7 ms·

‘Orientalism,’ Then and Now

71 points by lermontov 7y ago

weeksie 7y ago
I enjoyed Orientalism. My problem with so many of these works, however, is that they seem to take such an intentional stance. Like the assertion that the language of Orientalism serves to create an other in order to. . . Like, wait right there. One of the most valuable insights from scholarship like this is that we are all trapped in power structures. The "othering" that happens isn't the result of some demonic intention, it's just what people do. While Said takes great pains to make this point, most readers of the book that I've interacted with do not seem to grasp it. When I finished Orientalism I kind of chuckled because in many ways he engaged in the process that he was describing, "Occidentalizing" western area studies, as it were. I know it's not, but at some level I kind of hoped the book was a big meta-joke to illustrate the inescapability of the dynamic.
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- iguy 7y ago
  > Like the assertion that the language of Orientalism serves to create an other in order to. . . > Like, wait right there. Then you got further than I did! Someone should have dragged that guy to math class -- before you can prove two things are the same, you have to first define both of them, then make your case.
  - claudiawerner 7y ago
    That's not what critical theorists think; for them, often the process of describing a phenomenon involves looking at how "it" behaves. The idea that everything must be defined analytically before it is used or analyzed shuts one off from a lot of possible insight. For example, the debate as to whether porn is art continues to this day, but we have analyzed both porn, art and porn as art before we were ever clear on the matter rigourously speaking. Furthermore, to impose a definition is to trap a concept (usually a historically contingent one) in a moment, which isn't always useful. There are some works on the matter of definitionalism that make this point better but I can't find them right now. I'm short, critical theory and philosophy are different sciences (another thorny word to define, but we use it regardless of the intellectual poverty of some of its widely accepted definitions) to mathematics.
    - iguy 7y ago
      Sure, I completely agree that a book discussing porn vs art can't literally start with definitions they way a math book can, that's too narrow. But if it wishes to use an existing word like "art" in a new sense, for instance to claim that all portrayal of humans is inherently pornographic, then IMHO it needs to be very careful to distinguish this from pre-existing meanings. The fact that some building on campus has "art" chiseled into the marble cannot be assumed to already imply agreement with some new meaning you invented 5 pages ago, a meaning which would have been very surprising to the guys who sponsored the building. Even if you ultimately make a convincing case that the sense you describe is somehow more correct/useful/interesting than other ones, or encompasses them, you've got to act as if you haven't yet shown that. That's what I meant he should have learned in math class. And really the more honest course is to introduce new words for new concepts, not to try to muddle older ones, as Said successfully did. But, to be fair, I didn't finish the book.
- house_atr 7y ago
  Sounds like you took the enlightened centrist "all sides" path and completely missed the point.
- abhiyerra 7y ago
  The West defined the East, but the East also defined the West. How each side views the other is also a part of that power dynamic. Power structures are bidirectional graphs. Examples, of this are college departments like Chinese Studies, South Asian Studies, European Studies, etc. These are methods of creating the history of the other and creating power over the other. I'm sure the Chinese, Europeans, Africans, etc. also have such histories.
deogeo 7y ago
> The expeditionary force that Napoleon Bonaparte sent to Egypt in 1798 included 122 scientists and intellectuals, among them a handful of professional Orientalists. The history of Orientalism is rich in tales of Westerners assuming Oriental masquerade, as if they wanted to become, and not simply to master, the Other. It would be 30 years after this attempt to 'master' the Other, that the Greek war for independence from the Ottoman empire was won. It boggles the mind how one can write such a long article on history, without even the briefest mention of Arab invasions and colonialism in Europe (or slavery - "between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured between the 16th and 19th centuries by Barbary corsairs, who were vassals of the Ottoman Empire, and sold as slaves." [1]). As much as this article tries to paint the Orient as being viewed by Europe as some sort of curiosity, it was in fact an existential threat for the better part of a millennium. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade
- rudiv 7y ago
  I think you regard this article as a tidbit to be understood by itself, but it's more of a reflection on the book. You seem to be aggrieved with it, can I ask why? Or is it specifically because the Ottoman colonization of Greece was not mentioned? Because I can think of many other significant historical events that are not mentioned, but I fail to see how that's relevant.
  - deogeo 7y ago
    > You seem to be aggrieved with it, can I ask why? I think I was very clear as to why: the article heavily implies Arab-European relations were that of one-sided colonization by Europeans, when in fact, until very recently, the opposite was the case. This would be understandable if it had limited itself to more recent history, but as it stands, I consider it lying by omission.
    - mxfh 7y ago
      That's what Said's book is for and it couldn't be much clearer: "Not for nothing did Islam come to symbolize terror, devastation, the demonic. hordes of hated barbarians. For Europe. Islam was a lasting trauma. Until the end of the seventeenth century the "Ottoman peril" lurked alongside Europe to represent for the whole of Christian civilization a constant danger" The article reflects on the impact the book had since publication, it's not even close to be mistaken for an introduction or recollection of the whole topic. https://books.google.de/books?id=npF5BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA59&dq=Not+for+nothing+did+Islam+come+to+symbolize+terror,+devastation,+the+demonic.+hordes+of+hated+barbarians.+For+Europe.+Islam+was+a+lasting+trauma.+Until+the+end+of+the+seventeenth+century+the+%22Ottoman+peril%22+lurked+alongside+Europe+to+represent+for+the+whole+of+Christian+civilization+a+constant+danger&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj9vI3f3rziAhXKQxUIHbnABZoQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=Not%20for%20nothing%20did%20Islam%20come%20to%20symbolize%20terror%2C%20devastation%2C%20the%20demonic.%20hordes%20of%20hated%20barbarians.%20For%20Europe.%20Islam%20was%20a%20lasting%20trauma.%20Until%20the%20end%20of%20the%20seventeenth%20century%20the%20%22Ottoman%20peril%22%20lurked%20alongside%20Europe%20to%20represent%20for%20the%20whole%20of%20Christian%20civilization%20a%20constant%20danger&f=false https://books.google.de/books?id=npF5BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA59&dq=Not...
