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Review Summary: Relevant but not complete |
Date: 2008-11-25 |
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Details: It certainly is a worthwhile read and will help many delve into concepts they may not have previously considered. That being said, the lens through which the West view(s)(ed) the Orient is quite similar to how those of the Orient (who are predominantly Muslim) with their concept of Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb view the world. To state that it is primarily the West that suffers from this form of myopia is weak. |
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Review Summary: Fatally flawed masterpiece |
Date: 2008-10-25 |
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Details: Edward Said, the celebrated scholar and stone thrower,(1) treats us to a generous helping of deconstructionism, nominalism and solipsism in his review of roughly 250 years of Western systematic misunderstanding of the East. Along the way he provides a fresh perspective to the prejudices and premises by Western scholars, an invaluable service. Having said that, however, his analysis is too contradictory.
Said's essential argument is as follows: humans categorize things into "binaries": us-them, west-east, familiar-unfamiliar. This ultimately causes a distortion of reality. Then through the written mode of communication, they distort reality further. According to Said, this creates, in the Occidental-Oriental context, an analytical mode that both causes and reinforces Western underlying desires for feelings of power and sense of superiority over peoples of the East.
Much of what Said has to say is very interesting and thought-provoking. It is worth the time to read and ponder, and has applications far beyond area studies. There is also much in the book that is accurate, at least as far as it describes psychological and philological phenomena. However, the book suffers from at least three serious structural and intellectual defects, described below.
FIRST, Said's analytical approach contradicts itself. One of his principal arguments is that when a person writes her or his experiences, opinions or conclusions, the act of writing, then reading by another, causes an uncorrectable distortion of reality (pp 21, 92-93). But if that's true, then the same can be said of Said's book itself: just in being written, and read by us, it causes an irreparable distortion of reality. Therefore, the book is, by its own terms, untrustworthy in whatever information it attempts to convey. Said inadvertently creates a version of the Epimenides Paradox.
Related to this point is the problem of the book's self-defeating solipsistic subtext. As Major Stephen C. Coughlin points out: "if Said's line of reasoning [were] extended along general lines, two points would emerge: first, that no culture could ever explain another; and, second, if Said held true to his own syllogism -- that members of one culture cannot explain another's -- there would be no basis for his writing Orientalism for the purpose of explaining to the West its own `intellectual genealogy ... in a way that has not been done'" (p 24).
SECOND, Said concentrates on West-East relationship when in fact he admits he is describing a universal phenomenon. He argues that humans by their nature classify people into binaries and prefer their culture to others' (p 54). It's obvious that sound self-preservation reasons exists for these universal human characteristics, which, although somewhat intellectually imperfect and logically flawed, allow for rapid decision-making in periods of extreme stress. In other words, the West's view of the East, in its anthropological underpinnings, is no different than the East's view of the West, or the South's view of the North, etc. Since that's the case, how does Said arrive at the conclusion that the West is somehow morally culpable for having "created" Orientalism?
THIRD, Said presents no alternative analytical mode to the one he criticizes, although he does briefly discuss the usefulness of non-area studies disciplines vis à vis the East in the final pages of the book (pp 326-328). By inference, Said seems to endorse a requirement of total, uncritical cultural submersion for every area studies student. If that's the case, then frankly such an approach is impractical for all but the narrowest of area studies, and such a mode of learning (i) would be available only to people with a considerable amount of wealth and leisure time, which is a class of people whose general background would itself distort their understanding of another culture and (ii) suffers from the "Schrodinger's Cat" problem of an outsider's mere presence changing the behavior of the subject studied.
The book also contains the usual left-wing politics, hasty generalizations, word-twisting and distortions that one has come to expect of these types of books. Here are a few of many.
* ANTI-AMERICANISM. "[T]he American Oriental position since World War II has fit...in the places excavated by the two earlier European powers" (p 17). Oh please. The Suez Crisis? The U.S. intervened *against* the British and French in *favor* of Egypt? How about Kosovo? Since WW II the U.S. has been the world's leading anti-imperialist and has freed hundreds of millions of people from imperial rule, from Eastern Europe to the former Soviet Republics to Grenada to the Philippines.
* TOO NARROW A FOCUS for the purported subject matter. Said mainly limits his study to Arab-influenced nations and Islam (pp 16-17; last thirty or forty pages). That's just a fraction of the population and geography of the geopolitical concept known as the Orient. Wouldn't it have made more sense to call the book "Arabicism" or "Islamicism" instead of Orientalism?
* CLICHÉS SUBSTITUTING FOR APHORISMS SUBSTITUTING OR FACTS, e.g., "The Orientalist can imitate the Orient without the opposite being true" (p 160), "Western confidence that descriptions of general, collective phenomena were possible..." (p 176). This is particularly annoying because Said throughout his book correctly takes dozens of scholars to task for employing clichés in the place of analysis.
