At City of Brass, I argue that orientalism is a concept that western muslims should reject. What do you think?
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Willow 7:06 am on July 24, 2008 Permalink |
I disagree, though I think Muslims should be more flexible in how they perceive and respond to it.
But now I am off to talk about comics. I’m told Vertigo is putting up a gigantic promotional banner for AIR–the first Big Two (DC/Marvel) ongoing monthly series ever to be written by a Muslim.
aziz 7:44 am on July 24, 2008 Permalink |
Grin. I wonder if you will be accused of being orientalist
Or are westerners exempt from the charge if they are also muslim? (Im not snarking – do we, as western muslims, inherit the supposed biases that Said argues are omnipresent?)
Also, take a good photo of te banner. And gve me something for the sidebar here at TI that I can use to promote the comic, please!
Sy 8:18 am on July 24, 2008 Permalink |
While I too am ashamed to admit I havent read Said’s seminal work, I don’t think his thesis was “any study of eastern cultures by western historians is necessarily tainted by a racist, condescending, colonial perspective that portrays eastern culture in an inherently inferior light,” rather that large swaths of academia relating to study of Muslim/ME lands up until that point had been adulterated by the above lenses. That seems perfectly reasonable to me.
You’re absolutely right in stating that any study of foreign culture will necessarily engender some degree of “orientalism” in the form of interpreting alien constructs into one’s own native schemas. That said, there has been and continues to be not just ignorance (which is fine when admitted), but a failure to recognize one’s ignorance re: ME/Islam (which unrecognized leads to pernicious generalizations). And occidentalism does not excuse orientalism.
I don’t blame Totten and commentators like him for making slightly overarching generalizations or even making small mistakes of fact, I do blame them when they claim larger authority on topics than they should (as it seems Totten often does). Commentators like him oftentimes extrapolate far more from their own personal experiences in the ME than they should, and that goes for both positive and negative aspects of Islam/ME. I don’t expect an always sympathetic view from individuals who write about the ME, but when its not your own culture its your incumbent responsibility to have a far greater open mind when concerning religion/ME politics and exercise greater attempts at painting nuance than what we’ve gotten from people like Applebaum, Hitchens, Hari, etc. (and that goes double when they travel in the ME).
I don’t think orientalism becomes outmoded simply b/c it delineates a line b/w Islam and the west, after all, this is a line continually reinforced when “western” leaders talk about muslim immigrants needing to understand “western” values as if they are not universal; as if the peoples in muslim countries are incapable of aspiring to the same level of freedom that westerners are. Saying orientalism doesnt exist for the reasons you seem to outline is akin to saying racism is an antiquated term largely b/c the KKK and overt expressions of it are mostly not tolerated in public. Like saying that sexism is no more relevant b/c overt expressions of it are generally not tolerated, however, covert ones very much are in vogue (see: Beck, Fox News on HRC). Similarly, orientalism, I think, cannot be rejected out of hand simply b/c it hasnt taken on the indiscreet racist overtones it had in prior incarnation. I think it still endures in a more subtle form, (although the racist one still exists) which in ways is more pernicious.
As an aside, I don’t think it was Said’s intention to divide “east and west as proxies for the palestinians and israelis” with orientalism. He makes distinctions in his work b/w orientalism relating to ME politics and that relating to Islam in particular.
I’ve read some critiques of Said’s work (including by baller Steve Kerr’s dad, Malcolm Kerr) and while some say that it overreaches at times, esp. with regards to specific scholars, most concede that a lot of its gist is correct. But I’d be curious as to what someone who’s read the book has to say, or even Occidentalism by Buruma.
mushaq on mobile 9:44 am on July 24, 2008 Permalink |
sy no offense but if u haven’t read said then how cone u is dropping all them other names?either u have read said and are pretending u haven’t so u can say what u want w out being challenged (weak!) or u haven’t read it and by dropping all those other names just reveal that u are a pseudo intellectual in the vein of most Muslim ‘thinkers’ today. I’m probe to think u come from first category bc u sound like u have real brains.
