Critique Of Orientalism Research Articles

In Memory of Edward Said – The Bulletproof Intellectual

This plenary presentation eulogizes Edward Said and speaks to his courage, passion, and scholarship, while simultaneously acknowledging his discomfort with the problematic category of “great men.” Shohat traces Said’s early scholarship, the vitriolic backlash against his words, and the way his work consolidated what would, a decade later, become the fields of postcolonial studies and cultural studies. Shohat’s presentation then delves into the circulation and reception of his critique of Orientalism as an example of “traveling theory.” In Middle East studies, Said has been criticized as a deficient political scientist or historian or anthropologist, with critics ignoring the central concern of his work: the problem of representation and the necessity of a political critique that is also a cultural critique. In postcolonial studies in Israel, a certain post-Zionist discourse privileged Homi Bhabha’s theories of hybridity, which were translated into Hebrew, over Said’s not-yet-translated and allegedly binaristic notions of coloniality. In the final moments of the presentation, Shohat reflects on her friendship with Edward Said, remembering his courage in the face of consistent attacks and his willingness to inhabit the ever-uncomfortable space of the worldly yet “out-of-place” intellectual.

The Problem South: Region, Empire and the New Liberal State, 1880-1930 by Natalie J. Ring (review)

Reviewed by: The Problem South: Region, Empire and the New Liberal State, 1880-1930 by Natalie J. Ring David Jansson The Problem South: Region, Empire and the New Liberal State, 1880-1930 Natalie J. Ring . The University of Georgia Press, Athens. 2012. 288 pp. Photographs, illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $59.95 cloth. (ISBN 978-0-8203-2903-1) Ring argues that most historians view the period demarcated in the book's title as consisting of a process of gradual national reconciliation and reunion between the former Confederate states and the rest of the United States, one that sought to politely ignore what was characterized as the region's deficiencies. The intense criticism that the South came under during the 1920s is then difficult to reconcile with the previous decades of reconciliation. Ring counters that in fact interest in the problems of the South can be traced back to the early postbellum years, when "an array of institutions and people, including northern philanthropists, federal officials, southern liberals, social scientists, national journalists, progressive reformers, clergymen, and academicians, helped fashion an image of the South as a regional, national, and even global problem" (pp. 3-4). This quote also serves as a list of the cast of characters Ring discusses in the book, as it is just these institutions and individuals whose actions and ideas make up the empirical material of the book: what they did, and why, in the South, and how they thought about their work in trying to bring improvements to the region. These actors created an image of the South as a problem that served the ideological purpose of "reinforc[ing] the hegemony of the nation-state and creat[ing] a sense of urgency surrounding sectional reunion" (p 3). Northern and southern reformers worked together to modernize the South, and Ring places these efforts in the context of the development of liberalism in the early 1900s and its contributions to the process of national state formation. Investigations of the South's perceived backwardness rested in a liberal faith in the potential for social science to serve as a tool of reform, while at the same time producing an influential vocabulary for defining, analyzing and categorizing the South's problems. Thus Ring suggests that "the effort to reincorporate the New South into the nation was as much a process of rehabilitation and reform as one of political and cultural reunion" (p 5). Ring places her argument at the intersection of studies of the "global South" and postcolonialism. Regarding the former, [End Page 455] Ring is careful to discuss the many ways in which the attempts at reconstructing the South after Reconstruction connected to the role of the U.S. on the global stage, and she continuously notes the similarities between the views about and experiences of the South with other places and regions outside the U.S. This transnational perspective is a central element of Ring's analysis, and she argues persuasively that "[i]t makes more sense to locate southern history in a complex web of intersecting regional, national, and global discourse, practices, and designs" (p 10). In the context of relevant global discourses, Ring situates the conceptualizations of the South within broader debates on tropical and colonial settings elsewhere in the world, thus bringing us to the linkages with postcolonialism. In particular, Ring understands the discourse around the "southern problem" as a manifestation of what she rather awkwardly calls "southern neo-orientalism," a reference to Edward Said's critique of Orientalism as a discourse reproduced by various agents of the state as well as private citizens that reinforces asymmetrical power relations between various centers and their peripheries. However, Ring does not elaborate more on her own view of the similarities and differences between southern neo-orientalism and Orientalism or on what we may learn by applying Said's analysis to the study of the South. The book consists of five empirical chapters. Chapter one, "The 'southern problem' and readjustment," traces the origins of the conceptualization of the South as a problem from the perspective of journalists, scholars, writers, politicians and government officials, and what Ring calls "cultural geographers" (which turns out to be a usage of the...

