Electronic Orientalism? the afterlife of Syed Hussein Alatas’ The Myth of the Lazy Native in online databases

Abstract

This article examines how in the discourse on Orientalism, electronic databases from Western academia represent voices from formerly colonized countries. In a case study, the afterlife of one of the classics of Orientalism studies, The Myth of the Lazy Native (1977) by the Malaysian Syed Hussein Alatas, in online databases, particularly JSTOR, is examined. It is found that almost all authors of the included articles are educated in or affiliated with Western academia. This does not automatically result in a rejection of his critical views on Western Orientalism. A close reading reveals that only the early reviews (1977—82) tend to view The Myth of the Lazy Native critically. From 1983 onwards, almost all represented articles refer to the Myth as an authoritative work, with relevance for various fields of study in different periods. However, due to the biased coverage of the online databases, voices from outside the Anglo-American academia remain unheard, which is particularly problematic in the discourse on Western Orientalism.