''Orientalising'' the Egyptian uprising http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/72938

The narrative of the Egyptian revolution is being distorted by old, Western ways of seeing the Arab world. Rabab El-Mahdi suggests a different narrative.The fundamental pillars of these Orientalist understandings of Arab societies and individuals are based on: 1. ‘Othering’ - ‘they’ (Arabs or Muslims) are different from ‘us’ (Western, specifically European) who are the normative standard.2. Romanticisation and exotisation - this oriental ‘other’ is mystical and mythical.

As Edward Said explained years ago, Orientalism is not only confined to ‘Western’ depictions of the Middle East -and particularly Arabs and Muslims - but it is also internalised and propagated by ‘local’ elites. As such, in the new grand narrative of ‘Arab Awakening’ both academics and the media (international and local) are appropriating, interpreting, and representing the recent events along the same pillars of ‘othering’ and, ‘romanticisation’, while casting Eurocentric judgments.

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