Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

247many Orientalisms, not just one. For example, the Ottoman Empire embraced the Enlightenmentideals. The modernization of the Ottoman Empire necessitates an internalization of the West’srepresentation of its colonial subjects. The Ottoman reform system matches the Europeanunderstanding of imperialism. The European discourse of imperialism sees the colonial subjectsas inferior and, mainly, dependent on the West. Likewise, the Ottoman Empire legitimized theOttoman Turkish rule over the other subjects, mainly Muslims. Ottoman reformers wanted theArab provinces to be Ottomanized. What we have here is an Orientalism within Orientalism, anOrientalism in excess of representation. While subjecting Muslims and other minorities, theOttoman Empire is itself considered by the West as a fertile territory that needs to be cultivatedand governed by the West.The desire to domesticate the exotic East and reorder it according to an idealized image ofthe West’s class hierarchy makes it clear that it is Sameness rather than Otherness and the desireto replicate a certain vision of the imperial order throughout the world that have motivated thecolonial enterprise. What needs to be noted at this juncture is that, besides staging the missedencounter between the Orient and the Occident, Said’s work falls into the trap of the Westernessentialist discourse. The West’s representation of the East constitutes a Foucauldiandiscoursea system governed by discontinuities and interruptions. These discontinuities,however, construct knowledge and are characteristic of the missed encounter. Interested in theconstruction of knowledge, the Western discourse establishes a network of power relationships.Said does not talk about the interaction between the colonizer and the colonizer. What we have isanother binarist discourse. Though he is preoccupied with the construction of the Orient in theWestern discourses, Said considers all Western discourses about the East as misrepresentations