Reflections on Edward Said and the Other Side of the Map

 The Orient, as the West has imagined it, was never truly a place. It was a projection—a curated fantasy. A place conjured into being not through conversation but through control. Paintings like A Lady Receiving Visitors are not just beautiful—they are political. They present the East not as it is, but as Europe needed it to be: sensual, static, and silent. The subject does not speak; she receives. That is the language of empire.

At the heart of this portrayal lies the idea of “the Other.” To define oneself, one must draw a boundary. The West saw itself as rational, modern, civilized—and so it needed an opposite. The East became that opposite. Not because it was inherently different, but because difference was useful.

This is what it means to “Other” someone: to reduce them to their distance from your norms. To say: they are not like us. They are primitive. They are mysterious. They are dangerous. In doing so, the West created a mental border—not just physical geography, but psychological territory.

Maps helped. So did novels. So did museums. They were all part of the same architecture of control. When students read of the “Middle East” or “Far East,” they are not just reading directions—they are seeing the world through the coordinates of colonialism. As if Europe sits naturally at the center of the world, and all else is defined by its distance from it.

The process of Othering is subtle, but powerful. It turns people into symbols. It takes a person with a full, complex life and shrinks them into a type: the veiled woman, the angry man, the mystical sage. These are not truths. They are fictions with consequences.

To teach this region honestly, we must not just name places accurately—we must listen to how those places name themselves. We must look beyond the textbook and hear the voices that were silenced in its making. Because if we do not question who gets to speak, we will always mistake the echo of power for the voice of truth.


Comments

  1. David Tyler Rand-McKayJune 20, 2025 at 12:28 PM

    TLDR When we talk about 'the Other,' we’re not just talking about difference—we’re talking about power. Europe made the East its opposite: exotic, backward, mysterious. Not to understand it, but to control it. To Other someone is to turn them into a story you tell about them instead of letting them speak. And that story shows up in maps, in museums—even in how we teach. Question it.

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