9-11: Surviving the Struggle

Rise Up: Let it Go

The September 11, 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and Twin Towers are a sign of the postmodern times we live in because terrorism seems to defy definitions just like postmodernity.

The World after 9-11 

Terrorism presents a moral problem.  How does one fight against it and win? Though we send bombs and troops to another country, we are really still in a state of fear. 

Each new act of terrorism will enhance our fears and defeat us even more.  Terrorism wins because is gnaws at our ignorance. 

We have had a political presence in the Middle East for quite some time. Much of our presence was there to counter any Soviet presence. The Soviet Union has dissolved and now we have become a major target for reactionaries.  The terrorist action makes us ask: "Why us?" 

That is a good question.  We must now re-examine our role in the Middle East and question our military presence anywhere. We must also understand the  diverse cultures of the Middle East. 

Edward Said

As Edward Said (1935-2003), the Palestinian American thinker, said in Orientalism that we have objectified the Middle East in order to conquer it militarily.   However, any military wins are only temporary. Ultimately, knowledge will bring a better kind of liberation. We must try to understand the Middle East.  We must now try to understand the Cultural Other.  One way to approach the Other is through art, through literature and films. America is a microcosm of this Cultural Other.  Each presence of America in other parts of the world has brought that part of the world to America. 

Postmodern Times

Postmodern times are defined by fragmentation and ethnicity.  Colonial Western society, be it British, French, Spanish  or American, must now face its once objectified Cultural Other. Fighting violence with violence may bring one type of justice, but it will only be a temporary justice.

Cultural acceptance will bring a better type of justice: the justice of understanding, which has a greater longevity.  Accepting Postmodernity is an acceptance of the fragmented wholes that now thrive within our borderless borders.

Other postmodern works show how ethnicity is an embedded  characteristic. 

Orientals, As Objectified Colonialist Subjects

The whole scholarly endeavor of studying, classifying and translating the Orient or Middle East is suspect as Edward Said in Orientalism proclaims because the Orientalists objectified and greatly distorted information in order to define themselves, the Occidentals, the Westerners as superiors.

Occidental/Oriental: Binary Opposites

Occidental

• Superior

• Rulers

• White

Oriental

• Inferior

• Enslaved

• Dark

With the West being superior and the East being inferior, the ultimate ramification of Orientalism was that it became a way to justify and defend the colonization of Asia.

Edward Said created a new discipline, Postcolonial studies,  which tries to examine Asian, Middle Eastern and all non-western worlds from a less hegemonic point of view. Postcolonialism calls for the voices of the objectified to speak for themselves.

Postcolonialism and the Brave New World

Colonial scholars often interpreted religious, scholarly, political and artistic qualities of the Orient as either inferior or as an Exotic Other.  This objectification of the Orient was used as a justification for the colonization of the East.  Thus, the logic went that since the EAST has an inferior justice system, European colonies justify their existence as the keepers of law and order, the supreme rulers of an inferior race. 

Postcolonialism is the new scholarship that examines the institutionalized racism embedded in Western society, especially Western higher education: in such places as Oxford, Harvard and Yale.

The Orient: The Mindful Defeat of Thinking

According to Edward Said: "The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experiences. Yet none of the Orient is merely imaginative. The Orient is an integral part of European material civilization and culture." (8)

Though the Orient that Edward Said mentions mostly pertains to Middle Eastern and Islamic countries, the term also expands to Asia in general because the term Oriental now usually refers to people from countries like China, Japan, and Korea.