Key Terms to Learn Before Hand for Lucid Understanding

1) Culture: The ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society.
2) Imperialism: a policy of extending a country's power and influence through colonization, use of
military force, or other means.
3) Orientalism: Orientalism derives from a Latin word orient meaning "east" (literally "rising sun").
This is the opposite of the term Occident. In terms of the Old World, Europe was considered to
be "The West" or Occidental, and the furthest known Eastern extremity was "The East" or "The
Orient."
4) And when we talk about Orientalism we basically talk about the style, artifacts (man-made
objects often referring to primitive tools), or traits considered characteristic of the peoples and
cultures of Asia.
5) Multiculturalism: the presence of, or support for the presence of, several distinct cultural or
ethnic groups within a society.
6) Hybridism: Genetics The offspring of genetically dissimilar parents or stock, especially the
offspring produced by breeding plants or animals of different varieties, species, or races.
Something of mixed origin or composition, such as a word whose elements are derived from
different languages.
7) Fundamentalism: strict adherence to the basic principles of any subject or discipline.
8) Colonialism: The policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another
country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.
9) Reflexivity (A Social Theory): It refers to circular relationships between cause and effect. A
reflexive relationship is bidirectional with both the cause and the effect affecting one another in
a relationship in which neither can be assigned as causes or effects.

Key Points: Why and how does Said relate Culture and Imperialism?
1) Edward Said Introduction (Place of Birth, Academic Profile, Works, year of death etc.)
2) Culture and Imperialism is a speech about the same subject, he delivered at York University,
Toronto, February 10, 1993.
3) Saids views on Culture and Imperialism: Culture and Imperialism is a lecture by ES. It briefly
surveys the formation of Western Culture to show that the process itself was a result of
imperialism. In defining the two terms he says that,
4) Definition of Culture: The learned, accumulated experience of communities and it consists of
socially transmitted patterns of behavior. According to the anthropologist Cliff Greety, Culture
is: An ordered system of meanings and symbols in terms of which social interaction take place.
5) Imperialism: An aggressive expansion of peoples at the expense of the neighbors.
6) Expansion of Western (British) Colonies on an astonishing scale during the nineteenth century.
From 1800 to 1878, the imperial metropolitan centres expand their control over 83,000 square
miles territory per year, and from 1878 to 1914 the expansion rate jumped to 247,000 square
miles per year.
7) The economies were hungry for overseas markets, raw materials, cheap labour and profitable
land.
8) The US was founded as an empire, a dominion state of sovereignty that would expand in
population and territory, and increase in power.
9) Neither imperialism, nor colonialism is a simple act of accumulation and acquisition. Its not just
a matter of going on it. Both of these practices are supported and even impelled by impressive
cultural formations that include ideas that certain territories require and beseech domination.
10) Colonialism and imperialism did not pay their dues when they withdraw their flags and police
forces from our territories. (Franz Fanon)
11) Its an absolute requirement of the western system of ideology that a vast gulf be established
between the civilized west, with its traditional commitment to human dignity, liberty and self-
determination and the barbaric brutality of those who, for some reason, perhaps defective genes,
fail to appreciate the depth of this historical commitment.
12) ---- in the British and French cases the sheer distance of attractive territory summoned the
projection of far-flung interests. That is my focus here, partly because I am interested in
examining the cultural form and structures of feeling which it produces and partly because
overseas domination is the world I grew up in, and we still live in.
13) The goal of US foreign policy is to bring about a world increasingly subject to the rule of law. But,
it is the United States which organizes the peace and defines the law. The United States imposes
the international interests by setting the ground rules for economic development and military
development across the planet.
14) The US, uniquely blessed with surpassing riches and an exceptional history, stands above the
international system, not within it.
15) Imperialism has caused dislocations, homelessness for the Muslims, Africans and the West
Indian
16) The solution is the revised attitude to education, to urge students on insistence of their identity,
culture and democracy, thus nationalism is the solution.
17) The relationship between culture and empire is one that enables disquieting forms of
domination. Imperialism considered the mixture of cultures and identities on a large scale, but its
worst and the most paradoxical gift was to allow people to believe that there only white, black,
western or oriental.
18) Conclusion: Saids message is that Imperialism is not about a moment in history, it is about a
continuing interdependent discourse between subject peoples and the dominant empire. Saids
view of the empire and colonialism is best expressed through Fanny and Sir Thomas from Jane
Austens Mansfield Park which is the story of Fannys being taken into Sir Thomass life at
Mansfield Park where she eventually adjusts into the role of mistress of estate. Fanny was
poor. Her parents are not capable managers of wealth. These skills she acquires when she goes
 to Mansfield Park to live at 10. Saids comment on Jane Austens writings highlight the extent to
which he sees in her the reflection of empire.

