Few theoretical works have marked the last decades of the twentieth century as deeply as Orientalism by the American-Palestinian intellectual Edward Said (1935-2003).

Since its first publication in 1978, the book has been translated into dozens of languages and has become a landmark work for scholars of comparative literature, the Human Sciences in general, and for historians of colonialism. Said, scrutinizing the ways in which the Arab-Muslim East has been represented in Western literature over the past centuries, as well as in other parallel discourses—scientific, geographical, administrative, etc.—that have been steadily developed by Western colonial powers during their era of global expansion, demonstrated how the "West" forges its own identity through the construction of its "negative": a falsely homogeneous and misleadingly derogatory image of the "East," one that justifies the supremacy and dominance of the "white man."

He simultaneously posed broader questions of interest, such as: What criteria constructed the so-called "Western literary canon"? What determined the imposition of English as a global language? What connects the textual functions of representation with the political functions of representation?

From his problematic emerged an entire academic field of our time, the so-called Postcolonial Studies.