Orientalism

1) Orientalism tries to answer the question of why, when we think of the Middle East for example, we have a preconceived notion of what kind of people lives there, what they believe, how they act. Even though we may never have been there, or indeed even met anyone from there. More generally Orientalism asks, how do we come to understand people, strangers, who look different to us by virtue of the colour of their skin?”

2)   How do we understand the natives we are encountering so we can conquer and subdue them easier? This process of Orientalism makes this general process more formal in that it presents itself as objective knowledge. Said identifies "Napoleons"  conquest of Egypt in 1798 as marketing a new kind of imperial and colonial conquest, that inaugurates the project of orientalism.

3) In American Orientalism The differences between different kinds of Orientalisms are in effect the differences between different experiences of what is called the Orient. Edward said signify that mean the difference between Britain and France on the one hand and the United States on the other, is that Britain and France had colonies in the Orient. So difference between British and French Orientalism on the one hand and the American experience of the Orient on the other is that the American one is much more indirect, much more based on abstractions.

4) Edward said draw on work of Antonio Gramsci,
“Therefore the task at the outset, is to try to compile an inventory,” in
other words to try and make sense of it. And this seems to me to be the most interesting sort of human task. It's the task of interpretation. It's a task of giving history some shape and sense, for a particular reason, not just to show that my history is better than yours, or my history is worse than yours.

5) the central argument of Orientalism is that the way that we acquire this knowledge is not innocent or objective but the end result of a process that reflects certain interests. That is ,it is highly motivated.