hurryskurry 7y ago
Imo the problem with the article, and perhaps if it is a faithful representation of the original idea of orientalism, is that it is incoherent. >As Said argued, Orientalism’s failure was “a human as much as an intellectual one; for in having to take up a position of irreducible opposition to a region of the world it considered alien to its own, Orientalism failed to identify with human experience, failed also to see it as human experience.” Alright, but considering the rest of continental philosophy and post-modern thought it is a literal impossibility to do this ever, even with one's own culture and even with one's previous and future selves. How can it be an indictment on anyone to not have done something that one is actually unable to do? If, in the 19th century, before Amazon and YouTube, and Instagram, and Facebook, you lived in England, in a village where most people barely even ever travelled farther than the next village over, and you came into contact with radical alterity how else could you be expected to respond. And as, again according to post-modern philosophy (say Baudrillard in this case) you get closer to this difference you actually start changing it so it becomes more and more like you. So you are either in this state of being orientalist, or in a state of intense globalization, and someone making a critique from this moral high road of globalization about this bucolic, parochial state of the orientalist is probably someone similar to a policy wonk referring to a basket of deplorables, which is just another kind of power-knowledge relation, which is what the critique is meant to make clear in the first place. To think about Foucault's preface to Anti-Oedipus, the problem is we can never really escape from this stuff. And the problem with ever even making a statement such as this is that it is incoherent in the sense that one never comes away clean, basically because always and already the claim of tu quoque can be leveled. I mean sure it doesn't strictly speaking invalidate the claim there is this power relation, but when we're so stuck in the middle of them all the time in every way, as Foucault said, the strategic adversary becomes fascism itself, not the historical fascism, but our love of power and how it causes us to act everyday, and how it makes us love it even as it dominates us. And that is very difficult to uncover if you're leveling a claim of inappropriate relation to any one group, because the problem is our humanity, not the content of our relations or historically contingent facts. Putting names to faces makes it opaque, because the reality is any human occupying a similar role would act inappropriately, so what you do is you attack the role not the name. It may be that Said does that. I have never gotten around to reading the book, but just going off of the confused article posted, I just felt there was a sort of mishmash without a really clear and distinct thesis, and that what the facade was hiding in a metaphorical sense was paving stones to be thrown in the next revolution, rather than an attempt to end violence or power relations altogether.
gataca 7y ago
Said's original work was just as myopic as this more recent revisit. There are so many issues with this article that it's difficult to list them all. The author completely ignores the long history of conflict and colonialism in the opposite direction, namely from the Islamic world and into Europe. The idea of "the Other" is actually codified in Islamic law with religious minorities forced to wear distinctive clothing (the yellow mark for Jews predates its use in Germany by centuries) and pay special taxes, as well as numerous other restrictions. Another tactic used by this author is to argue against the most extreme and least educated of the 'Orientalists' (Sheldon Adelson and Steve Bannon) instead of engaging with more thoughtful critics of current Islamic culture like Sam Harris and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. My last point is that this guy also forgets Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. His examples of 'experts' who misunderstand the Arab world for a nefarious purpose can just as easily apply to political 'experts' in the US who couldn't have fathomed that someone like Donald Trump could ever win the presidency.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  >this guy also forgets Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Perhaps he is just not a fan of aphorisms pulled from Murphy's law themed joke books. Though the trouble with Hanlon's law is not in its origins, rather it is that malice and stupidity are not in any regard mutually exclusive and also that people are quite adept at disguising malice as stupidity.
  - SuoDuanDao 7y ago
    I do not think the benefit of Hanlon's law is intended to be predictive. It seems rather more like a commentary on how our beliefs about people tend to be self-fulfilling prophecies.
    - inflatableDodo 7y ago
      I just think it is a clumsy version of giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Is a social grace you can grant people to not look too closely at what they are doing and assume the best about them. And in moderation it is a good thing to be doing. It is definitely not a good approach to analysis of academia or government however, which is where I often see it used, usually to defend ones outlook or respective 'team'. edit - it also makes me very suspicious about Hanlon. Maybe not the first person I would trust if they tried to play dumb.
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mensetmanusman 7y ago
We are all descendants of slaves at one point or another in our genealogy. Where does this victimhood-chic eventually lead?
- coldtea 7y ago
  Usually to some well-off people that got the better end of the deal saying "It's all history now, let's put those things behind us, where does this victimhood-chic eventually lead?".
  - mensetmanusman 7y ago
    If most of the well off were poor when they were young, would that be the optimal solution?
woodandsteel 7y ago
From the article: " With Orientalism, Said wanted to open a discussion about the way the Arab-Islamic world had been imagined by the West—not to prevent a clear-eyed reckoning with the region’s problems, of which he was all too painfully aware." Well that's the basic problem right there. Did Said assume there was no need to do a serious study of the Middle East's problems and what causes them, because he assumed that if the West would just leave the Middle East alone, it would all on its own solve its problems? Certainly that is what a lot of his followers seem to think, that the world was an egalitarian paradise until evil White people can along and started oppressing everybody.

