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Hamilton Gibb
The White Man is a character type that appears frequently in the works of British poet and novelist Rudyard Kipling. The White Man is strongly associated with the British citizen. Like the Orientalist (there is indeed a lot of overlap between the two), the White Man has specialist knowledge—the knowledge of civilization and power conferred to him by dint of being a member of the White race and a Western power. The White Man has a strong sense of his superiority over Oriental subjects, and also a finely tuned sense of responsibility toward them, which he uses to explain his acts of dominion over them. When pressed, he could and would turn to violence to impose his will on the world. Living examples of the White Man ideology include T. E. Lawrence and Richard Burton.
White Man Quotes in Orientalism
The Orientalism quotes below are all either spoken by White Man or refer to White Man . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 3, Part 2
Quotes
Being a White Man was therefore an idea and a reality. It involved a reasoned position towards both the white and the non-white worlds. It meant—in the colonies—speaking in a certain way, behaving according to a code of regulations, and even feeling certain things and not others. It meant specific judgements, evaluations, gestures. It was a form of authority before which nonwhites, and even whites themselves, were expected to bend. In the institutional forms it took (colonial governments, consular corps, commercial establishments) it was an agency for the expression, diffusion, and implementation of policy towards the world, and within this agency, although a certain personal latitude was allowed, the communal idea of being a White Man ruled. Being a White Man, in short, was a very concrete manner of being-in-the-world, a way of taking hold of reality, language, and thought. It made a specific style possible.
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The main issue for [early 20th- century Orientalists] was preserving the Orient and Islam under the control of the White Man.
A new dialectic emerges out of this project. What is required of the Oriental expert is no longer simply “understanding”: now the Orient must be made to perform, its power must be enlisted on the side of “our” values, civilization, interests, goals. Knowledge of the Orient is directly translated into activity, and the results give rise to new currents of thought and trends in the Orient. But these in turn will require from the White Man a new assertion of control, this time not as the author of a scholarly work on the Orient but as the maker of contemporary history, of the Orient as an urgent actuality […]
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White Man Quotes in Orientalism
The Orientalism quotes below are all either spoken by White Man or refer to White Man . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 3, Part 2
Quotes
Being a White Man was therefore an idea and a reality. It involved a reasoned position towards both the white and the non-white worlds. It meant—in the colonies—speaking in a certain way, behaving according to a code of regulations, and even feeling certain things and not others. It meant specific judgements, evaluations, gestures. It was a form of authority before which nonwhites, and even whites themselves, were expected to bend. In the institutional forms it took (colonial governments, consular corps, commercial establishments) it was an agency for the expression, diffusion, and implementation of policy towards the world, and within this agency, although a certain personal latitude was allowed, the communal idea of being a White Man ruled. Being a White Man, in short, was a very concrete manner of being-in-the-world, a way of taking hold of reality, language, and thought. It made a specific style possible.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
The main issue for [early 20th- century Orientalists] was preserving the Orient and Islam under the control of the White Man.
A new dialectic emerges out of this project. What is required of the Oriental expert is no longer simply “understanding”: now the Orient must be made to perform, its power must be enlisted on the side of “our” values, civilization, interests, goals. Knowledge of the Orient is directly translated into activity, and the results give rise to new currents of thought and trends in the Orient. But these in turn will require from the White Man a new assertion of control, this time not as the author of a scholarly work on the Orient but as the maker of contemporary history, of the Orient as an urgent actuality […]
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