From Willful (Mis) Representation to the Rhetoric of Civilization; Unveiling the ‘Power-Knowledge’ Discourse in Western Oriental Studies

Foregrounding Said’s critique of Western Oriental Studies, this paper attempts to explore how the willful misrepresentation of the Orient was employed by the West to generate the Rhetoric of civilization. Moreover, it also endeavors to bring forth how Said deploys Michael Foucault’s notion of discourse and its relation to power, in order to destabilize and subvert the convention thoughts attached to Western Orientalism and uncover the ‘power-knowledge’ discourse in this apparently ‘cultural field’ of study. Being a qualitative study, the following paper would exploit Robert Irwin’s novel The Arabian Nightmare to scrutinize the relation of the Occident with its Oriental counterpart. The research probing into the concept in detail, unearths the fact that Said’s claim regarding the hidden agenda of Oriental Studies was not an ‘amateur’ claim but an audacious attempt at unveiling how the power discourses inherent in this academic discipline were used not only to generate, but to legitimize and perpetuate colonial rule in the Orient.