The interpretation of oriental dogmas through images

Abstract

Orientalism was constructed through colonial experience and the estrangement between the cosmologies between the West and the East. The author Edward Saïd stands out as the reference for orientalist studies. For him, Orientalist practices can be identified through four dogmas, namely: the differences in development between the West and the East, the preference for the description of the classical East over the modern, the utopianvision of the east seen as eternal and the imagem of a fearful East. According to Edward Saïd, orientalist practices can be identified through four dogmas. The Orientalist Art, exemplified in this article through paintings made in the Victorian century, constitutes as an important tool of interpretation of the Orientalism dogmas. It’s the purpose of this article intends to show that the understanding of the dogmatic manifestation of Orientalism in the paintings enables us to project it into other forms of language, increasing our critical capacity and qualifying our interpersonal relations and political analysis, both based on the exercise of identity opposition.