Edward Said and Recent Orientalist Critiques

Tahrir Khalil Hamdi Tahrir Khalil Hamdi

doi:10.13169/arabstudquar.35.2.0130

Abstract

There have been many attempts in recent years to discredit Edward Said's thesis of the “affiliation of knowledge with power” (1997: xlix) by those who argue that Orientalist scholarship represents genuine and accurate knowledge of the Arab/Islamic world. Said's detractors claim that much of Orientalist scholarship has been “sympathetic” to the Orient and is free from any power motive. However, this article will attempt to show how all of these arguments fall apart when put to the test of reality, past and present, in literature, Orientalist scholarship and politics. After all the arguments of Bernard Lewis, Ibn Warraq and think tank and area experts, it is Said's voice of humanism that drowns out all of his dissenters' voices in this Orientalist war of words, which as Said believed, is “richly symptomatic of precisely what is denied” (1985: 91).

Highlights

There have been many attempts in recent years to discredit Edward Said’s thesis of the “affiliation of knowledge with power” (1997: xlix) by those who argue that Orientalist scholarship represents genuine and accurate knowledge of the Arab/Islamic world
Said’s detractors, contend that many Western Orientalist scholars were in it for intellectual curiosity as Said observes: “Lewis has been busy responding to my argument, insisting that the Western quest for knowledge about other societies is unique, that it is motivated by pure curiosity” (1985: 96); or even for showing Arabs
Muslims in a positive light as Ibn Warraq has attempted to do in Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism (2007)

Summary

Introduction

There have been many attempts in recent years to discredit Edward Said’s thesis of the “affiliation of knowledge with power” (1997: xlix) by those who argue that Orientalist scholarship represents genuine and accurate knowledge of the Arab/Islamic world.

Results

Conclusion