One thousand and One Night and Orientalism Reconsidered (group 4)

When we read One thousand and One Night and Orientalism, what do we feel about in those text? We all known the One thousand and One Night as Arabian night since we was a child. This book is a collection of many eastern stories and folk tales. But we usually read the texts are translate by many different authors from western culture. Also, Many people know the Asian culture based on those literature translate by the western authors. I would like to also use Edward Said’s Orientalism to support my idea. I believe that there some ideas we could find out from the text. People might have some stereotype thinking and wrong cognition to Eastern culture when they only receive the message from the translation version by Western authors.

In One thousand and One Night, many editors modified the context and translation to fit the Western audiences. Many version comes out for children or adult, but we can dig out some detail about the description to Arabic or Islamic, even Asian. The Authors (editors) mostly show the Western stereotype mindset. In the story “The Fisherman and the Genie” from One thousand and One Night by Payne’s version. Payne state: “for indeed He is a jealous God, who delayeth to punish, yet letteth not the evil-doer escape.”(Payne: The Fisherman and the Genie 1) In this line, the Eastern culture did not have positive image which will be set up on our mind. The religion from Asia has some negative setting since the western audience first in touch with these literature from Eastern countries. We can also look at another example from another story in One Thousand and One Night. The story “The Merchant and the Genie” is also reveal this same mindset of eastern culture. In Payne translation: “Cut short thy speech, said the genie, for, by Allah, there is no help for it but I must kill thee.”(Payne: The Merchant and the Genie 1) The text shows again that “Allah” seen like not that positive. And the Eastern people is kind of evil. In both stories from One Thousand and One Night, the god – Allah was not like the Christian think about their “own god.” Moreover, the western audiences will received the negative images from those different translation version by the western editors.

In addition, I believe that the western editors want to make their own culture being more distinguished, therefore they will not consider to being more concerned about the eastern culture and even some editor would not like to research the cultural background in those stories. In Edward Said’s Orientalism Reconsidered, we can find out some idea and evident in his book to support my statement. In the text, Edward Said state: “Nor was this all. The challenge to Orientalism and the colonial era of which it is so organically a part was a challenge to the muteness imposed upon the Orient as object.” And “Orientalism was a scientific movement whose analogue in the world of empirical politics was the Orient’s colonial accumulation and acquisition by Europe.” (Orientalism Reconsidered 93) In other words, the western people already think about the Orient as a silent others, they don’t even consider about the Orient as culture, but they think about the world it’s just a spoils of war of Europe. Also, the Eastern people has no representative to represent about their own culture. That’s why the western can keep doing their own way to describe the Eastern as their thought. This idea also reveal in the Edward Said’s text, “the Orientals cannot represent themselves, they must therefore be represented by others who know more about Islam than Islam knows about itself.”(Orientalism Reconsidered 97) That’s sound like more understandable to western editors keep thinking their own way to describe the Eastern in the eastern literature.

In conclusion, we can say this is a historical issue cause people to be placed on different position, the Western as a dominator to colonize or imperialize the Eastern. Therefore, in the western people way to describe the eastern culture. They will have some privilege to themselves and make their own culture being more distinguished. They will have some stereotype think to those culture which is not belong to or familiar to them.