Turkey, Tourism and Interpellated ‘Westernness’: Inscribing Collective Visitor Subjectivity

That tourism's representation of places in terms of the clichéd and the banal is a means to overcome consumer uncertainty is surely an unproblematic observation. None the less it invites enquiry into those discourses circulating within the representing culture (the source of tourism demand) constitutive of the subject position that both reassures and is reassured. Turkey is frequently presented to potential consumers in a litany of familiar binaries (West/East, Europe/Asia, Modernity/History etc.). A collective gaze is invited in which tourists may conceive of themselves as part of an abstract collectivity, that of interpellated ‘Western-ness’ or ‘European-ness’ continuously reiterating a wondrous encounter with the very idea of the East. In this respect, Turkey is deployed instrumentally as a discursive device, commodifying the self-designation of ‘Western-ness’. Therefore, the occupation of a European subject position in relation to the idea of the East is an ‘attraction’ offered to consumers of tourism in Turkey. Turkey's position is quite singular in its categorization as being functionally European, yet also a site that articulates, in abstract terms, ‘Europe's’ self-assigned cultural boundaries. The notion that the Orient exists as a self-confirming object for the West is a commonplace for those familiar with Edward Said's critique of Orientalism. However, Turkey is utilized as a mechanism for the functioning of that discourse, rather than Orientalized in and of itself. That this occurs within a sphere of popular consumption such as tourism does not diminish its discursive potency in underwriting arbitrary notions of the civilizational patterning of the world.

The Concept of the Sinophone

The spectacular rise of China as a superpower perhaps only now compels us to recalibrate existing discourses of empire and postcoloniality, but China has been an empire in the modern sense since the mid–eighteenth century, when it conquered vast lands north and west of “China proper.” This history has been largely hidden from view because of two unacknowledged obsessions: the fetishization of Western empires over other empires and the prevailing discourse of Chinese victimhood at the hands of Western empires. The rise of China would not have caught so many by surprise if our vision had not been persistently clouded by our privileging of the oceanic (i.e., Western) mode of colonial expansion, which paradoxically centered the West as the most deserving object of critical attention and intellectual labor. It also would not have been a surprise if we had looked back at the Manchu conquests of inner Asia, which present-day China largely inherited and consolidated in a continuous colonial project. Postcolonial theory as we know it, particularly its critiques of orientalism, may prove irrelevant or even complicit when we consider how the positions of Chinese intellectuals critical of Western imperialism and orientalism easily slip into an unreflective nationalism, whose flip side may be a new imperialism.

Indo-German Connections, Critical and Hermeneutical, in the First World War

The questions that Edward Said raised in Orientalism are still unresolved regarding the German interest in India. Said himself mostly excluded German Orientalism from his critique of the British and French intellectual project of domination over the Middle East. As the Indo-German connection was not burdened directly by German colonialism of India, one can argue that Said does not apply to Indo-German contacts, or at least, as Fred Dallmayr does, that Said's formulation itself an essentializing construct based on a selective examination of historical evidence. (1) Others such as Ronald Inden, Kamakshi Murti, and Kaushik Bagchi argue that Said applies very well to the German interest in India, and that Germans adapted themselves to European colonialism, which explains some of their attitudes toward India. (2) Susanne Zantop even theorizes that it was the lack of colonies during the eighteenth and early nineteenth Centuries that created a greater desire for them in Germany. (3) Wilhelm Halbfass, most known in his India and Europe for promoting the hermeneutical interpretation, actually eventually made arguments between these poles, pointing out that Germany is very much part of Europe, inseparable from its European context, including both its hermeneutical and colonial projects. (4) Bradley Herling in an article in this issue of The Comparatist discusses the two main approaches scholars have taken regarding cultural interaction: critical consciousness or hermeneutical consciousness, or in other words, a Saidian focus on power differentials and exploitation versus a Gadamerian emphasis on shared dialogue. (5) If these are the twin poles of colonial interaction, one can certainly see them within Indo-German connections during the First World War. Dialogue was very apparent in the active courting of Indian revolutionaries by Germans. As Modris Ecksteins argues, Germany was a revolutionary force in the world at the time, supporting revolutionaries in Ireland and Russia, and I would add India. (6) Yet the Germans were deeply conflicted, and their attitude toward revolutionaries also reflected a counter-current of domination, when Germans found themselves adhering to the colonial attitudes of their otherwise wartime enemies in Europe, the British. This alignment makes sense in terms of the patterns of belief in the superiority of European civilization, religion, and race, attitudes that stretched back well into at least the nineteenth Century. Following, Ricoeur scholars such as Herling are today seeking the fusion of these two points of view, the critical and the hermeneutical. An examination of Indo-German relations around the First World War provides a promising venue for such a dialectical synthesis of these viewpoints, a site of inquiry as Herling suggests, for an analysis that transcends the more materialist concerns of the Saidian critique of Orientalism and the intellectualist focus of Halbfass's hermeneutical approach. (7) It important that one examine the context around the formation of these views. As Herling points out, hermeneutics and 'critical consciousness' come together when we identify the genealogical critique of our categories, including the anti-Orientalist critique, with a foregrounding of the prejudices that have come down to us from within our tradition. (8) A step toward finding this synthesis the examination of the structures of knowledge about the other, just what the arguments and ideas Germans and Indians each held. Usually scholars look at one approach or the other, trying to dispel its opposite. Yet these views really are two sides of one coin of cultural interaction and (mis)perception. After all, at least a century before Germans decided to work with Indians to undermine the British during the First World War, Germans also made arguments for an especially close Indo-German connection, and pursued actions that helped to establish one. A small circle of cultivated Germans revered ancient Indian texts and the admiring influence was mutual. …

