Orientalism

Alexander Lyon Macfie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138161788
• eBook ISBN: 9781317875321
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

At a crucial moment in the history of relations of East and West, Orient and Occident, Christianity and Islam, Orientalism provides a timely account of the subject and the debate.

In the 1960s and 1970s a powerful assault was launched on 'orientalism', led by Edward Said. The debate ranged far beyond the traditional limits of 'dry-as-dust' orientalism, involving questions concerning the nature of identity, the nature of imperialism, Islamophobia, myth, Arabism, racialism, intercultural relations and feminism.

Charting the history of the vigorous debate about the nature of orientalism, this timely account revisits the arguments and surveys the case studies inspired by that debate.

PART ONE

BACKGROUND

ONE

INTRODUCTION – ORIENTALISM IN CRISIS

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (1971), the word orientalism was in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries generally used to refer to the work of the orientalist, a scholar versed in the languages and literatures of the East; and in the world of the arts to identify a character, style or quality commonly associated with the Eastern nations. At the same time, according to John MacKenzie, the author of Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts (1995), in the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth, the word came, in the context of British Rule in India, to acquire a third meaning. There it was used to refer to or identify a ‘conservative and romantic’ approach to the problems of government, faced by the officials of the East India Company. According to this approach the languages and laws of Muslim and Hindu India should not be ignored or supplanted, but utilized and preserved, as foundations of the traditional social order. For a time this approach was adopted, but at the turn of the eighteenth century it was challenged by the combined forces of evangelicalism and utilitarianism; and in the 1830s it was supplanted by the new, so-called ‘Anglicist’ approach. Henceforth, as a minute on education – presented by Thomas Macaulay, President of the Committee of Public Instruction, to the Supreme Council, in Calcutta, on 2 February 1835 – made clear, indigenous learning in India would be completely supplanted by British scholarship, imparted through the English language.

The meaning of the word orientalism, as given in the Oxford English Dictionary, remained more or less unchanged until the period of decolonization that followed the end of the Second World War (1939–45). Then, in a little more than twenty years, it came to mean not only the work of the orientalist, and a character, style or quality associated with the Eastern nations, but also a corporate institution, designed for dealing with the Orient, a partial view of Islam, an instrument of Western imperialism, a style of thought, based on an ontological and epistemological distinction between Orient and Occident, and even an ideology, justifying and accounting for the subjugation of blacks, Palestinian Arabs, women and many other supposedly deprived groups and peoples. This transformation, which as MacKenzie has remarked turned orientalism into one of the most highly charged words in modern scholarship, was accomplished by a series of scholars and intellectuals, many of whom lived in or came from the Orient. Principal among these were Anouar Abdel-Malek, an Egyptian (Coptic) sociologist, attached to the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) (Sociology), Paris; A.L. Tibawi, a Syrian student of Arabic history, employed at the Institute of Education, London University; Edward Said, a Palestinian (Christian Arab) student of English and Comparative Literature, employed at Columbia University, New York; and Bryan S. Turner, a leading English sociologist and student of Marxism. The result was that orientalists, members of what had, in recent years, become an abstruse, dry-as-dust profession, were now accused of practising, not orientalism, but ‘orientalism’, that is to say a type of imperialism, racism, and even, according to some, anti-Semitism.

The conditions necessary for the launching of an effective assault on orientalism, as traditionally practised, were, as Maxime Rodinson, the eminent French orientalist, has pointed out, in an article entitled ‘The Western Image and Western Studies of Islam’, in S. Schacht and C. Bosworth, The Legacy of Islam (1979), already created well before the outbreak of the Second World War. The Iranian revolution of 1906, the Young Turk revolution of 1908, the defeat and destruction of the German, Austrian, Russian and Ottoman Empires in the period of the First World War, the rise of the Kemalist movement in Turkey (1919–22), the rise of the national movement in Egypt (1919), the spread of Bolshevism – all these events and developments showed that the military and political hegemony imposed by the European powers, throughout large parts of Asia and Africa, could now be successfully challenged, and even on occasion undermined. There followed a period of rapid decolonization, culminating in the independence of India (1947), the Algerian uprising (1952), the British withdrawal from Egypt (1954) and the collapse of the British-backed Hashemite regime in Iraq (1958). As a result of these and other developments, there arose, in Asia and Africa, in the 1950s and 1960s, a climate of opinion that made possible an effective challenge to European hegemony, not only in the military and political, but also in the intellectual sphere.

