1. Said argued that the concept of the Orient as other serves to establish Europe and the West as the norm.

   1. In regards to the quote above, can the same be said in reverse? Who establishes what the “norm” is?

It can be said that the West as the norm serves to establish the the orient as the other, since Western culture in a way subconsciously established itself as the norm through various aspects. This idea of binary opposition where we identify as something being a certain way therefore we must be this, or the opposite of that concerning this particular topic traces back to the era of colonialism. Instead of these countries traveling and identifying the West, the West went and “discovered” them. That already puts these lands and people which just so happens to be parts of the Middle East, Asia and Africa in a state of inferiority or being uncivilized, whether that be the case or not. Since these lands were subject to colonization and then became partners in trade with the West, we have looked to these areas as foreign and mysterious. Thus creating the cultural construction Orientalism that establishes the East as the Orient and the west as the Occident or the norm. This construction is then maintained by familiar cultural representations, especially stereotypes though culture and the arts. This reinforcement is made by artists painting seductive women which started movements such as the Neoclassical, or pictures that can reinforce common false assumptions of how Egypt is mostly made up of sand dunes and  camels. These examples support how many of these stereotypes are still prominent today and can be easily identified through visual media. Cinema is full of cultural stereotypes and can be traced back to binary opposition such as in the movie The Mummy Returns where the plot is based on an Egyptian curse. Or Aladdin where the antagonist is tall dark, mysterious, a sorcerer and wears a turban. Not all of the Middle East is Muslim speaks Arabic and wears hijabs or turbans, yet that is how Western culture tends to associate those people. For a more recent example, not all Hawaiian men have tribal tattoos, wear straw skirts, and participate in luaus, yet that is the first thing that comes to mind when people of Western civilized culture think when they see the word Hawaii . A land that we took over not too long ago.  Therefore, The West or the Occident has established the norm by the events and practices throughout history such as colonization and control of other countries that have identified foreign land as unfamiliar and the Orient which unfortunately makes it subject to discrimination.

It is difficult to say if the West would have some sort of cultural construction if colonization didn’t occur, I’m sure some sort of stereotype would still be present just based on the advancement of Western civilization at the height of the era of colonization even if control wasn’t in place, just maybe not the certain extent of how associate Orientalism to the East like we do today. There would still be some sort of feeling towards foreign land due to trade. It would be interesting to theorize what would’ve happened if the situation was flipped. Would the West be the Orient and subject to similar discrimination?