Edward Said’s essay on the genesis of Orientalism is a formidable and courageous critique not only of an invented term but also as an indictment of an elite dialectic consciousness responsible for cultural and academic colonialism. Said opens his essay with a personal reflection during the civil war in Beirut as an encapsulation of an exchange with a French reporter who laments at the loss of European control of the region as symbol of nostalgia for the colonial past. This reporter does not reflect on the loss of the pre-colonial culture as worthy of mention. This sets the tone for Said’s entire exploration into the historical ideas and trends which served not only to originate the idea of Orientalism, but its use as a tool of dominance and oppression from pre-colonial history to more modern historical thought.
Said uses a unique set of sources in his work most of which dates from the1960’s to the late 1970’s. His article was published in 1978 and then again in 1994. When considering his sources it is important to notice that his work is based on the history of ideas over time, not on specific events. The works he draws upon to support his major thesis are largely works of philosophy, sociology, political science, literature, and modern Arab/Islamic thought. He also employs historical sources such as British parliament speeches and Napoleonic encyclopedic references along side of a laundry list of philosophers from every philosophic era with the most emphasis on those from the Middle Ages to the present. His sources are extremely comprehensive and show a multidisciplinary base of disciplines and how they correspond and contribute to the concept of Orientalism in their unique and overarching methodology.
Said believes that the historical actors in his work are the West with special attention given to Britain, France, and in later years, the United States. Other actors could be considered the “Orient” as the West as well as the developing philosophy defined it and nuances surrounding the term itself, so perhaps the evolution of the idea of Orientalism. It is important to note that the agency and true experience of the “Orientals” while unknown or unrecorded by the West is also an actor in his story.
The force of change over time in Said’s writing places causal emphasis on the inherent cultural assumption of superiority by the West in relation to the “Orient” and the use of such dominant justifications for cultural and economic colonialism. This colonialism was of course based on the need to exploit and increase capital wealth and influence, not as a tool for pure academic or social inquiry. The subjugation of the Orient was necessary as a way to understand and explain the inherent natural dominance and superiority of the Europeans. Ranajit Guha refers to this group as “subaltern” rather than Oriental, but I would say I am drawn to Said’s definition. Guha’s further relational definition of “binary” is also helpful in understanding this interconnected concept of dominance and subordination.
Said’s narrative is a mix of events and individuals who are relevant during a long duree of historical and philosophic thought. He does look at the last fifty to one hundred years of postmodern history as well as the postcolonial movements as a unique historical era, but this is not the majority of his focus.
Said’s theoretical framework is based on the concept that ideas are the main engine of history and that Oriental history is pejorative and inaccurate as well as completely invented. He makes a point to mention that every western philosopher has imperialized the concept of Orientalism from Marx to Dante. He thinks history is more of an act of interpretation than a retelling of fact and that in reference to the “Orient”; there has been little true or even accurate depiction of fact or context. He believes that Western “culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self”. (Pg 3) He references Foucault often as a source of inspiration.
It is important to note that Said defines himself as a humanist meaning a person whose academic pursuits encompass the humanities and distances himself from any political agenda, yet he makes it clear that no person can truly interpret history or the humanities without the tinge of personal experience influencing the work or its interpretation. He makes the point that dominant powers try to discredit work that puts them in a negative historical light by charging them as too political. This is a technique that allows them to continue defining the terms of the dialectic.
Said believes deeply that the vast and varied people of the Orient had tremendous agency and presence but that this agency was not reflected in the colonial record. He also believes that those in power be they European elites, or elites within the colonized areas who were native had an undue and overrepresented agency in history. In some ways he seems Marxist, thought he makes clear that Marx was a western invention.