The assault on orientalism, when it finally came, was launched on four fronts: on orientalism as an instrument of imperialism designed to secure the colonization and enslavement of parts of the so-called Third World (Abdel-Malek, ‘Orientalism in Crisis’, Diogenes, 1963); on orientalism as a mode of understanding and interpreting Islam and Arab nationalism (Tibawi, ‘Critique of English-speaking Orientalists’ and ‘Second Critique of the English-speaking Orientalists’, Islamic Quarterly, 1964 and 1979); on orientalism as a ‘cumulative and corporate identity’ and a ‘saturating hegemonic system’ (Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient, 1978); and on orientalism as the justification for a syndrome of beliefs, attitudes and theories, affecting the geography, economics and sociology of the Orient (Turner, Marxism and the End of Orientalism, 1978).

The intellectual origins of the four principal assaults on orientalism, launched in the post-Second World War period, were somewhat narrower in scope than might have been expected. Abdel-Malek based his critique of orientalism on the work of Karl Marx, the nineteenth-century German philosopher and economist. Tibawi based his analysis on the traditional principles of mutual respect, scientific detachment and fair-mindedness, much promoted in Europe in the nineteenth century. Said based his approach on the work of a number of European scholars and intellectuals, including Jacques Derrida (deconstruction), Antonio Gramsci (cultural hegemony), and Michel Foucault (discourse, power/knowledge and epistemic field). Turner based his criticism on a critical reading of Marx and the literature of anti-colonialism associated with his name. All four critiques, that is to say, were either based on, or assumed the existence of, a European philosophy or thought system, derived for the most part from the work of two of the greatest German philosophers of the nineteenth century, G.W.F. Hegel, the transcendental idealist and precursor of Marx, and F. Nietzsche, the critic of idealism in all its manifestations.

The motivation of the four principal assaults on orientalism, on the other hand, may be sought elsewhere: in a hatred of colonialism and imperialism (Abdel-Malek); a dislike of what was perceived by some to be the lack of respect shown by many English-speaking orientalists for Islam (Tibawi); a personal sense of loss and national disintegration (Said); and an aversion to the workings of the capitalist system (Turner). In the face of such resentment, exacerbated, it is said, in Tibawi’s case by a sense of personal and professional marginalization, it is not surprising that apologies for orientalism and defences of it made by a series of European and American scholars should have failed to persuade the four principal critics of the subject to reconsider their position.

What the principal critics of orientalism hoped to achieve, according to their own account, was a critical re-evaluation of the methods employed by the orientalists (Abdel-Malek); a ‘better understanding of an old problem’ (Tibawi); an exposure of the ‘subtle degradation of knowledge’, accomplished by the orientalist (Said); and a reconsideration of the dispute between the orientalists, the sociologists and the Marxists, regarding the characterization of the history and social structure of North Africa and the Middle East (Turner). What they actually succeeded, to a considerable extent, in achieving, in conjunction with other anti-European, anti-imperialist and anti-elitist groups (liberals, socialists, blacks, feminists and others) active at the time, is what Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, was wont to refer to as a ‘transvaluation of all values’. What had previously been seen as being good (orientalism, text-based scholarship, knowledge of classical languages, concepts of absolute truth, ethnocentricity, racial pride, service to the state, and national pride) was now seen as being bad, or at least suspect. And what had previously been seen as being bad (anti-colonialism, racial equality, uncertainty regarding the nature of truth, resistance to imperialism, mixed race and internationalism) was now seen as being good, worthy of promotion. Not that the victory achieved by the critics of orientalism was uncontested, as the debate which ensued, following the publication of Said’s Orientalism in 1978, shows.

Of the four principal assaults launched on orientalism, as traditionally practised, that launched by Edward Said, in Orientalism, proved to be by far the most effective. According to Said, the orientalist, the heir to a ‘narcissistic’ tradition of European writing, founded by, among others, Homer and Aeschylus, through his writing ‘creates’ the Orient. In the process, he assists in the creation of a series of stereotypical images, according to which Europe (the West, the ‘self’) is seen as being essentially rational, developed, humane, superior, authentic, active, creative, and masculine, while the Orient (the East, the ‘other’) (a sort of surrogate, underground version of the West or the ‘self’) is seen as being irrational, aberrant, backward, crude, despotic, inferior, inauthentic, passive, feminine and sexually corrupt. Other ‘orientalist’ fantasies invented, in Said’s opinion, by the orientalists include the concept of an ‘Arab mind’, an ‘oriental psyche’, and an ‘Islamic Society’. Together they contribute to the construction of a ‘saturating hegemonic system’, designed, consciously or unconsciously, to dominate, restructure and have authority over the Orient – designed, that is to say, to promote European imperialism and colonialism.