71 points by lermontov 7y ago

I enjoyed Orientalism. My problem with so many of these works, however, is that they seem to take such an intentional stance. Like the assertion that the language of Orientalism serves to create an other in order to. . . Like, wait right there. One of the most valuable insights from scholarship like this is that we are all trapped in power structures. The "othering" that happens isn't the result of some demonic intention, it's just what people do. While Said takes great pains to make this point, most readers of the book that I've interacted with do not seem to grasp it. When I finished Orientalism I kind of chuckled because in many ways he engaged in the process that he was describing, "Occidentalizing" western area studies, as it were. I know it's not, but at some level I kind of hoped the book was a big meta-joke to illustrate the inescapability of the dynamic.

deleted 7y ago
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iguy 7y ago
> Like the assertion that the language of Orientalism serves to create an other in order to. . . > Like, wait right there. Then you got further than I did! Someone should have dragged that guy to math class -- before you can prove two things are the same, you have to first define both of them, then make your case.
- claudiawerner 7y ago
  That's not what critical theorists think; for them, often the process of describing a phenomenon involves looking at how "it" behaves. The idea that everything must be defined analytically before it is used or analyzed shuts one off from a lot of possible insight. For example, the debate as to whether porn is art continues to this day, but we have analyzed both porn, art and porn as art before we were ever clear on the matter rigourously speaking. Furthermore, to impose a definition is to trap a concept (usually a historically contingent one) in a moment, which isn't always useful. There are some works on the matter of definitionalism that make this point better but I can't find them right now. I'm short, critical theory and philosophy are different sciences (another thorny word to define, but we use it regardless of the intellectual poverty of some of its widely accepted definitions) to mathematics.
  - iguy 7y ago
    Sure, I completely agree that a book discussing porn vs art can't literally start with definitions they way a math book can, that's too narrow. But if it wishes to use an existing word like "art" in a new sense, for instance to claim that all portrayal of humans is inherently pornographic, then IMHO it needs to be very careful to distinguish this from pre-existing meanings. The fact that some building on campus has "art" chiseled into the marble cannot be assumed to already imply agreement with some new meaning you invented 5 pages ago, a meaning which would have been very surprising to the guys who sponsored the building. Even if you ultimately make a convincing case that the sense you describe is somehow more correct/useful/interesting than other ones, or encompasses them, you've got to act as if you haven't yet shown that. That's what I meant he should have learned in math class. And really the more honest course is to introduce new words for new concepts, not to try to muddle older ones, as Said successfully did. But, to be fair, I didn't finish the book.
house_atr 7y ago
Sounds like you took the enlightened centrist "all sides" path and completely missed the point.
abhiyerra 7y ago
The West defined the East, but the East also defined the West. How each side views the other is also a part of that power dynamic. Power structures are bidirectional graphs. Examples, of this are college departments like Chinese Studies, South Asian Studies, European Studies, etc. These are methods of creating the history of the other and creating power over the other. I'm sure the Chinese, Europeans, Africans, etc. also have such histories.