Lost in Historiography: An Essay on the Reasons for the Absence of a History of Limited Government in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire

This article tackles the question of why an attempt to uncover an indigenous history of limited government in the early modern Ottoman Empire has not been undertaken in twentieth-century Turkish historiography despite the obvious existence of several constituents for such a history, such as the political power and prestige of jurists (ulema), the political role of the janissary corps, and the many depositions and other revolts that they staged in cooperation with the jurists, which, in practice, limited the political authority of the sultan. The answer suggested by the article focuses on the political concerns of the early republic, the socio-economic concerns of the Muslim democrats currently in power, and the theoretical concerns of contemporary western historians who have been influenced by Edward Said's critique of Orientalism.

RECONCEPTUALIZING THE POSTCOLONIAL PROJECT

This essay investigates the possibility of formulating a much needed new direction for postcolonial studies by focusing on a certain thread of argument in Edward Said's Orientalism, one that suggests that Orientalism is more an account of how the West experienced the Orient than it is a description about a place in the world, viz. the Orient. In this sense, ‘the Orient’ is both a place in the world and an entity that exists only in western experience. Orientalism is not only an experiential discourse but also a way of structuring this experience. The essay suggests that to dispute the truth status of this discourse and its descriptions is to stay within the framework of the colonial experience. Moreover, since Orientalism developed in continuous interaction with and as a part of the growth of social sciences, the latter cannot possibly offer an alternative to Orientalism. Both are expressions of the experience of one culture, the West. To understand the way western culture has described both itself and others is to begin understanding western culture. The challenge of Orientalism, then, is a challenge to understand western culture itself. Consequently, a critique of Orientalism becomes coterminous with the task of creating alternative theories in the domain of the humanities and social sciences.

On The Margins of Middle Eastern Studies: Situating Said’s Orientalism

The question of beginnings in relation to Edward Said’s book Orientalism can be narrated in very diverse ways, leading to a potentially productive question: when and where does the critique of Orientalism begin? Here at MESA, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary to Said’s book, it would perhaps be instructive to situate the book in relation to the various geographies, histories and fields of knowledge in which it is embedded. What are the contexts and intertexts of Said’s work? How can we characterize its undergirding conceptual paradigms and disciplinary methodologies? What about the neighboring fields that have impacted Said’s work and that in turn have been impacted by that work—are they relevant to Middle Eastern studies? Since the Saidian critique of Orientalist epistemology has by now been extrapolated to diverse cultural geographies, how can we map these transnational currents in relation to the study of the Middle East? And, finally, what does a book, written by a diasporic Palestinian in the U.S., tell us about the kinds of analytical frames that might illuminate the study of that Middle East which is not simply “over there” but also “back here?”

