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Hegemony
Semitic refers to the cultural and ethnic groups associated with the family of languages that include Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, ancient Phoenician, ancient Akkadian, and others. The term was coined in the early 19th century as the study of ancient languages (philology) was uncovering the associations between different languages and cultures in the ancient world. Although in the contemporary period, “semitic” has come to be strongly associated with the Jewish culture, throughout much of the 18th and 19th centuries, the umbrella term lumped Jewish people with other cultures of the so-called Orient, including Muslim and Arab people.
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Semitic Term Timeline in Orientalism
The timeline below shows where the term Semitic appears in Orientalism. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1, Part 2
...discipline of Orientalism is established in 1312, when European universities began to endow chairs of Semitic (Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac) languages. Over the next 650 years, the discipline expands to encompass...
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Chapter 2, Part 2
...of the encounter between the philologist and the Orient (specifically, for him, the study of Semitic languages and people) from a religious framework to a scientific one. In this light, he...
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...Said points out that Renan’s justification for his studies—based on the foundational idea that the Semitic (person, language or culture) is somehow aberrant—is circular. By identifying the Semitic as different, he...
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Chapter 3, Part 3
...colonialism, Massignon cannot transcend the essentializing idea that modern Oriental subjects are first and foremost Semites—that is, a vestige of an ancient past perfectly preserved and somewhat incongruously set down amid...
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Chapter 3, Part 4
...empty vessel into which Westerners can put their “traditional, latent mistrust” of Oriental subjects, specifically Semitic—and even more specifically, Arab—people. This has something to do with the West’s involvement in the...
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...Orientalism is the way that the Zionist movement and the creation of Israel split the “Semitic myth” in two, aligning the Jewish people (or at least democratic Israel) with Western Orientalism...
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