Orientalism in Dominions

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

Plus, I personally disagree-even with your Egyptian friend-in the idea that Egypt is somehow the Orient. That just doesn't jibe with me, even if I were to accept the whole "Orient vs Occident" motif.

According to the dictionary, "Orient" applies loosely to basically everything East of the Mediterranean. Egypt sort of straddles that line, I suppose. But I agree, it's kind of weird to make a distinction that "everything but Europe is Oriental" - as perhaps that was the paradigm of perspective at one time, but (I guess) at least as an American, I never saw that. I was taught that Africa and the Middle East are distinct entities, and the Orient would be all of the East Asian nations, not including any part of Russia or its subsidiaries.

[Poopsi]

I think that for the most part Egypt has always been considered the Orient.

[Kristoffer O]

Egypt is the Orient!

There rises the sun.
There lies Heliopolis where the phoenix rises.
There man was born and civilization flowered.
There the mysteries flowered and died again.

Hidden from our eyes by sand.
Hidden from our reach by heat.
Hidden from our memory by millennia of time.

We will never understand the glory of the east.
And so we love it unconditionally.

---

Hmm, it was not my intention to write lyrics, but it fits well with the theme of the thread Just wanted to say that Egypt is more orient than even Constantinople in my eyes. I believe the original Orient would have been the Middle East and Egypt to the romans. The Orient is a roman concept, right?

[Gregstrom]

Originally Posted by Kristoffer O

The Orient is a roman concept, right?

I think it just got called that Occidentally.

Da-dum ching!

[Sombre]

And egypt = ctis = lizards.

Turns out omni was right. KO is a racist! :O

[NTJedi]

This seems similar to the issue where one individual was all bothered by the Jewish representation... was it Hinnom? I'm sure there's many dozen angles where religion, nationalities, culture, and other historic aspects could be found as annoying/inaccurate/offensive/etc .

I'm sure if a real MAJOR issue/conflict did exist we would have seen several huge topics discussing the issue... compared with one or two topics each year with very few individuals feeling there's a problem.

[Omnirizon]

Originally Posted by NTJedi

This seems similar to the issue where one individual was all bothered by the Jewish representation... was it Hinnom? I'm sure there's many dozen angles where religion, nationalities, culture, and other historic aspects could be found as annoying/inaccurate/offensive/etc .

I'm sure if a real MAJOR issue/conflict did exist we would have seen several huge topics discussing the issue... compared with one or two topics each year with very few individuals feeling there's a problem.

Actually this is exactly opposite.

Orientalism is a theory of _how_ we represent the Orient; not what is represented.

Using Orientalism, I cannot come and troll around, claiming that representations of the Orient in this game are degrading or false; Orientalism is in no position to judge the quality or truth of a representation. In fact it would reject any kind of judgment.

Orientalism would be entirely unconcerned with the content of a representation aside from demonstrating how it is a performance of Orientalism. If you read my posts, that's all I was concerned with doing. This was not an instrumentalist choice; I was not trying to make an instrumentally political statement where I could gather support for some cause. Theorists of Orientalism would reject this too. (On the whole, these theorists are intellectually elitists, and find the worldy norms of doing everything for an instrumental reason as part of what is wrong with the world. Consider that "Orientalization" happened and was used for instrumental reasons.)

Without going into the epistemics of the acts of the person who was complaining about Hinnom, I can just say that politically most theorists of Orientalism would find the representation of the Jewish tribes in this game as terribly ironic, and the humored ones would probably crack a smile. I've always said Dominions is a game of irony; and that's true.

[Spendios]

Is the Ramayana orientalist ? Just wondering because there are a lot of monkey people in

[Ewierl]

Huh, quite a thread you all got going here.

One thing that many number-counters/comparers seem to have missed: Caelum is "oriental" also. Their concept and national summons draw primarily from Zoroastrianism, which is basically Iranian.

Plus, whomever counted Caelians as 'non-humanoid' while counting EA Abysia as 'humanoid' is nuts

[Gregstrom]

Hmm... I think these were addressed at me.

Originally Posted by Ewierl

One thing that many number-counters/comparers seem to have missed: Caelum is "oriental" also. Their concept and national summons draw primarily from Zoroastrianism, which is basically Iranian.

I did count them as oriental, although it could go either way. The original race is said by the devs to be entirely fictional, with the Zoroastrian summons added later. I lumped them in as oriental just to be sure. Perhaps that's orientalism on my part.

Originally Posted by Ewierl

Plus, whomever counted Caelians as 'non-humanoid' while counting EA Abysia as 'humanoid' is nuts

I counted Abysia as human-shaped but non-human. Caelum are not human-shaped, by virtue of having great big wings. The groups I made were a bit arbitrary and I guess the edges are fuzzy.