Edward Said begins the Introduction of Orientalism paraphrasing the narrative of a French journalist Thierry Desjardins as he expresses his view of the present day Orient foregrounding the stereotypical representation of the Orient. Said’s work Beginnings is seen to be the beginning of this academic enterprise: “To begin to write, therefore, is to work a set of instruments, to invent a field of play for them to enable performance” (24). Critics like Joshua Muravchik assert how the phenomenon hailed a new era for leftism in which ‘people of color’ substituted the proletariat as the redeemers of humankind. Said examines the interplay of dichotomies that has been built under the tutelage of the West. Orientalism (1978) forms a trilogy with other works such as The Question of Palestine (1979) and Covering Islam (1981), the first of the two that established his career. Said sets out to delineate the West’s supercilious stance and condescending conceptions of the East. Said’s Orientalism exposes the Eurocentric universalism built on a self-reflexive history in terms of the East.
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