Edward Said and James Joyce

Admittedly, I really don't have much experience when it come to world literature.  It's embarrassing because you would think that a liberal arts education would furnish students with voices, opinions, and styles from all over the globe.  Although I've been exposed to some amazing literature during the course of my education, I can only think of one time I was assigned a book written by an Eastern author (Rushdie).  Besides some African American and Native American literature, I'd say 99% of every book I have read during my studies were written by either American or British white guys. Nevertheless, the works of James Joyce have been the most informative when it comes to both post-colonial writing and misconceptions of the Middle East. 

Obviously it's impossible to draw neat parallels between Joyce's Ireland and the entire Middle East but I think Said would agree with many of the same colonial apparatuses that are set up in Dubliners, Portrait, or Ulysses.  For instance, Said wrote On Orientalism to illustrate the disparity between popular perceptions of Arab culture and the reality of Arab culture.  What is interesting when it comes to Joyce is that this idea is used to such a great ironic effect that it becomes central to many post colonial criticisms on Joyce.  Almost everyone in Dubliners, for example, is obsessed with classic notions of the orient.  Either they desperately want to escape to some Middle Eastern harem or talk about it vaguely as if it were a place drunk and depressed Catholics can only dream of.  In reality, most of those countries at the time were facing some level of colonial persecution from the exact same culture with which Ireland had been at odds.  Said would cringe at these characters ideas of the orient and would argue that they are a result of rampant colonialism.  The side effect of this on Arab cultures was and still is destructive since it allowed England and France to take control of these cultures early on.  By creating caricatures of Arabians and the Middle East, they were able to convey the message of superiority to both Arabs and Englishmen.  Joyce is very aware of the trick and lets his Dubliners espouse Irish nationalist rhetoric.  Of course, that rhetoric is in opposition to the Protestants but it also calls for Ireland to go back to its "roots", like river dancing or folk songs about Finn MacCool.  In essence, these are merely cliches that were designed by the British to keep Ireland from modernizing, which was exactly the plight of Egypt before the army crossed the Suez canal in 1973 to prove they in fact weren't the cowards they had been staged as (Irish parallel=Irish Republican Army)

Sadly, Joyce is my only literary point of access when it come to post colonial criticisms.  I want to gain a more expansive knowledge of Eastern culture than what I have gleamed from the character of Leopold Bloom.  Hopefully, this class will fill in the most important gaps.

-Corey Scibilia