Coming up next: Muhammad mushtaq writes a history of postmodernism. Without reading Foucault.
Lawrence of Arabia 10:16 am on July 24, 2008 Permalink |
my first comment would be that your understanding of Said’s thesis is a popular one but one that skews his point. The significant thing that you seem to me to leave out is that Orientalism treats the Middle East as a static cultural phenomena with an unchanging essential identity. This allows the “Orient” to be simplified and fetishized for consumption (e.g., you can see this especially in the French Orientalist painters and the way power and beauty are used to orient the viewer towards erotic consumption of the Orient). The quote about Romanticism that you include at the end misses the point that this is precisely what Romanticism does, not only to the Orient, but you can also find it in its often nostalgic view of the European Middle Ages, etc (obviously different in its effects: the idealized harem full of (often very European looking) beautiful women laying around waiting all day to be used when you get the urge vs. the idealized chivalry where women are respected and admired and treated in a proper, more human, manner).
It does of course allow you to encounter that strange world of the Orient…but, to put it in modern terms, you encounter it in images of women in abbiyahs and burquahs and men with beards carrying AK-47s (a sexualized culture driven by violence).
For my money, Orientalism is alive and well, and is part and parcel of consumerist culture. If anything, I think the limits of Said’s book is that he failed to suggest or mention that Orientalism is just a particular form of objectification/commodification (maybe he shared Foucault’s distrust of anything that rings of Marxism).
Sy 10:33 am on July 24, 2008 Permalink |
The names I “dropped” were pretty famous, and not necessarily reflective of any “pseudo-intellecutalism” on my part. And I welcome your explanation of post-modernism. Because I have yet to here a coherent defintion of that very hip catch-all phrase.
thabet 1:47 pm on July 24, 2008 Permalink |
Two short answers:
a. No, to your question. I know it is fashionable nowadays to minimise the impact of colonialism and reject “Saidism” (I have my own problems with its ab/uses), but I don’t see how you can admit ‘orientalism’ in the colonial age (e.g. British India) then say it has no bearing on what people say or do today. Colonialism is as much a part of the ‘rise of Europe’ as the Enlightenment, democracy, human rights, liberalism, etc.
b. Said was,in my view, basically asking the ‘oriental’ to start writing his/her own histories.
thabet 1:59 pm on July 24, 2008 Permalink |
Btw, I would add that yes Muslims need to respond to it better. Merely screaming ‘orientalist’ doesn’t remove their own problems.
A couple of notes for reading (which you may like Aziz):
Timothy Winter says in his new book “that older ideas of Western Islamic studies as a monolithic and structurally anti-Islamic project now need to be modified, if not discarded altogether.”
Geoffry Nash looks again at pro-Muslim British orientalists (pdf).
rawi 7:10 pm on July 24, 2008 Permalink |
“I admit to not having read Edward Said’s Orientalism”
With all due respect, that should probably have been the end of story, but I guess this is meant precisely to open a discussion (And, I certainly don’t claim to fully understand Said).
I agree with LoA. The evidence for Orientalism in art is the most overt, as I was told by at least two teachers (one of whom, a former student of Said himself, also added that that is precisely why Said had to dig deeper and look at texts and literature, where the workings of power and ideology are much more subtle).
I want to add, however, that I think the crux of Said’s thesis is a critique of power, in much the same way that the only/most effective anti-racist critique is a critique of structural racism and the real feminist critique is a critique of male power. Of course, everyone has stereotypes about everyone else, but it is power and domination that makes the difference. And that is why the “reverse” attempts of people like Ian Buruma (“Occidentalism”) hardly make much sense.
Of course Said is not above faults (who is!?) and there have been many good critiques, Aijaz Ahmed’s being a notable example. More recently, Daniel Varisco of Tabsir.net has published “Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid,” an introductory excerpt from which is available here.
