未命名6
Write no more than 3-5 paragraphs per answer, no more than one page per question. You are not
eing tested on the length of your answer but on the soundness of the argument, engagement with
the content and understanding of the main concepts introduced up to this point in the course.
1. Edward Said’s use of the term Orientalism has three distinctive meanings or areas of
entanglement, but his work drives at the role of scholarship in furthering empire and power.
Discuss Said’s definition of Orientalism, and illustrate with examples from the reading and
lecture notes on how the world is shaped by colonial forces?
2. Edward Said introduces the idea of Latent and Manifest Orientalism, what is the theoretical
foundation behind it, how does he map it and what are the impacts in the real world? What
are the links between Latent and Manifest Orientalism on the formulation of policy relating
to the Global South?
3. The idea of Orientalism was originally focused on the Middle East but, in due time, Said’s
work has extended beyond the initial scope and served as a steppingstone for the emergence
of postcolonial theory and an examination of the whole field of representation that is
deployed opposite the Global South. How do we understand Said’s work in settings outside
the original scope, how the system of representation is modified to fit diverse regions and
what interests are served by it? More critically, how are academic writings and scholarship
eproducing these representation systems and get deployed as “objective” knowledge?
4. The Colonizer and Colonized by Albert Memmi is a critical examination of the relationship
etween the two protagonists in the colonial drama. What is Albert Memmi’s main argument
in this book, what impact did it have on the understanding of the relationship between the
two protagonist and what did he mean when he says that the colonized become “divorced
from reality”?
5. Contrast and compare Memmi’s two portraits, the colonizer and the colonized, and how
each set of representations serves to cement the colonial structure, while understanding that
it is unstable at the core and will eventually collapse?
6. Both Fanon and Memmi introduce the idea of the colonized being “presumed a thief” and
“guilty” and is central to the colonial condition. What do both mean by this presumption and
what role does it play in shaping the structure that governs the colony-internal and external?
7. In Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon gives considerable space to discussing the Colonized
intellectual and the role they play in the colonial society. What is Fanon’s main argument
about the colonized intellectual, what role they plan, the shifts or possible transformation
they undertake once a people revolution is underway and what is your own assessment of
his framing of the problem?
8. Using lecture notes and contents from Erasing the Human, discuss the six features of
colonization and expand on one aspect that spoke to you directly? You can use direct citation
and other outside elements, if needed.
9. Several lectures and PowerPoint presentations focused on the centrality of race, as an
independent category of analysis and the role it plays in every facet of life, both in the US
and across the world. Discuss the concept of race, how is it situated, what factors influence
it in the society and why is it, or possibly, is not an independent category of analysis?
Syllabus for Middle East_ Post-Colonialism, Migration, and Diaspora (Fall 2022)