Quotations for Why and how does Said relate Culture and Imperialism?
1) Neither imperialism, nor colonialism is a simple act of accumulation and acquisition. Its not just
a matter of going on it. Both of these practices are supported and even impelled by impressive
cultural formations that include ideas that certain territories require and beseech domination.

2) Colonialism and imperialism did not pay their dues when they withdraw their flags and police
forces from our territories. (Franz Fanon)

3) Its an absolute requirement of the western system of ideology that a vast gulf be established
between the civilized west, with its traditional commitment to human dignity, liberty and self-
determination and the barbaric brutality of those who, for some reason, perhaps defective
genes, fail to appreciate the depth of this historical commitment.

4) ---- in the British and French cases the sheer distance of attractive territory summoned the
projection of far-flung interests. That is my focus here, partly because I am interested in
examining the cultural form and structures of feeling which it produces and partly because
overseas domination is the world I grew up in, and we still live in.

5) The last point I want to make is that this is an exiles book. Ever since I remember, I have felt
that I belonged to both the Worlds, without being completely of either one or the other, He
says. (To conclude the answer, I would rather write this quotation than point number 18)

Key Points: Use of Reference to Classical English Novelists, its context & purpose
1) The main idea of the book is inspired by Orientalism. In Orientalism was limited to Middle East.
But this book presents a clear picture of the domination on the distant territories of the countries
of Asia and Africa for capturing their natural responses of raw materials by western power.
2) Ironical the subject matter of many notable novelists was not the British imperialistic agenda.
Instead they wrote in favour of the atrocities inflicted upon native just to make the barbaric
people civilized.
3) Edward said, an unsparing critic of imperialism, comes down hard on novelists who ignore the
seamy side of imperialism.
4) He believes that the novel has played an important role in the formation of imperialist attitude in
the 19th and 20th century.
5) Speaking of the importance of fiction in the formation of his argument against imperialism, he
says, ------ narrative is crucial to my argument here, my basic point being that stories are at the
heart of what explores and novelists say about strange regions of the world; they also become
the method colonized people use to assert their identity and existence of their own history.
 6) Said believes that stories may motivate the people to struggle for emancipation.
7) Edward said shows ill-regard for Jane Austen, Dickens, Thackeray, Balfour, Forster and Kipling
8) He singles out Conrad and speaks highly of him. He is his ardent admirer.
9) Said also admires Graham Greene and V.S. Naipaul for their equally severe view of Western
imperialistic illusions.
10) Conclusion: To conclude, we may sat that Saids critical outlook was of course, influenced by his
pre-World War II colonial background. It had to be, because being a Palestinian by birth, he
himself belonged to a dispossessed and displace nations. Hence his profound sympathy for such
nations and disgust of imperialism. And hence his habit of liking imperialistic context in the works
of Western novelists.

Quotations: Use of Reference to Classical English Novelists, its context & purpose
1) narrative is crucial to my argument here, my basic point being that stories are at the heart of
what explores and novelists say about strange regions of the world; they also become the method
colonized people use to assert their identity and existence of their own history.

2) Much of the rhetoric of the New World Order promulgated by the American government since
the end of the Cold War with its redolent self-congratulation, it unconcealed triumphalism, its
grave proclamations of responsibility might have been scripted by Conrads Holroyd; We are
number one; we are bound to lead, we stand for freedom and order and so on.

3) Charles Gould, the British owner of a mine says: We shall run the worlds business whether the
world likes it or not.

4) The appropriations of history, the historicization of the past, the narrativization of society, all of
which give the novel its force, include the accumulation and differentiation of social space, space
to be used for social purposes.

5) Texts are not finished objects.

6) ..Culture is not monolithic either and is not the exclusive property of the East or West nor of the
small groups of men and women.