“East is East and West is West”

“All knowledge that is about human society, and not about the natural world, is historical knowledge, and therefore rests upon judgment and interpretation. This is not to say that facts or data are nonexistent, but that facts get their importance from what is made of them in interpretation… for interpretations depend very much on who the interpreter is, who he or she is addressing, what his or her purpose is, at what historical moment the interpretation takes place,” wrote Edward W. Said, author of the seminal “Orientalism”. In this episode we walk through some of the key points in the analysis of the historical construction of the Other of Western civilization, and therefore of itself.