Edward Said's Orientalism

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Subsequently, in Edward Said’s Orientalism discusses about the West’s patronizing perceptions and illusory depiction of the East, which connects why white men had stereotypes of other races. According to Said:
Orientalism is never far from what Denys Hay ahs called the idea of Europe, a collective notion identifying ‘us’ Europeans as against all ‘those’ non-Europeans, and indeed it precisely what made that culture hegemonic both in and outside Europe: the idea of European identity as superior one in comparison with ass the non-European peoples and cultures (7).
In other word, Europeans identified them superior than other non-Europeans, which made them identified as the self and non-Europeans as “the other.” This connects to Antoinette’s husband …show more content…

In other words, the author is comparing Antoinette’s husband treated her as “the other” like the other white men treated black slave women as “the other.” The reason her husband treated as “the other” is because her husband is a white man, which has racial stereotype and want to control everything he owned. Antoinette’s creole identity would suffer from any white men’s hand. Even she is their wives. Any white man would do the same thing because they want to control everything and feel they were more privileged, which connects to why her husband want to possess her. Wickramagamage also states, “…she is quick to jump to their defense when her husband misunderstands their behavior, she never attempts to dissolve the racial divide that separates her from them in the racialized social hierarchy of the West Indies. In fact, she is quick to take offence, and quick to resort to racial slurs” (36). This shows that Antoinette was just defending her husband’s stereotype of Christophine and didn’t try to dissolve her husband’s racial stereotypes on her identity. As a result, she was suffering from her husband’s racial stereotype eventually and to be treated as “the other.” We can say that she was the one who let this happened because she was just embraced whatever she faced, which connects to why her husband would still have racial stereotypes on her and her husband could control easily. Overall, races and gender were treated as “the other” is due to white men’s obsession of control and they were just embraced whatever they

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