Reinterpreting Edward Said: Feminist Interventions in Contemporary Discourse

Abstract

This paper focuses on Orientalism through the lens of contemporary feminist interventions to examine how Orientalist discourse is not only racial and cultural but also deeply gendered. It also argues that women in the “Orient” are doubly “Othered”: first as colonial subjects and second as women within patriarchal and imperial frameworks. Drawing upon feminist postcolonial theorists and selected contemporary feminist literary texts, the study explores how female writers challenge Orientalist stereotypes of the submissive, eroticized, and silenced Eastern woman. A gendered re-reading of Orientalism not only expands Said’s critical framework but also reveals how feminist fiction functions as a powerful counter-discourse that resists both colonial domination and patriarchal control. Thus, the study proposes that Gendered Orientalism is a crucial lens for understanding contemporary post-colonial literature and the evolving politics of representation in a globalized world.