deogeo 7y ago

> The expeditionary force that Napoleon Bonaparte sent to Egypt in 1798 included 122 scientists and intellectuals, among them a handful of professional Orientalists. The history of Orientalism is rich in tales of Westerners assuming Oriental masquerade, as if they wanted to become, and not simply to master, the Other. It would be 30 years after this attempt to 'master' the Other, that the Greek war for independence from the Ottoman empire was won. It boggles the mind how one can write such a long article on history, without even the briefest mention of Arab invasions and colonialism in Europe (or slavery - "between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured between the 16th and 19th centuries by Barbary corsairs, who were vassals of the Ottoman Empire, and sold as slaves." [1]). As much as this article tries to paint the Orient as being viewed by Europe as some sort of curiosity, it was in fact an existential threat for the better part of a millennium. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade

rudiv 7y ago
I think you regard this article as a tidbit to be understood by itself, but it's more of a reflection on the book. You seem to be aggrieved with it, can I ask why? Or is it specifically because the Ottoman colonization of Greece was not mentioned? Because I can think of many other significant historical events that are not mentioned, but I fail to see how that's relevant.
- deogeo 7y ago
  > You seem to be aggrieved with it, can I ask why? I think I was very clear as to why: the article heavily implies Arab-European relations were that of one-sided colonization by Europeans, when in fact, until very recently, the opposite was the case. This would be understandable if it had limited itself to more recent history, but as it stands, I consider it lying by omission.
  - mxfh 7y ago
    That's what Said's book is for and it couldn't be much clearer: "Not for nothing did Islam come to symbolize terror, devastation, the demonic. hordes of hated barbarians. For Europe. Islam was a lasting trauma. Until the end of the seventeenth century the "Ottoman peril" lurked alongside Europe to represent for the whole of Christian civilization a constant danger" The article reflects on the impact the book had since publication, it's not even close to be mistaken for an introduction or recollection of the whole topic. https://books.google.de/books?id=npF5BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA59&dq=Not+for+nothing+did+Islam+come+to+symbolize+terror,+devastation,+the+demonic.+hordes+of+hated+barbarians.+For+Europe.+Islam+was+a+lasting+trauma.+Until+the+end+of+the+seventeenth+century+the+%22Ottoman+peril%22+lurked+alongside+Europe+to+represent+for+the+whole+of+Christian+civilization+a+constant+danger&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj9vI3f3rziAhXKQxUIHbnABZoQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=Not%20for%20nothing%20did%20Islam%20come%20to%20symbolize%20terror%2C%20devastation%2C%20the%20demonic.%20hordes%20of%20hated%20barbarians.%20For%20Europe.%20Islam%20was%20a%20lasting%20trauma.%20Until%20the%20end%20of%20the%20seventeenth%20century%20the%20%22Ottoman%20peril%22%20lurked%20alongside%20Europe%20to%20represent%20for%20the%20whole%20of%20Christian%20civilization%20a%20constant%20danger&f=false https://books.google.de/books?id=npF5BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA59&dq=Not...

