History / Poland and Orientalism [115]

Edward Said, the author of the 1978 landmark tome Orientalism, wrote his doctoral thesis on Joseph Conrad (Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski). Said's affinity for Conrad is understandable when one compares the two authors life histories. Conrad was the scion of a noble Polish family who left his home in Berdyczów because of Russian occupation. Said was the scion of a noble Jerusalemite family forced to leave their home in Palestine by Zionist occupation. Both men found themselves exiles in the English speaking world and both men mastered English to become preeminent in their fields of endeavor, Conrad in literature and Said in literary criticism and cultural studies. Analysis of a Polish writer’s work was a good place to start for the man who would later write Orientalism because Poland, like Palestine, has been the victim of Orientalism. Orientalism is a Western mode of thinking that projects a wild and irrational essence onto Eastern peoples and thus justifies Western political dominance over them. In the case of Poland this Orientalism was historically perpetrated primarily by Germans. (Russians, for obvious reasons, couldn’t get away with such nonsense and instead justified their dominance over Eastern Poland by what may be termed “Occidentalism”). Although Poland is now independent we on this forum still see Orientalism quite often in the content of posters from the West who portray Poles as a backwards folk who should be grateful for the enlightenment they, as English teachers or other professionals, provide. Since today, May 15th, is the day the world remembers the dispossession of the Palestinian people by foreign powers let us also remember Poland’s struggle against partition and vow to oppose those who continue to Orientalize Palestinians, Poles, or any other people.