The first thing to be said about ‘Orientalism’ is that it doesn’t in 2011 seem quite as incendiary as it surely was when it was first written back in the seventies.
Many of its ideas (though not all) sit comfortably within most contemporary leftist and even some centre-leftist discourse, as commentators continue to define (and vie for a spot in) the post-post-Colonialist literary space. Its initial impact as a “cultural bombshell” is well known, as is how both influential and polarising it proved, as is the inception and emergence of postcolonial theory as a field (due in large part to it).
But as Maya Hasanoff and others have pointed out, since Said, a new generation of post-Colonialists has sought to replace (I prefer the word augment) the “outdated binary conception of Otherness with richer analyses of hybridity and identities.”
All of which presents us with something of a paradox: because with 2011’s Arab Spring, it’s also hard, now, not to see his ideas being more relevant or more vein-poppingly resonant than ever before.
Not to mention we must also deal with the uncomfortable fact that many of the Orientalist tropes he was so critical of remain a firm fixture within much of both contemporary European and American discourse on the Middle East. One might easily imagine what Said would have made of the triumphalism and re-appropriation of Empire espoused by historians like Niall Ferguson.
Said presents an unapologetically unsympathetic vision of Orientalism: its founding, its motivating factors, its supporting structures, its epistemological and cultural machinery – machinery Said contends was anything but apolitical. A vision that may be summarised thus:
1) That Renaissance Europe was obsessed with ideas of self-identity most of which depended upon distinguishing an ‘Occident’ from a remote, suspicious, not-entirely-knowable and, in many cases, degenerate, ‘Orient’. A definition of “Us” in reflexive opposition to a definition (our definition) of “Them”.
2) That there existed between Orientalism and Colonialism not so much a confluence of interests as in the former providing the latter with a pretext, a justification and sense of moral security for its ideas of control over Asia, Africa and the Middle East. That Orientalism was, amongst other things “a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” – the one serves as a prelude to the other.
3) That Orientalism contained within it an unyielding (and unjust) set of generalisations predicated upon a uniformity and unvarying essentialism that depicts the Orient as ‘female’, childlike, sensual, irrational and incapable. And open, therefore, to discovery, representation (because it is unable to represent itself) and, ultimately, domination.
Each of these facets (as essential to Orientalism as the idea of essentialism itself) are outlined at length in the introduction and early chapters. Much of the rest of the book is then an analytical survey of the development of Orientalism (as a discipline with seemingly innocuous roots in Philology), of Political History and Theory, and of Culture from the time of Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt to the present day (ideas Said further refined in ‘Culture and Imperialism’), one that expounds upon those essential facets, underpinned as all those disciplines were by them.
The prose is very much of the type of work it is, and reads as such: a discursive, non-linear academic treatise. This doesn’t always make for continuity or clarity – you’ll almost certainly have to re-read certain sections to re-establish that continuity – though I daresay it’s no different in this respect to other similarly discursive surveys of history, politics or literary theory.
Said places certain limits upon the scope of his Orientalist survey from the outset – most notably (and controversially) he explicitly excludes its German and Russian counterparts. An omission many critics have claimed is deliberate as their trajectory runs counter to many of his theses.
Much of the reaction began soon after it was published, with the most common objection taking the form of claiming an unfair and narrow focus on those demeaning generalisations, summations and stereotypes, and thereby damning most of what remained otherwise “a noble scholarly tradition”.
There’s no doubt Said is, at times, unflinchingly contemptuous of such flattering or even innocuous characterisations (the word “scholarship” appears more than once in quotes, the word ‘noble’ doesn’t appear at all) but I doubt he was out to either “damn” or to ingratiate the tradition – that’s not really the point.
In any case, Orientalism’s never been short of voices ready and willing to exalt it (a tradition perhaps as old as Orientalism itself) – the premise of the book, surely, lies in what, up to that point, had been quite chillingly absent: the unyielding generalisations, the near fanatical focus on essentialism, the overlap and “exchange of traffic” between Orientalists and colonial administrative policy, the coarse stereotypes that continue to pervade History, Journalism and other cultural discourse unknowingly (and knowingly) to the present day.
Whilst Said has undoubtedly been selective, most such objections to omission and narrow focus seem similarly selective.
Citing instances of scholarship or even broader trends within the field that would seem to have little or nothing to do with the aims of Imperialism, would suggest a certain want of nuance on Said’s part, but feel, ultimately, rather myopic – “nuance” demanded, quite laughably, by those that happily turn a blind eye to centuries of systemic bias.
Presenting isolated instances of eccentric and supposedly disinterested scholars does little to negate Said’s central assertion that an overwhelming enormity of scholarship was coloured with exactly the kind of tropes that would be (but aren’t always) considered unacceptable today (his analysis takes this a step or two further, culminating in the question of whether any representation can ever remain unsteeped in the dialectic of its time, can ever truly be “disinterested”, let alone apolitical, or the very postmodern question of the validity of representation itself) – if we’ve not heard very much on these tropes before Said , it’s because it’s been ignored (or assumed in the manner ‘received wisdom’ often is), not because it wasn’t there.
It doesn’t, in other words, falsify any of Said’s most central theses, anymore than it succeeds in depicting the field as an innocuous, academic guild concerned mainly with the study of “dusty manuscripts”.
None of which is to suggest Orientalism is without flaws – but it seems to me that a reasoned critique of those flaws would limit itself to historical inaccuracies, areas of neglect and/or tendentious argument (where such exist), without recourse to a perceived anti-West slant that really doesn’t exist (many of Said’s ideas on humanism as an enabling theoretical device for new discourses on the “Orient” are in tune with 21st century liberal Western notions of plurality), much less a defence of outdated and and wholly indefensible notions of supremacy.
Any discussion of such perceived bias without due attention, in particular, to the rise of postcolonial studies and of the many succeeding voices it gave rise to (Subaltern studies amongst others) that, in turn, gave Orientalism’s original theses more texture, plausibility and applicability to the decades that have followed its release, is plainly disingenuous.
If Said’s relied upon a certain poetic licence to illuminate the spectre of Colonialism that lurked (unbeknownst or perhaps ignored) behind much of Renaissance culture, to engage in a lively, defiant inversion of control by essentialising Orientalism (quite credibly) in much the same way as it essentialises the Orient (unjustly), bringing these and other (what were then) neglected issues to the fore, and in doing so, founding an entire academic field, then so be it.
It’s no different to the very unpoetic licence of the many reactionary voices that have been with us since the late 60s. And it doesn’t surprise me in the least that those voices now sound none too pleased.
