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Orient in the Western Culture: Representations, Insights, Misundcrstandings

Assoc. Prof. Maurice N. Fadel New Bulgarian University Department of New Bulgarian Studies, Sofia, Bułgaria

e-mail: morisf2001 @yahoo.com General Description

The relations betwecn the Orient and the West are usually rcprcscntcd through the language of repression. In the interpretation oF thesc relations, Edward Said's conccpt of “orientalism”, which transfers the Foucaulfs theory of power-knowledge to the intcractions betwecn Europę and the Orient, is adopted. Europę is considcrcd as colonizing the Orient not through power, but rather through the institutions of knowledge - by a careful studying the cultures of the so-callcd “Orient”, by a “good will to understand” (Gadamer) rhem, which, however, deprives them of the opportunity to speak for themsehes. The Orient turns out to be catched in the orbit of the W est through the loss of language by means of which it can describe itself. Armcd wifh the conccpt of “orientalism”, the rescarcher usually shows how the Orient is manipulativcly “inserted” into the W estern representation machinę, how it bccomcs part of the imperial behavior of the West.

The coursc consisting of four lectures and one workshop, which aims to give another picture of the links betwecn the West and the Orient. It will try to analyze these links not in terms of the power. We will tracę certain moments of the presence of the Orient in the cultures of the so-called ‘‘West”, paying attention not to the repressive distortion of the “image” of the Orient by the West, but by looking at the moments when there are intcractions betwecn the West and the Orient which are not determined by language the domination, the moments when the West cjuestiones its imperial attitude towards the Orient in order to find new ways to express itself.

The Strangc Namc of a Train: Crimc Friction and Orient

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W hy does the murder in the celebrated novcl by Agatha Christi happen on a train that bears the name “Orient I .xpress”? The lecturc will show that this is not a chance fact. The crimc fiction - a literary phenomenon that bclongs simultaneously to the high and to the mass culture - relates to Orient not in the superficial sense of the word (as motives, themes or plot). The liaison of the crime fiction to the Orient determines the structure and the messages of genre. The lecture will pay special attention to the figurę of the detectiee without which the genre wouldn’t be what it is, and which is impossible without the influence of the Orient.

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