In Orientalism, Said cites scores of examples of orientalism, as it appears in the works of European scholars, poets, philosophers, imperial administrators, political theorists, historians, politicians, travel writers and others. These include the Italian poet, Dante, the French orientalists, Barthélemy d’ Herbelot and Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron, the East India Company official and founder of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Sir William Jones, the German political economist, Karl Marx, the French novelist, Gustave Flaubert, the English adventurer, Sir Richard Burton, the British Arabist, Sir Hamilton Gibb, and the British (later American) Islamist, Bernard Lewis. Not that Said believes that the orientalism he discovers in Western thought and text is merely an imaginative phenomenon, a ‘structure of lies and of myth’, which might, if the truth were ever told, be quickly blown away. On the contrary, he believes that it is part of an integrated discourse, an accepted grid for filtering the Orient into the Western consciousness, and an ‘integral part of European material civilisation and culture’ – an instrument, that is to say, of British, French and later American imperialism.

The critiques of orientalism mounted by Abdel-Malek, Tibawi, Said and Turner provoked a variety of responses. Abdel-Malek’s critique in ‘Orientalism in Crisis’ provoked two polite but firm responses from Claude Cahen, Professor of Muslim history at the Sorbonne, and Francesco Gabrielli, Professor of Arabic languages and literatures at the University of Rome. Tibawi’s critique, in ‘English-speaking Orientalists’, provoked an uncertain response from Donald P. Little, a student of Middle Eastern history, employed at the Institute of Islamic Studies, Montreal, Canada. Said’s critique, in Orientalism, provoked a wide-ranging response, from scholars as diverse as James Clifford, Albert Hourani, Peter Gran, Jalal al-’Azm, David Kopf, Fred Halliday, Bernard Lewis, Aijaz Ahmad, Emmanuel Sivan, Ernest J. Wilson III and John MacKenzie. And Turner’s critique, in Marx and the End of Orientalism, provoked a vigorous response from Ernest Gellner.

Said’s critique of orientalism, in particular, provoked a lively debate in the academic community. A list of critics generally convinced of the validity of his thesis might include Stuart Schaar, ‘Orientalism in the Service of Imperialism’ (1979), Ernest J. Wilson III, ‘Orientalism: A Black Perspective’ (1981), and Ronald Inden, ‘Orientalist Constructions of India’ (1986). A list of critics generally opposed might include Bernard Lewis, ‘The Question of Orientalism’ (1982), C.F. Beckingham, Review of Orientalism (1979), David Kopf, ‘Hermeneutics versus History’ (1980), M. Richardson, ‘Enough Said’ (1990), John MacKenzie, ‘Edward Said and the Historians’ (1994), and Keith Windschuttle, The Killing of History (1996). A list of critics generally sympathetic, but critical of some (and in one or two cases many) aspects of his approach, might include Sadik Jalal al-’Azm, ‘Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse’ (1981), Aijaz Ahmad, ‘Between Orientalism and Historicism’ (1991), James Clifford, ‘On Orientalism’ (in The Predicament of Culture, 1988), and Fred Halliday, ‘Orientalism and Its Critics’ (1993). Donald P. Little, ‘Three Arab Critiques of Orientalism’ (1979), while in general critical of Said, effectively accepts his conclusions, as does Albert Hourani, ‘The Road to Morocco’ (1979).

What divides Said from many of his critics is the fact that while Said, in Orientalism, tends to view his subject through the prism of modern and post-modern philosophy (the philosophies of Foucault, Derrida and, surprisingly, the Marxist, Gramci), his critics remain for the most part firmly wedded to a traditional (realist) approach to the writing of history. Thus Bernard Lewis, in his article, ‘The Question of Orientalism’ (1982), accuses Said of an ‘arbitrary rearrangement of the historical background’, a ‘capricious choice of countries, persons and writings’ and an ‘unpolemical ignorance’ of historical fact. Into the category of orientalist, he, Said, introduces a series of writers and littérateurs, such as Chateaubriand and Nerval, whose work may have been relevant to the formation of Western cultural attitudes, but who had nothing to do with the academic tradition of orientalism. David Kopf, in ‘Hermeneutics versus History’ (1980), notes Said’s failure to take account of the bitter Orientalist-Anglicist controversy, concerning cultural attitudes and policies, that took place in India in the 1830s. Said’s notion of orientalism, Kopf remarks, lacks historical precision, comprehensiveness and subtlety. John MacKenzie, in ‘Edward Said and the Historians’ (1994) points out that, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Britain’s principal ‘other’ was France; and in the century and a half that followed, France, Russia, Germany and the Soviet Union. Said’s account of orientalism fails to take account of the instability, the heterogeneity and the ‘sheer porousness’ of imperial culture. His work is ‘supremely a-historical’.

