Orientalism. Edward Said

His most prominent work, Orientalism (1978), is a famous American professor of Palestinian origin, literary critic, and influential public intellectual, Edward Said, devoted to the study of the interaction between the cultures of the West and the East. He views Orientalism as a holistic and powerful ideological system of the Western world's ideas about the Orient, which to a large extent determined and continues to determine relations between them, influencing the formation of identities and political decision-making. The author analyzes the views of Western scientists, philosophers, intellectuals, and artists and shows what prejudices about the East, and Islam in particular, they are permeated with, as well as how simplistic and false is the romanticized and exotic image of the East, formed by Europeans in order to assert their own political power, intellectual superiority, and colonial domination.