Western Self-Identity In Edward Said's Star Wars

The binary thought process and power dynamic invoked by Western history is very similar to the same thought process and power struggle the Jedi face with the "Others" in their universe. In the fictional universe of Star Wars, the Jedi are the guardians of the Star Wars universe, and the only beings powered by the mystical energy of the Force. The Force gives their lightsabers energy and gives them a constant source of "power", much like a wizard uses magic. The Jedi, the most powerful beings in the universe, function like the West in their position of power, they can distort laws and ways of living and thinking. In Edward Said’s Orientalism, he argues that the Orient is culturally and ideologically born through the process of Western self-identity,

and the separation of the Occident and the Orient through the Western-world’s man-made fantasy of the East. He establishes the Orient’s relationship with the Occident and the role the West played in establishing the distinction between the two, through this distinction, the West distorts the perception of the East, and with this altered perception the Western superiority complex is born which has material effects on the East. Power invokes a sense of superiority, stimulated by the fear of the unknown and the potential loss of self-identity, causing a binary thought process, which provokes a distorted understanding of the world and the place we have in it.
The fantasies of the East, or rather, Orientalism, were fabricated by the West and using this fictional identity, the West manipulates our perception of what we understand of the world from what it is.

The West uses its superiority, creating a bubble, filtering facets of the unknown to its own liking, further altering the unfamiliar, creating the separation of the Occident and the Orient, which instills a fear to truly understand unfamiliar. “…[T]he hegemony of European ideals about the Orient, themselves reiterating European superiority over Oriental backwardness usually overriding the possibility that a more independent, or more skeptical, thinker might have had different views on the matter” (Said 15). The West in many ways was born from the East, it provided the foundation for the development of Western civilization and was a main source for the expansion of the West’s languages. The West did not believe that the East was synonymous with itself, whether it was because of skin color, language barrier, cultural differences, political disparities, or social discrepancies, the West exploited these differences and characterized them as “evil”. With this new ideology, the West emerged itself in a one-sided struggle for power with the East, and the struggle was powered by the boundaries set in place for the fear of a potential loss of self-identity. This was how the binary thought process was born, and it gave the West justification for the false labeling of the East, and with

this altered identification, the West separated itself from the East.
The Jedi much like the West, established distorted ideologies that are a product of a misconstrued fear of the unknown, and the fear of change.

Much like how the West created an inaccurate depiction of the East, the Jedi constructs an “other”, which in the Star Wars universe, is the Sith. The disparity between the Jedi and the Sith is in the way they access the Force; the Jedi practice passivity, while on the other hand, the Sith have no boundaries set on they can channel the Force. This gives the Sith the potential to become more powerful than a practiced Jedi who follows the strict boundaries set in place by the Jedi Order. This fear of a loss of control, fuels the Jedi’s need to establish a binary thought process much like the relationship between the Occident and the Orient. Establishing this thought process makes it easier for the Jedi to enforce their crooked view of the Sith, instead of allowing free will and attempting to govern through a looser set of guidelines. In the third film of the Star Wars saga, young Jedi by the name of Anakin Skywalker ascended the ranks of the Jedi Order; he was powerful, but was overly confident and rebellious in following the laws in place by the Jedi. Since he was young, the Jedi feared the power he held at such a young age, and since he did not fit the typical Jedi mold, he was rejected from progressing through the Jedi ranks even further. This left Anakin distraught and vulnerable, leading to his temptation to the dark side. Using

Anakin’s fear to protect his family, he was lured to the dark side by the promise of power he could not achieve if he continued following the Jedi’s strict laws. The Jedi, like the West, are entrenched in a search for ultimate power, they alter ideologies to their own view in order to prevent people from offering a challenging opinion to the already established structure in place. The power dynamic between the Jedi and the Sith is like the power dynamic shared between the East and West, the Jedi and West are in the position of power, they distort our understanding of foreign cultures and ideas, in order to encourage a separation between the known and the unknown.
The power dynamic shared by the East and West along with the Jedi and the Sith is powered by fear, a fear of a loss of one’s self identity. The Jedi created a very narrow set of rules, and with this narrow mindedness the Jedi fall victim to creating an enemy of those that do not fit in their narrow system of living. The Jedi use their position of power to create a binary thought process like the West did, to continuously instill a fear of the unknown and the potential to lose one’s self by becoming like the so-called “others”. The creation of a self-identity was used by the West to separate itself from what it did not fully understand and what did not fit into the established system. Fear plays a major role in the shaping of our world, it keeps boundaries in place and scares people from attempting to search the boundaries or even to cross them. The West distinguishes itself from the East by highlighting the cultural differences, political differences, and social differences these two entities have, and misconstruing these differences to pit the East against the West for fear of becoming like the East. The West’s ultimate goal is total control.