Thanks to this student's paper I learned something about the ideas of the Palestinian-American literary critic Edward Said, about whom previously I had known almost nothing. Although I certainly did not become an expert on Said, as a result of reading this paper I did develop at least a basic understanding of his concepts of "Orientalism" and "Otherization." As I understand it, "Orientalism" is the term Said employed to describe what he claimed to be the tendency of Westerners (including scholars) to create an exotic but imaginary version of "the Orient" (meaning, at least initially, what is now called the Middle East, but later expanded to include Asia as well). "Otherization" (again, according to my understanding) is a related concept employed by Said to describe the (supposed) tendency of Westerners to depict non-Westerners as wholly different from themselves-the "other"--and to use that putative difference to justify an attitude of cultural superiority toward non-Westerners and even rationalize the exploitation of non-Westerners.
My student's argument was that in The Woman Warrior Hong Kingston essentially "otherizes" Chinese culture by making it seem totally exotic and bizzare to her American readers, thus reinforcing their preconceived notions about China and the Chinese. As I read her paper, however, I began to realize that her argument was perhaps not totally original. Thanks to some of the scholarly sources cited in her paper, I became aware of the fact that Said's theories of "Orientalism" and "Otherization" had gained a certain amount of popularity among Chinese academics writing about Chinese-American literature or more generally about Westerners' attitudes toward China.
After reading my student's paper, it didn't take long for me to realize why Said's ideas would become so popular in China. They fit very well with the narrative of China's victimization by the West that is often encountered in China. According to this narative, China was exploited in the past by Westerners, who exhibited an attitude of cultural superiority toward the Chinese (there is certainly historical evidence for this view, witness the famous sign in a Shanghai park: "No dogs or Chinese allowed"!); furthermore, modern critics of China are motivated by similar attitudes toward the Chinese, or perhaps by plain ignorance (or fear) of China. By applying Said's ideas to Western perceptions of China and Chinese culture, Chinese scholars could give an academic gloss to this China-as-victim trope.
Nevertheless, I find this embrace of Said's ideas by Chinese scholars to be problematic, for at least two reasons. First, it seems to ignore the fact that not only have Westerners had a sense of cultural superiority toward the Chinese, at times the Chinese have expressed a sense of cultural superiority vis-a-vis foreigners. After all, the name for China in Chinese--Zhongguo (中国)--literally means "Central Country" (sometimes more poetically translated as "the Middle Kingdom"), reflecting the belief of the Chinese for many cenuries that their country was the center of the civilized world (of course, others thought the same!). This sense of cultural superiority is reflected in an argument made by a Confucian scholar against the acceptance of Buddhism. His argument was essentially that since the Buddha was a foreigner, he had nothing of importance to teach the Chinese! It can even be argued that one reason why Westerners were able to exploit China in the 19th and early 20th centuries was that the this feeling of cultural superiority toward foreigners made the Chinese less willing to learn from Westerners, and thus they fell victim to the West's technological superiority (notably, the Japanese, who had a tradition of borrowing from other cultures, had less of a sense of cultural superiority and thus were more willing to learn from the West and were consequently less vulnerable to Western domination). In other words, we might say the Chinese "otherized" foreigners as much as foreigners "otherized" the Chinese, with adverse results for China.
Second, Said's arguments about "Orientalism" and "Otherization" are in some ways just another example of the tendency of some to portray white-skinned Europeans/Westerners as the source of nearly all evil in the world. Non-Westerners are depicted as merely the innocent victims of the evil Westerners (unless they collaborate with the oppressors!). Thus, for example, slavery is presented as being almost entirely the result of white people's profound racial prejudice against people with darker skin, ignoring the fact that slavery had long existed as an institution in many cultures before Europeans began to enslave Africans (this fact does not, of course, in any way justify slavery in the U.S. or other Western countries). Moreover, as I have demonstrated above, feelings of cultural superiority are not unique to Westerners! In fact, the real locus of evil in the world, I would suggest, is not people of a particular geographical origin or culture, but the human heart, which is, as the Bible says, "desperately wicked." In short, it is human sinfulness that leads to "otherization." Not, perhaps, a politically correct thought, but one that is, I believe, firmly grounded in the realities of human existence.