To further appreciate Said’s essay one may focus on his exploration of how Orientalism evolved over time. It is his contention that the Orient was a concept not constructed from historical fact, but instead out of necessity. It was a lie. Its existence was only brought into consciousness an idea, not as an actual geographic area. Oriental meant essentially there instead of here. In the myth of the Orient, the people were reduced to objects and their agency negated. As far as the West was concerned, they only excited as the next chapter in a book of conquests. Said states that 18th century knowledge about the Orient was prescriptive and not specific but more a curiosity than an academic pursuit. He makes the point that is not possible to determine exactly when Orientalism was invented, as it did not correspond to a single historical event.
For the sake of brevity, I will attempt to condense his observations regarding this evolution. Said looks at the time of European imperialism as the main time period responsible for the increased rhetorical and symbolic spread of the concept. He credits the British in India as well as the French in Egypt, and the Germans in Africa as the main culprits. He specifically points to Napoleon as a major purveyor of misinformation and falsehood using his doctrine of Egyptian culture as a tool for dominance and generating what was thought to be sound studies that were then studied and academically validated by the Germans and the British. These documents created a “strategic formation” which infiltrated the consciousness of the West even more deeply. In this kind of dynamic, the Orientalist only gives voice for the sake of the West, not for the sake of the Oriental himself. This Said describes as an example of exteriority. He continues to explain how this era’s Orientalist eventually gave rise to 20th century academic study in Europe and eventually in America. He emphasizes that the mere controlling of Orientalism by the West imposed limits on what it was and how it could be understood. Challenging the concepts of Orientalism and its origin was not done and any detailed definitions were supported with imagined geographic boundaries.
He likens the dehumanizing of Arabs in Palestine with Semitic thought making the argument that Israel in 1948 is another form of Orientalism in dominant operation. This is a provocative argument if seen through the lens of Orientalism as a pro Christian and anti Muslim dichotomy. He stresses that anti Muslim, anti- Mohammedanism as a pejorative for Islam, had long been part of the European Christian hegemonic racist agenda. I think his point is well made and I would tend to agree. Ignoring the blatant similarities between the Islamic and Christian tradition and suppressing Islamic social history, with emphasis on the Qu’an, as a reaction to a fake or exaggerated threat has been a true constant over time. Napoleon’s complete dismissal of Egyptian nationalism might be a good example of this repressive positionality, or for example the vestige memories of the Ottoman Empire as a past threat to Europe. The demonization of Mohammed in Dante’s Inferno demonstrates how not only was Islam misrepresented, but targeted as inherently less human with its prophet seen as false. At this stage Orientalism becomes a paranoid self-perpetuating closed system of cosmology.
He advances his argument to eventually include the US after 1950 as polarized against Muslim and Arab identity, and acknowledges the reconsideration of Oriental studies in the context of emerging area studies and the rise of interdisciplinary practice. He underscores the fact that the fixed concept of Orientalism has not prepared the West for the true appreciation and agency of the East. As Islam and Orientals become real global threats and powers, the West has to reexamine its true historical virility as a method of future collaboration and understanding. There is nothing like threat to motivate learning.
Tosh seems to assert in general, and I am taking the liberty to transfer his arguments to Said for the sake of better understanding, that Said seems to not be a positivist or an idealist since he does not make his arguments in a traditional way that is based on any predisposed laws of history, nor is he an saying that human history is separate from natural history. Said is not confined to the categories of thought which produced his original documents. He has somehow transcended from a flat historiagraphical dimension to one of multilevel reconstructivist, from photographer to painter. The recognition of Said as a post modern, post colonial, and multicultural historian seems to imply that on one hand his political identity may hamper his credibility, but on the other his ahistorical approach is just another wrinkle in the fabric and in fact in not ahistorical at all, but rather explicitly biased and pointed as compared to implicitly biased and discriminatory. Perhaps as Tosh muses, all history is a function of distortion and that its interpretation through multidisciplinary and multicultural lenses is what makes it an art and surely not a science? This makes the historian as artist much more vital and interesting than the historian as scientist. I am not implying that either one it more accurate, but rather one seems more human and encompassing than the other by nature.
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