hurryskurry 7y ago

Imo the problem with the article, and perhaps if it is a faithful representation of the original idea of orientalism, is that it is incoherent. >As Said argued, Orientalism’s failure was “a human as much as an intellectual one; for in having to take up a position of irreducible opposition to a region of the world it considered alien to its own, Orientalism failed to identify with human experience, failed also to see it as human experience.” Alright, but considering the rest of continental philosophy and post-modern thought it is a literal impossibility to do this ever, even with one's own culture and even with one's previous and future selves. How can it be an indictment on anyone to not have done something that one is actually unable to do? If, in the 19th century, before Amazon and YouTube, and Instagram, and Facebook, you lived in England, in a village where most people barely even ever travelled farther than the next village over, and you came into contact with radical alterity how else could you be expected to respond. And as, again according to post-modern philosophy (say Baudrillard in this case) you get closer to this difference you actually start changing it so it becomes more and more like you. So you are either in this state of being orientalist, or in a state of intense globalization, and someone making a critique from this moral high road of globalization about this bucolic, parochial state of the orientalist is probably someone similar to a policy wonk referring to a basket of deplorables, which is just another kind of power-knowledge relation, which is what the critique is meant to make clear in the first place. To think about Foucault's preface to Anti-Oedipus, the problem is we can never really escape from this stuff. And the problem with ever even making a statement such as this is that it is incoherent in the sense that one never comes away clean, basically because always and already the claim of tu quoque can be leveled. I mean sure it doesn't strictly speaking invalidate the claim there is this power relation, but when we're so stuck in the middle of them all the time in every way, as Foucault said, the strategic adversary becomes fascism itself, not the historical fascism, but our love of power and how it causes us to act everyday, and how it makes us love it even as it dominates us. And that is very difficult to uncover if you're leveling a claim of inappropriate relation to any one group, because the problem is our humanity, not the content of our relations or historically contingent facts. Putting names to faces makes it opaque, because the reality is any human occupying a similar role would act inappropriately, so what you do is you attack the role not the name. It may be that Said does that. I have never gotten around to reading the book, but just going off of the confused article posted, I just felt there was a sort of mishmash without a really clear and distinct thesis, and that what the facade was hiding in a metaphorical sense was paving stones to be thrown in the next revolution, rather than an attempt to end violence or power relations altogether.

gataca 7y ago

Said's original work was just as myopic as this more recent revisit. There are so many issues with this article that it's difficult to list them all. The author completely ignores the long history of conflict and colonialism in the opposite direction, namely from the Islamic world and into Europe. The idea of "the Other" is actually codified in Islamic law with religious minorities forced to wear distinctive clothing (the yellow mark for Jews predates its use in Germany by centuries) and pay special taxes, as well as numerous other restrictions. Another tactic used by this author is to argue against the most extreme and least educated of the 'Orientalists' (Sheldon Adelson and Steve Bannon) instead of engaging with more thoughtful critics of current Islamic culture like Sam Harris and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. My last point is that this guy also forgets Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. His examples of 'experts' who misunderstand the Arab world for a nefarious purpose can just as easily apply to political 'experts' in the US who couldn't have fathomed that someone like Donald Trump could ever win the presidency.

inflatableDodo 7y ago
>this guy also forgets Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Perhaps he is just not a fan of aphorisms pulled from Murphy's law themed joke books. Though the trouble with Hanlon's law is not in its origins, rather it is that malice and stupidity are not in any regard mutually exclusive and also that people are quite adept at disguising malice as stupidity.
- SuoDuanDao 7y ago
  I do not think the benefit of Hanlon's law is intended to be predictive. It seems rather more like a commentary on how our beliefs about people tend to be self-fulfilling prophecies.
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    I just think it is a clumsy version of giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Is a social grace you can grant people to not look too closely at what they are doing and assume the best about them. And in moderation it is a good thing to be doing. It is definitely not a good approach to analysis of academia or government however, which is where I often see it used, usually to defend ones outlook or respective 'team'. edit - it also makes me very suspicious about Hanlon. Maybe not the first person I would trust if they tried to play dumb.

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mensetmanusman 7y ago

We are all descendants of slaves at one point or another in our genealogy. Where does this victimhood-chic eventually lead?

coldtea 7y ago
Usually to some well-off people that got the better end of the deal saying "It's all history now, let's put those things behind us, where does this victimhood-chic eventually lead?".
- mensetmanusman 7y ago
  If most of the well off were poor when they were young, would that be the optimal solution?

woodandsteel 7y ago

From the article: " With Orientalism, Said wanted to open a discussion about the way the Arab-Islamic world had been imagined by the West—not to prevent a clear-eyed reckoning with the region’s problems, of which he was all too painfully aware." Well that's the basic problem right there. Did Said assume there was no need to do a serious study of the Middle East's problems and what causes them, because he assumed that if the West would just leave the Middle East alone, it would all on its own solve its problems? Certainly that is what a lot of his followers seem to think, that the world was an egalitarian paradise until evil White people can along and started oppressing everybody.