Oriente y Occidente:dos conceptos a debate

Abstract

The concept of Orientalism, according to Edward Said “is a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in European Western experience”. The justification of the Oriental is not only related to the artistic and intellectual progress, but rather to the power of submission of the Europeans and Occidentals, whom considered themselves as the owners of the world for discovering the liberty and the illustration as well as the knowledge they incorporated by force, in many occasions, amongst the rest of the world. The labour of Orientalism in this aspect, in the words of Edwards Said himself, is to gather the fragments of a portrait as if it dealt with a restored painting of Orient and Occident. These concepts are mere inventions of the French and English Colonialism. That is due to the distribution of lands after the Second World War. The Oriental perception of Occident is also attributed to some differentiating cultural and ethnical features, but does not include civilization. We assume that there is only one civilization and that the world spins around human development without differentiation amongst races, boundaries or any other type of segregations. This study summarises the key ideas available in the book of Edward Said. It also seeks refecting on the background relations behind these concepts. The internal coherence of Orientalism and its ideas concerning Orient is also approached.