Orientalism as a Device of Violence: Representation and Subordination in the Construction of Alterity
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14422/ryf.vol289.i1466.y2025.004Keywords:
orientalism, violence, device, economy of violence, cultural subordination, alterity, otherness, neo-orientalismAbstract
In this article, we examine the interrelations between orientalism and violence, proposing a reconceptualization of the former as a “device”. Through a critique and expansion of Said’s notions of the term, we analyze the multiple facets of Orientalism as a conceptual and epistemic device intrinsic to the human experience that establishes and (re)configures both hierarchies and cultural subordinations. We argue that orientalism entails an inherent conceptual violence, unfolding in various stages where it manifests in different forms. Thus, the proposed reconceptualization enables the visualization of the power dynamics underlying the discursive construction of a horizon of “Orient(s)” as well as the instrumentalization of these categories in specific historical and political contexts. Finally, we emphasize the utility of such tool in unveiling and confronting the underlying violences embedded in representations of alterity through an economy of violence.
Downloads
References
Agamben, G. (2011). ¿Qué es un dispositivo? Sociológica 26(73), 249-264.
Akram, S. M. (2000). Orientalism Revisited in Asylum and Refugee Claims. International Journal of Refugee Law 12(7, 1), 7-40. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijrl/12.1.7
Altwaiji, M. (2014). Neo-Orientalism and the Neo-Imperialism Thesis: Post- 9/11 US and Arab World Relationship. Arab Studies Quarterly 36(4), 313- 323. https://doi.org/10.13169/arabstudquar.36.4.0313
App, U. (2010). The Birth of Orientalism. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Aristóteles. (1991). Política. Alianza.
Barbero, I. (2016). Citizenship, identity and otherness: the orientalisation of immigrants in the contemporary Spanish legal regime. International Journal of Law in Context 12(3), 361-376. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744552316000252
Benesch, O. (2014). Inventing the Way of the Samurai. Nationalism, Internationalism, and Bushido in Modern Japan. Oxford University Press.
Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The Location of Culture. Routledge.
Bhabha, H. K. (1983). The Other Question: the Stereotype and Colonialist Discourse. Screen 24(6), 18-36. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/24.6.18
Clarke, J. J. (1997). Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter Between Asian and Western Thought. Routledge.
Clifford, J. (1988). The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Harvard University Press.
De las Casas, B. (2003). Brevísima Relación de las Destrucción de las Indias. Anauco.
Deleuze, G. (1990). ¿Qué es un dispositivo? En E. Balbier, G. Deleuze, H. L. Dreyfus, et al., Michel Foucault, filósofo (pp. 155-163). Gedisa.
Derrida, J. (1989). Violencia y metafísica. Ensayo sobre el pensamiento de Emmanuel Levinas. En La escritura y la diferencia. Anthropos.
Descartes, R. (1650). Specimina philosophiae: seu dissertatio de methodo recte regendae rationis, & veritatis in scientiis investigandae. Dioptrice, et Meteora Ex Gallico translata, & ab auctore perlecta, variique in locis emendata. Ludovicum Elzevirium.
Foucault, M. (1994). Dits et Écrits III: 1976-1979. Gallimard.
Frainais-Maitre, M. J. (2013). The Edifying and Curious Letters: Jesuit China and French Philosophy. En Yangweng Zheng (ed.), The Chinese Chameleon Revisited: From the Jesuits to Zhang Yimou (pp. 34-60). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Friday, K. F. (1994). Bushidō or Bull? A Medieval Historian’s Perspective on the Imperial Army and the Japanese Warrior Tradition. The History Teacher 27(3), 339-349. https://doi.org/10.2307/494774
Gadamer, H. G. (1992). Hombre y lenguaje. En Verdad y Método II. Sígueme.
Heidegger, Martin (2004). ¿Qué es la filosofía? Herder.
Heródoto (1977). Historia. Libro II Euterpe. Gredos.
Huntington, S. P. (1996). The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Simon & Schuster.
Junuzi, V. (2019). Refugee Crisis or Identity Crisis: Deconstructing the European Refugee Narrative. Journal of Identity and Migration Studies 13(2), 117-147.
King, R. (2001). Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and the ‘Mystic East’. Routledge.
Lowe, L. (1991). Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalism. Cornell University Press.
Lowe, L. (2015). The Intimacies of Four Continents. Duke University Press.
Mignolo, W. D. (2000). Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton University Press.
Minear, R. H. (1980). Orientalism and the Study of Japan. The Journal of Asian Studies, 39(3), 507-517. https://doi.org/10.2307/2054678
Moro Abadía, O. (2003). ¿Qué es un dispositivo?. Empiria. Revista de Metodología de Ciencias Sociales, 6, 29-46. https://doi.org/10.5944/empiria.6.2003.933
Navarrete, M. F., (ed.). (1922). Viajes de Cristóbal Colón con una carta. Calpe.
Navarro, T. R. (2008). El discurso orientalista en la traducción francesa (1927) del Bushido de Nitobe. Inter Asia Papers, 5, 1-26.
Nitobe, I. (1969). Bushido. The Soul of Japan. Tuttle Publishing.
Paniker, A. (2005). Índika: Una descolonización intelectual. Reflexiones sobre la historia, la etnología, la política y la relición en el Sur de Asia. Kairós.
Platón (1992). Diálogos VI. Filebo, Timeo, Critias. Gredos.
Rocher, R. (1993). British Orientalism in the Eighteenth Century: The Dialectics of Knowledge and Government. En C. A. Breckenridge y P. Van der Veer (Eds.), Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives On South Asia New Cultural Studies (pp. 215-249). University of Pennsylvania Press.
Rodinson, M. (1988). Europe and the Mystique of Islam. Tauris.
Said, E. W. (2002). Orientalismo. Penguin Random House.
Said, E. W. (1998). The Myth of the Clash of Civilizations. Media Education Foundation.
Said, E. W. (1985). Orientalism Reconsidered. Cultural Critique, 1, 89-107. https://doi.org/10.2307/1354282
Saimiei, M. (2010) Neo-Orientalism? The relationship between the West and Islam in our globalised world. Third World Quarterly, 31(7), 1145-1160. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2010.518749
Shumway, N. (1991). The Invention of Argentina. University of California Press.
Standaert, N. (1999). The Jesuits Did NOT Manufacture ‘Confucianism’. East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine, 16, 115-132. https://doi.org/10.1163/26669323-01601007
Standaert, N. (2000). The Classification of Sciences and the Jesuit Mission in Late Ming China. En Jan de Meyer y Engelfriet (Eds.), Linked Faiths: Essays on Chinese Religions and Traditional Culture in Honour of Kristofer Schipper (pp. 287-317). Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004488939_013
Ubieta López, J. A., Asensio, V. M. y García Rodríguez, S. (2009). Biblia de Jerusalén. Desclée de Brouwer.
Wahid, M. A. (2023). From Orientalism to neo-Orientalism: medial representations of Islam and the Muslim world. Textual Practice, 39(2), 162-181. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2023.2288112
Young, R. (1990). White Mythologies: Writing History and the West. Routledge.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Martín Ricardo López Angelini
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The authors of articles published in Razón y Fe retain the intellectual property rights over their works and grant the journal their distribution and public communication rights, consenting to their publication under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivates 4.0 Internacional. Authors are encouraged to publish their work on the Internet (for example, on institutional or personal pages, repositories, etc.) respecting the conditions of this license and quoting appropriately the original source.
