Restating Orientalism

A Critique of Modern Knowledge

Wael B. Hallaq

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780231547383
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Bildungstheorie & -praxis

Since Edward Said's foundational work, Orientalism has been singled out for critique as the quintessential example of Western intellectuals' collaboration with oppression. Controversies over the imbrications of knowledge and power and the complicity of Orientalism in the larger project of colonialism have been waged among generations of scholars. But has Orientalism come to stand in for all of the sins of European modernity, at the cost of neglecting the complicity of the rest of the academic disciplines?

In this landmark theoretical investigation, Wael B. Hallaq reevaluates and deepens the critique of Orientalism in order to deploy it for rethinking the foundations of the modern project. Refusing to isolate or scapegoat Orientalism, Restating Orientalism extends the critique to other fields, from law, philosophy, and scientific inquiry to core ideas of academic thought such as sovereignty and the self. Hallaq traces their involvement in colonialism, mass annihilation, and systematic destruction of the natural world, interrogating and historicizing the set of causes that permitted modernity to wed knowledge to power. Restating Orientalism offers a bold rethinking of the theory of the author, the concept of sovereignty, and the place of the secular Western self in the modern project, reopening the problem of power and knowledge to an ethical critique and ultimately theorizing an exit from modernity's predicaments. A remarkably ambitious attempt to overturn the foundations of a wide range of academic disciplines while also drawing on the best they have to offer, Restating Orientalism exposes the depth of academia's lethal complicity in modern forms of capitalism, colonialism, and hegemonic power.

Index

Page numbers refer to the print edition but are hyperlinked to the appropriate location in the e-book.

Abbasid caliphate, 70, 286n77

Abdel-Malek, Anouar, 1, 2, 7, 285n59

Abdurrahman, Taha, 242, 290n15

academia: and collective/institutional sociopathology, 24, 186, 190, 192–93, 325n31; and the corporate world, 103–4, 186–92, 196–97, 286n73, 305n127, 321–22n9, 323n20; and the creation of sovereign knowledge and practice, 24, 277–78n43; critical thought and “thinking the world,” 103, 304n124; currently undergoing self-evaluation, 243–44; departments classified into central or peripheral domains, 24, 25, 194–96; fundamental questions for scholars, 248; funding for, 102–3, 303–4n120; implicated in genocide, 24, 67; implicated in the same sovereign project as Orientalism, 23–24, 186, 194–96, 277–78n43; implicated in unethical sovereign practices, 184–87, 190–93, 324–25n27; intertwined with colonialism, 24, 197, 223–24; Israeli academia, 223–26, 334n107, 334–35n109, 335–36n110, 336n111; and liberalism, 23, 238–39, 264, 305n127; moral and ethical education, or lack thereof, 186–87, 322n12; and the normalization of structural genocide, 214; opening critical space for scrutiny of, 25; Orientalism of a piece with, for Guénon, 177, 181; Orientalism seen by Said as anomaly/exception within, 165, 177–78, 181–82, 319n76; Orientalism’s similarity to other fields, 183–84; psychopathology and sociopathology in, 192, 197, 325n31; reasons for rise of Western academia, 69–70; Said’s influence on, 173–74; scholar’s ethical/moral responsibility, 264–67; single-discipline focus of, 73; and the state’s sovereign will, 102–4, 303–4n120, 324n24; this book’s place in the landscape of, 25–26. See also business schools; scholarship; and specific fields or areas of study

Actor Network Theory, 199. See also Latour’s Stone

adab, 3, 73, 74

adat, 127–30, 132

Adeola, Francis O., 323–24n22

Adorno, Theodor W., 111, 158, 272n22

Aeschylus, 27, 28, 33, 39, 45, 50, 58–59

aesthetic appreciation, 169–70

Africa: genocides against Africans, 87; Islamic cultures in, 73, 78, 109–10, 119, 124 (see also Algeria, French colonialism in); Israeli arms and military training in, 333–34n104; multinational corporations and imperialism in, 189, 322n18, 323n20, 323–24n22. See also Nigeria

Agamben, Giorgio, 207, 240, 329n64

agency, theory of: about, 108; agency of Palestinians, in Jabotinsky’s construction, 200–202; agency vs. presence, 199, 202 (see also Latour’s Stone); colonialism and agency, 21, 108–9, 199, 215, 307n135, 327n48; and the history of the Muslim world, 107–8, 109; individual agenc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• I. Putting Orientalism in Its Place
• II. Knowledge, Power, and Colonial Sovereignty
• III. The Subversive Author
• IV. Epistemic Sovereignty and Structural Genocide
• V. Refashioning Orientalism, Refashioning the Subject
• Notes
• Index