Introduction: Romanticism, Orientalism, Orientation

Summary

Orientation, n.

• 1. The relative position or direction of something; the bearing or lie of a thing.

• 2. The placing or arranging of something so as to face the east.

Oxford English Dictionary

It is time for us to consider the significance of “the orient” in orientation, or even “the oriental.”

Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology

The Oxford English Dictionary's first definition of “orientation” reads “the relative position or direction of something” (OED). This definition is clear and reflective of current usage. However, the second definition of “orientation” reads, “the placing or arranging of something so as to face the east” (OED). What does it mean, then, to “face the east?” What is, who stands for, and where exactly is the east? To where does it lead? What happens when we redirect our lines of reading along new lines, borders, and orientations—those that fail to fit neatly into the cardinal directions of North, South, East, and West? In asking these questions, I seek a change in perspective—one that recovers our understanding of cultural appellations like the East and its historical counterpart, the “Orient.” These words constitute fundamental parts of an ambiguous and persistent taxonomy of racial, ethnic, and gendered subjects and objects. This book, at its root, interrogates the creation of the “Orient” and its “Oriental” subjects during the Romantic period.

From Immanuel Kant's question, “What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thought?” (1786) to the question of the exact locale of the “Orient” or “East” in Romantic literature, the interconnected logic of orientation and “Orient” has not been excavated in Romantic literary and cultural studies. How do geographical, continental, and hemispheric divisions buttress aesthetic investments in poetic forms and subjects? If hemispheric divisions make location, position, and subject possible, what happens when continental and hemispheric divisions mark certain subjects as perpetually other and distant? Sara Ahmed writes in Queer Phenomenology, “We might not be able to imagine the world without dividing the world into hemispheres, which are themselves created by the intersection of lines (the equator and the prime meridian), even when we know that there are other ways of inhabiting the world” (13).