Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (Penguin Modern Classics)

£5.50

A stunning monument to engaged scholarship - A stunningly accomplished attack on Orientalism in all its guises. Said s richly detailed and politically charged break-through work has been subject to countless misreadings, misunderstandings and wilful distortions since its publication in the late 1970s. Being aware of these claims and counter-claims I was hugely relieved to discover that they had (very almost) no foundation in the text itself. Like his other writings, a generous humanism informs the argument here, an argument which also benefits stylistically from a wonderful way with words. Indeed, this easily meets the challenge laid down for the best prose - that it should read with a distinctive and convincing voice, as if it was being spoken aloud with authority.Orientalism is not an endorsement of Occidentalism. It does not essentialise either the East or the West. It does not reduce all scholarship about the Orient to politically-motivated scaffolding. It does not lump all Orientalism, across all time and space, together as the same undifferentiated mass. It does not romanticise the Arab or demonise the Westerner . Rather, it treats thinkers with subtlety and (occasionally) some sympathy. It brims with textual reference and informed context. It specifies historical moments, institutional states, variations, contradictions and antagonisms. It exposes essentialist and politically-expedient simplification with panache and wit. It rejects all arguments from undifferentiated historical essence, all reductions and denials of agency, history, contestation, dialogue.It is a landmark and a vital monument that continues to deserve our attention. Yes, the arguments have been extended. Yes, some of the misunderstandings can be traced to ambiguity in the text as well as to ignorance and deliberate misreading. But, as I think Spivak said, the work that we have that continues (some might say improves) on Orientalism is only possible because it carved such an accomplished and necessary path first.Brilliant.

It s about the Truth - I don t know much about Orient or Orientalism and after all this book is not about what I thought it would be but as a History undergraduate student I found this book very revealing. It s about the necessity for searching for the Truth, without contenting yourself with superficial findings based not on the Truth itself but what it is convenient for you to call true.

Utter Drivel - I do not know how Americans view Islam but as an Englishman/European it seems to me that Said s views are so much poppycock.To make a couple of points in a limited space.Of course we have a stereotypical view of Islam just as Islam has a stereotypical view of us - and these views are largely hostile .So what? For century after century Islam was an enormous threat to what might loosely be called Christendom. It shaped every aspect of European history and was directly responsible for Europes colonial empires. Up till around 1750 they were a dangerous direct competitor to our interests.Gibbon writing in the 1780s was the first to think that the danger had passed .On a local scale the threat lasted even longer - Barbary pirates ravaged the coast of England up till the 1830s carting off coastal villages into slavery and at even later dates on the west coast of Ireland and that was at the height of the British Empire ! .By a strange inversion left wing academics and Said have made Europeans and Americans see these things entirely from the point of view of Islam ie as uniquely a problem of western imperialism largely ignoring about a thousand years of history.Common sense would suggest that as our knowledge of these societies grew in the 19th century so stereotypes would break down.Said says the opposite - they served to reinforce them. Common Sense is right - stereotypes did break down.He makes much of the fact that as a boy he saw these european pictures of the east and they bore no relation to the societies he knew.It never seems to occur to him that as a Palestinian/American he might not be seeing these pictures as a European sees them and a 19th century European at that. 19th century Europeans , for whom these pictures were intended , were preoccupied with the dehumanising and mechanising aspects of industrial society ,their own society, and used other societies to show up these concerns.European attitudes were complex and contradictory but they were not attempting to give an accurate view of oriental society as their viewers well understood. When Gauguin paints a picture of a naked Tahitian girl we dont think he is trying to justify French imperialism nor do we think that he is saying much about Tahiti. Naked Tahitian girls did not buy his paintings. He was saying a great deal however about 19th century France with its rigid stifling conventions compared with the natural grace of a simpler more primitive world. Said is himself guilty of a kind of mental colonialism.He assumes that he understands what these pictures are about and is going to tell us what they mean. But he does not understand them because he does not understand 19th century Europe and he gets it wrong.Finally Said does not seem to understand that the British did not need to justify their oriental empire by regarding other societies as inferior and their rule as necessary to bring enlightenment to the natives. He assumes that, like the Roman Empire, it was acquired through conscious effort.Nothing could be further from the truth. The British Empire in India was acquired in a haphazard way through chance .They thought that as it had been delivered into their hands by fate they had as much right to be there as their Moghul predecessors. Early British colonialists simply adopted the customs of the dominant Muslim culture which they much admired.- even to the point of practising polygamy.It was only after the Indian mutiny in the late Victorian period when the British were forbidden to intermarry with the natives that they turned into a caste and thought that they had to justify their presence in the country by adopting spurious notions of superiority.In short western attitudes to the orient mirror by and large oriental attitudes to the west - often confusing and contradictory. Americas particular support for Israel owes much to a particular sense of their own identity and is not shared by European countries. Said s thesis is in my view nonsense..

Said too much..? - Drawing upon the work of Michel Foucault, Edward Said claims that Western ideas of the `Orient are not based upon objective facts but are created through academic and cultural `discourses which serve to promote Western imperialism - often despite `liberal intentions. This mythical `East is the antithesis of the West, a negative or inversion of the Occident, and is used to define both in binary opposition to each other and to facilitate the political and domination of the East.However in order to demonstrate the existence of this `Orientalism Said falls back on an equally stereotypical and monolithic `West which he constructs entirely from the carefully selected writings of a handful of 19th Century middle-class, white, male English and French authors. This tactic not only ignores or misrepresents a large body of Western authors sympathetic to the East and sensitive to differences within it, but also glosses over Western heterogenities of class, race, sex, religion and generation in order to manufacture a homogenous `Occident devoid of differences.Said is as guilty of *Occidentalism* as those he criticises are of *Orientalism*.Said fails to provide any evidence that the `West defines itself in binary opposition to a mythical `East that Western scholars have created for just this purpose, he simply *manufactures* the kind of `West necessary to explain the `East that he himself has constructed from a very limited number of Western texts about the `Orient . He has created his own mythical `East and `West from a small number of secondary sources which he then projects onto others and thinks he has *discovered* rather than *invented*.

Well past its sell-by date - Books, however good or bad they are, can gather a momentum of their own once they become best-sellers. So it is with Orientalism. People will continue to read it because so many have read it. All the same it is time to touch base and say loud and clear that this is a very bad book. It is full of unjustified vitriol against people Said does not like. It is completely unscholarly in that Said has clearly not read some of the material about which he offers opinions. It is unreliable in that he gets many important facts wrong. It is animated by the idea that anyone who doesn t have the same political opinions as Said cannot possibly have anything useful to say. Finally, and perhaps worst of all, Said showed himself to be impervious to criticism and did not even both to correct clearly established errors. This is a work of great arrogance. The case for all of these points is made by Robert Irwin in For Lust of Knowing (2006). Anyone reading Said s book must also read Irwin if they want to have a balanced view.

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