race’ (Cromer,
p. 37) ‘We may perhaps foster some sort of cosmopolitan allegiance grounded on the respect always accorded
to superior talents and unselfish conduct’ (Cromer p. 37).
Subject races did not have it in them to know what was good for them. (p. 37)
For Cromer, ‘managing them, although circumstances might differ slightly

here and there, was almost everywhere nearly the same. This was, of
course, because Orientals were almost everywhere nearly the same.’ (p. 38)
The local and the
international
u Central principles and authority – England vs the local
u ‘Local interests’ are Orientalist special interests
u The ‘Central authority’ is the general interest of the
imperial society.
u For ‘harmonious working’, first general interest,
then local interest.
u Western power over the Orient is taken for granted
as being a scientific truth.
Henry Kissinger: On Domestic Structure and
Foreign Policy
A model of binary opposition: divides the world into two halves.
• The West: “deeply committed to the notion that the real world is
external to the observer, that knowledge consists of recording and
classifying data – the more accurately, the better”. (p. 46-47)
• Positivism and Newtonian revolution
• The Orient: “ Cultures which escaped the early impact of Newtonian
thinking have retained the essentially pre-Newtonian view that the
real world is almost completely internal to the observer.”
The duty of the men in the post-Newtonian world is to “construct an

international order before a crisis imposes it as a necessarity” (p. 47)
• Similar to Cromer’s vision of a harmoniously working machine to benefit the
central authority and find a way by which the developing world can be
contained
Orientalism as justifying colonial rule
First Orientalism, then Colonial rule
‘To say simply that Orientalism was a rationalization of colonial rule is to ignore the
extent to which colonial rule was justified in advance by Orientalism, rather than after
the fact’
Two elements in the relation between East and West.

Growing systematic knowledge in Europe about
Europe in a position of strength and domination.
the Orient (reinforced by the colonial encounter)
Contrapuntal reading
Contrapuntal reading allows to place narratives in wider historical

context.
• Said proposes reading texts as polyphonic pieces with a plurality of voices and
counterpoints, like in Western classical music pieces, where “various themes play off
one another, with only a provisional privilege being given to any particular one; yet in
the resulting polyphony there is concert and order, an organized interplay that derives
from the themes, not from a rigorous melodic or formal principle outside the work”
(Said 2012, 51).
Break and disrupt the power/knowledge nexus that connects the

discourse of Orientalism
• Cultures are overlapping and interdependent, not monolithic.
• “interpret together experiences that are discrepant, each with its particular agenda
and pace of development, its own internal formations, its internal coherence and
system of external relationships, all of them co-existing and interacting with others”
(Said 2012, 32)
Post-colonial feminist
perspectives: Mohanty – Under
Western Eyes
u Colonization and structurals domination are

not only economic and political processes,
but also ideological à discursive
homogenization & systematization of
oppression of women in third world
u Relationship between the representation of
Woman (cultural & ideological Other) and
women (real, material subjects) is arbitrary
and fixed by the hegemony of Western
feminism.
u “It is in the production of this ‘third-world
difference’ that western feminisms
appropriate and colonize the constitutive
complexities which characterize the lives of
women in these countries.” (63)
(‘Third World’) Women as a category of analysis
Women as an identifiable Women in Development

homogeneous ‘powerless’ Simple oppositions: (Ester Boserup, Perdita
group before analysis Huston)
• ‘sameness’ of their • Women as powerless • Development
oppression: ’objects-who-defend- understood as
‘powerless’, themselves’ (victims of ‘economic progress’
‘exploited’, ‘sexually men, religion, colonial • Solutions proposed:
harassed’ processes, …) include ‘women’ as a
• Men as powerful coherent group in
‘subjects-who- development projects.
perpetrate-violence’ • This equates the female
subject to gender
identity (forgets about
social class, ethnicity,
etc.)
Women as a category of analysis: how
to do better
u Maria Mies study on houshold industry of lace-makers in
Narsapur, India (1982)
u ‘Non-working housewives’: ideology of the housewife
increases pauperization of women + disables possibilities
for collective organisation
u Lace-making work as ‘leisure-time activity’: exploitation in
patriarchal productive economy
u But: women are agents and have effective strategies for
organizing, resist and challenge
u Importance of understanding the contradictions in
women’s location within various social/economic/political
structures at local/national/international levels
Methodological universalism
u Through methodological approaches, Western feminist writings

demonstrate the universal operation of male dominance and female
exploitation
u Arithmetic method: high numbers as explanation
u Example: use of veil in Iran
u Use of concepts i.e. ‘sexual division of labor’ as if universal
u Example: ‘the feminisation of poverty’ as a result of the sexual
divison of labour
u Gender as a superordinate categoryà organising a system of
representations
Subjects of power, victims of empowerment
u What happens when the assumption of ‘women as a oppressed group’ is
situated in the context of western feminist writing about third-world
women?
u Robs women or their historical and political agency
u Defines women as subjects outside of social relations
u Paternalistic attitude towards women in the relative
‘underdevelopment’ of the third world:
u Automatically defined as religious (not progressive), family origented
(traditional), legal minors (not conscious of their rights), illiterate
(ignorant), domestic (backwards) and sometimes revolutionary (their
country is in a state of war).
Video: Kenyan
Ambassador to the UN
u On Russia’s invassion of Ukraine

u https://www.youtube.com/watc
h?v=jwDWxyLVBxk
u How can you ‘read’ the speech
by using the lenses of anti-
colonial thinkers that we studied
this and last week?

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Orientalism and Post- uPolitics of Development

Wednesday, 8th March, 13h-16h

1. Discourse: knowledge and power nexus

Discourse about the Orient

Orient = The East

u Body of knowledge, produced by experts, who

The Empire must be wise and with flexible discipline:

For Cromer, ‘managing them, although circumstances might differ slightly

The duty of the men in the post-Newtonian world is to “construct an

First Orientalism, then Colonial rule

Two elements in the relation between East and West.

Contrapuntal reading allows to place narratives in wider historical

Break and disrupt the power/knowledge nexus that connects the

u Colonization and structurals domination are

Women as an identifiable Women in Development

u Through methodological approaches, Western feminist writings

u On Russia’s invassion of Ukraine

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