BTW, the Orient as Far East is a particularly American trope, which may partly relate to American involvement in the region (Japan, Korea, Vietnam). The issue again would be the “Orient” as imaginative geography.
As for the question of a specifically Muslim response on this, I certainly agree that there’s work to be done. I hate it when Muslims freely use the word “Orientalism” whenever they like (Heard once in a khutbah when the man was heavily criticizing all academic scholarship on Islam, and somebody on an internet forum once said “Orientalist” about an academic conference run by Muslims).
historylover 10:38 pm on July 24, 2008 Permalink |
I just wanted to make a tangential point here.
It is not only us muslims who complain of ‘orientalism’. Hindus also contest Western scholarship using similar arguments.
tg 3:57 pm on July 25, 2008 Permalink |
Western views towards the east has been ingrained in biases and prejudices since the ancient greeks. In fact, the view held by greeks that the east (i.e., persia) was an effeminate society simply seeking pleasure has more or less persisted up until the 20th century.
It’s almost assumed that what muslims think of the west is biased, paranoid, and nothing more than a result of propaganda (see michael totten’s views of any muslim who doesn’t like the US or Israel)
Why take offense to muslims holding a similar view of western scholarship that has caricatured them?
thabet 9:27 pm on July 27, 2008 Permalink |
…but it is power and domination that makes the difference. And that is why the “reverse” attempts of people like Ian Buruma (”Occidentalism”) hardly make much sense.
This is the part which doesn’t make sense to me.
Surely, power and domination are relative? Why is there only a focus only on the power/domination* of the West on a ‘global’ stage? For example, who has power and domination in Saudi schools to portray the image of ‘disbelievers’?
The study of other people is not to be automatically disqualified because they have no power or domination. Lots of these groups took their image of the West as a reference point (everyone from Muslim anti-colonialists to Imperial Japan). But like I said, when I read Said I thought he was really asking ‘orientals’ to take up the challenge of writing their own histories.
*Argubaly, this undisputed power on a global stage is on the wane in what might the four key areas: military, finance, media and education. Where would that leave this theory then?
Willow 9:12 am on July 28, 2008 Permalink |
I think Thabet has hit on something important–the active element of Orientalism-the-book, which is fleshed out in detail in Culture and Imperialism. Said is calling for more, better and more independent non-western scholarship.
But “the study of other people” is never quite that simple or benign. When I was in Egypt it was very common for white tourists to go right up to a wedding party and snap pictures, as if they were looking at animals in a zoo. No one in their right mind would do such a thing at home in the US or Britain; everyone knows it would be unspeakably rude. But abroad among the picturesque natives it’s perfectly fine. I once met a liberal, hipster American documentary filmmaker, who, after hearing a really horrifying story about an Egyptian girl who was forced on to the streets for getting involved with a male prostitute, said without a trace of irony or sympathy “That’s perfect for my movie.”
The idea that the East exists solely to provide westerners with entertaining or transformative experiences is still alive and well. I have yet to run across an expat community in the ME that is not racist in the very particular way Said lays out in Orientalism, so I’m forced to conclude he’s right. In fact, I think it’s getting worse, not better–the current crop of neocon orientalists make Bernard Lewis look like a high school production of Up With People.
thabet 2:01 am on July 29, 2008 Permalink |
But “the study of other people” is never quite that simple or benign.
I agree. But it is not a ‘wrong’ either and shouldn’t be excluded from discussion.
The idea that the East exists solely to provide westerners with entertaining or transformative experiences is still alive and well.
Including lots of non-white Western Muslims.
Josh SN 6:02 pm on August 8, 2008 Permalink |
I believe I read in this book:
GILMORE, MYRON P. The world of Humanism 1453-1517
quotes from Arab Muslims about the barbaric Europeans they met.
I’m not sure it was that book, but I do remember the Scandinavian traders in human females were having carnal relations with them _during_ price negotiations.
Someday in the future the worm may turn again, and I already regret some of our shabby treatment of the “other.”
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