Critics of Said’s Orientalism are, from their own point of view, no doubt, fully justified in drawing attention to Said’s occasional lack of respect for historical fact. But in so emphasizing the issue of historical fact, it can be argued that Lewis, Kopf and MacKenzie, in particular, fail to make due allowance for the nature of the task undertaken by Said: the identification of orientalism as a Foucauldian discourse, a ‘systemic discipline’, without which it would be difficult, if not impossible, for European culture to ‘manage – and even produce – the Orient, politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively’ (Said, 1978, p. 3). Said, in other words, was not attempting to write a history of orientalism, similar to Pierre Martino, L’Orient dans la littérature française (1906) and Raymond Schwab, La Renaissance orientale (1950). Nor, as he makes clear in ‘Orientalism Reconsidered’ (Barker et al., Literature, Politics and Theory, 1986) and the Afterword of the 1995 edition of Orientalism, was he attempting to write an anti-Western tract, a defence of Islam and the Arabs, a history of East-West relations, a history of British and French colonialism, or a history of European and Asian cultural relations and exchange. His concern was merely to identify the nature of the ‘orientalist’ discourse as a ‘created body of theory and practice’, designed, consciously or unconsciously, to serve the interests of the European imperial powers. Not that, in exploiting the concepts of discourse and epistemic field, Said was necessarily following a model which Foucault would have recognized. According to Aijaz Ahmad, one of Said’s most perceptive critics, Foucault would not have accepted Said’s view that a discourse – that is to say an epistemic construction – could span both the pre-capitalist and the capitalist periods of history. Moreover, Said’s view, that an ‘ideology of modern imperialist Eurocentrism’ (Macfie, 2000, p. 291) might be found, already inscribed, in the ritual theatre of ancient Greece, was radically anti-Foucauldian.

For Foucault, it may be noted, a discourse was a complexly dispersed historical phenomenon, a recalcitrant means of expression, burdened with historical sedimentation, while an epistemic field was a field of knowledge, created by a culture, which exercised control over what might, and might not, be said and written.

The debate about orientalism in the academic journals was not confined to merely intellectual issues. In Lewis’s view, Said’s critique of orientalism was intended not as a contribution to understanding, but as an attack on Zionism, Jewish scholarship and the West, particularly America. It was a polemic inspired by hostile motives (Lewis, 1982). In Said’s view, on the other hand, Lewis, seen as a spokesman for the guild of orientalists, was a politically motivated zealot, masquerading as an imperial scholar. His defence of orientalism was an ‘act of bad faith’, covered with a ‘veneer of urbanity’. In reality it was pro-Zionist, anti-Islamic and anti-Arab (Barker et al., 1986, p. 218).

Criticism of Said’s Orientalism was not confined to reviews and review articles. In the twenty years or so following its publication, a number of scholars, including, in particular, John MacKenzie, J.J. Clarke, Sheldon Pollock, Rana Kabbani, B.J. Moore-Gilbert, Ronald Inden, Jane Rendall, Richard King and Sharif Gamie, sought to test out Said’s conclusions in what became, in effect, a series of case studies, the outcome of which proved once again quite inconsistent.

The critici...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Front Matter
• Part One Background
• 1 Introduction – Orientalism in Crisis
• Part Two Analysis
• 2 The Rise of Orientalism
• 3 The Orientalist — Anglicist Controversy
• 4 Orientalism in the Arts
• 5 The Assault on Orientalism
• 6 Responses to the Assault on Orientalism
• 7 Case Studies
• 8 Exit from Orientalism – Orientalism Reconsidered
• Part Three Assessment
• Nine Questions of Fact, Definition and Significance
• Orientalism: A Chronology 1757–1914
• Who's Who
• Guide to Further Reading
• Bibliography
• Index