* VICTIMOLOGY. At times Said's book descends to pure liberationist ideology and whining: "The web of racism, cultural stereotypes, political imperialism, dehumanizing ideology holding in the Arab or the Muslim" (p 27). This from a scholar? Said admits his emotional connection to the subject matter (p 27), but is not enough of a scholar to purge his emotions from the text. He even claims that what he writes is not "political" (p 8) and that current scholarship is "pure" (p 13). I guess the question would be: Pure what?
* IGNORING INCONVENIENT FACTS. Said consistently criticizes Western scholars and politicians for their belief that the Arab East is anti-scientific and illiberal. He doesn't bother to deal with the obvious, which is that historically at least, that's the truth. When the sacred texts of the region's principal religion discourage or outright forbid scientific inquiry(2) and the principal religion teaches that everything necessary for the human condition was revealed as of 632 C.E., that would seem to put a damper on scientific inquiry, I think you'd agree. As for illiberality, when the West starts executing people for being homosexual (Sûrah 7:80-81), crucifying and lopping off criminals' hands and feet (Sûrah 5:33), killing or subjugating anyone who doesn't convert to the principal religion (Sûrah 9:29) and mandating the beating of intractable wives (Sûrah 4:34), well then maybe some sort of rough cultural moral equivalency between the two regions can be reached. Until then...
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(1) Aaron Matz, "Stone Thrower and Scholar: Edward Said's Ferocious Unity," The New York Observer, September 10, 2000.
(2) Al-Misri, "Sacred Knowledge," a7.0: "Subjects that are not Sacred Knowledge," at a7.2: Unlawful knowledge includes: (2) philosophy;...(5) the sciences of the materialists." |
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Review Summary: A masterpiece about the origins of "knowledge"! |
Date: 2008-10-19 |
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Details: Few books in the modern world have acquired the stature of Edward Said's "Orientalism". It has become the de facto authority on the Western perspective of the Middle Eastern and Oriental worlds. Using impeccable scholarship and irrefutable evidence from two centuries' worth of European writing about the East, Edward Said lays down an indisputable case about how Western so-called "objective" and "scientific" study of the East has been corrupted and is far from describing reality. "Orientalism"'s main achievement, however, spreads far beyond the arena of "Oriental Studies" or "Near Eastern Studies" as they are now called. This book demonstrates using an in-depth case study how an entire field of study can be constructed out of self-reinforcing fiction that tends to gather its own inertia and develop its own seemingly self-consistent world. "Orientalism" therefore is a strong warning not only to Orientalists but to all unsuspecting researchers in any subject (even science) who might, deliberately or not, end up constructing their own mythical world. "Orientalism" also analyses the intricate relationships between knowledge and power, demonstrating the fallacy of taking knowledge for granted without analyzing and understanding the power structure that brought this "knowledge" into being.
This is a highly recommended book. It's only weakness is that it can somewhat difficult reading, thanks to its author's genius and total mastery of the English language. I often had to underline difficult words and look them up in a dictionary, and read over some paragraphs again and again in order to grasp the complex ideas, so once I was done with the book my GRE score improved 100 points. Seriously, though, "Orientalism" is a very perceptive and methodical study of an important topic today: the relationship between East and West. |
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Review Summary: Unfortunately, Unhistory and a misfed Pretense of facts. |
Date: 2008-06-05 |
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Details: Dr. Said missed the track completely with this supposed historical analysis that is neither historical nor good analysis. While I won't write pages of critique, here are just a few examples of poor work to make points not supported by fact (nor faith).
1. The British and French controlled the eastern Mediterranean at the end of the 17th century. False - the Ottomans controlled that area; French and British merchants needed permission to trade. None of the lands of the Eastern Med. were ever colonies. At most they were protectorates in which the real rulers were the local people. (Even true up to the pre-WW II phase.) This is common history for anyone who tried to look at such.
2. Muslim armies conquered Turkey before over-running northern Africa. False - The Arab armies did not "take" Turkey; they went straight to North Africa. The so cited areas remained Christian (Eastern Orthodox) until overrun by the Seljuck Turks in the 11 th century. Same comment as last sentence in #1, above.
3. Westerners get our history wrong. Only we muslims can interpret our religion correctly (paraphrase). I'm sorry, but there is a long history of intellectuals of all religions studying each other. Just because many do not accept that the Koran is god-given (faith) as opposed to man written (fact) does not make non-moslems wrong (some muslims believe it is a man-written document).
What other religion on this earth makes such a claim of perfectness and superiority untouchable by anyone? Why, muslims themselves argue about what the Koran means (unless he is Wahabbi - then of course there is no argument). Fanaticism and fact twisting in the name of religion is a vice..... |
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Review Summary: Intelligent and Poignant |
Date: 2008-02-21 |
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Details: This book is a great overview and as noted by many others, a true work of literary genius. Colonial subjects, such as Said himself, have a hard time placing themselves in the mess of Colonialism and the supposed Post-Colonial era we live in and this book aids in that coming to terms process. Said manages to marry the subjectivity of his reality with the brilliant grasp of academia. A Must read by all, to gain a better idea of the world and times we live in. |
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out of 71 Reviews