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Media, Racism and Islamophobia: The Representation of Islam and Muslims in the Media

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Media, Racism and Islamophobia: The Representation of Islam and Muslims in the Media

The Anthropology of Islam

Gabriele Marranci’s latest book, The Anthropology of Islam, examines thehistory and current status of anthropological work focusing on Islam.Despite its title, this work seems less intended as an overview of the anthropologyof Islamthan as a critique of the field. Essentialism,Marranci argues,still marks prominent works of anthropology that focus onMuslims. EdwardSaid’s critique of Orientalism and anthropology’s post-1980s “crisis of representation”notwithstanding, Islam and Muslims are still represented inmany anthropological texts as fixed and unchanging, tethered to an imagined,unitary tradition. Anthropological studies have not yet caught up withthe impact of migration, the Internet, or other global processes, and thus theyrepresent Muslims abroad as caught between cultures or locked in aninevitable crisis of identity in which a rigidly defined faith is found to be atodds with the pluralism of western life.The approach Marranci advocates involves examining the diverse waysMuslims feel and experience their religion, as well as the complex networksand interactions in which they locate themselves, particularly in the West.“‘Muslim,’” he writes, “has an emotional component attached to it. Theyfeel to be Muslim. Then, and only then, the ‘feeling to be’ is rationalized,rhetoricized, and symbolized, exchanged, discussed, ritualized, orthodoxizedor orthopraxized” (p. 8). Drawing on cognitive neuroscience, the authoradvocates exploring identity practices through this “feeling to be” Muslim ...

Rethinking Christian Missions: Said's Orientalism and Christian Missionary Responses to Prostitution in Thailand

I argue that an examination of Christian missionary responses to prostitution in Thailand illustrates that not only must the field of missiology take seriously the critiques of Orientalism, but that these challenges require a radical rethinking of the appropriateness of the very notion of Christian missions. In the essay, I (1) provide a theoretical framework; (2) profile three missionary responses to prostitution in Thailand; (3) assess the missionary responses through the theoretical framework; and (4) explicate my conclusions. Under-girding my entire examination is a multi-layered probe of the question: is the missionary impulse inherently Orientalist?

“Liberation” vs. “Purity”: Representations of Saudi Women in the American Press and American Women in the Saudi Press

This article analyzed representations of Saudi women in the American press after September 11, 2001. Using feminist criticism, the critique of Orientalism, and postcolonial discourses as theoretical frameworks, it also compared the representations of Saudi women in The Washington Post with those of American women in the Arab News. While The Washington Post overwhelmingly portrayed Saudi women as oppressed victims in need of Western liberation, the Arab News represented most freedoms enjoyed by American women as shallow. Even as the Arab News primarily constructed American women as ethnocentric, superficial, individualistic and immoral, it simultaneously bestowed Saudi women with the responsibility of resisting Westernization and preserving Islamic purity, national dignity and culture. While dominant representations of American women in the Arab News were pejorative in nature, those American women who were perceived as attempting to understand Saudi culture and praised Saudi customs, traditions and lifestyles were positively portrayed. Finally, the rescue discourses in the American press and the nationalist agenda in the Saudi press shared a defining characteristic: both had the same goal of disciplining the female body.

Rethinking the Historical Genealogy of Orientalism

The publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) marked a paradigm shift in thinking about the relationship between the West and the non‐West. Said coupled his critique of European discourse on the Middle East to issues of representation generally, demonstrating that Western discourse on the Middle East was linked to power, trafficked in racist stereotypes and continually reproduced itself. Despite important achievements, the critique of colonial representations often appeared abstract and disengaged from its own history as well as the specific colonial histories it sought to explain. We contend that while colonial representations have been theorized, they have yet to be adequately historicized. To this end, we trace the genealogy of the critique of colonial forms of knowledge in Britain, France and the US from the mid‐1940s to 1978. We argue for the historicization of the critique of orientalism, and for a more philosophically adequate theorization of modernity in world history.

Comparative Analysis of Mainstream Discourses, Media Narratives and Representations of Islam in Britain and France Prior to 9/11

It has become almost impossible to believe that Islam even existed in Western consciousness before September 11, 2001 (9/11). Those who have used that event to denigrate Islam, and those who criticise the Islamophobia inherent in such negative discourses, take the events and aftermath of that day as their starting point. In contrast to that imagination, and also in contrast to some literature that attempts to instantiate a critique of Orientalism, this paper shows that Western representations of Islam and Muslims were sophisticated, diverse and historically fluid before 9/11. It does so by analysing media sources from the United Kingdom and France, the two nation states whose governments have famously been at loggerheads over their post-9/11 analyses and foreign policies. The objective here is to capture the diversity of mainstream social discourses as they were reflected in the press. The purpose is not to analyse media influence or the relative importance of different discourses, so the sources are deliberately selective and small in number. The article is structured around the “paradigm shift” from an exotic, sensual stereotype of Islam to a stereotype of Muslim fanaticism (prominent at the time of the Rushdie affair, for example), which prepared the ground for responses to 9/11, but it also identifies a media critique of these discourses, and of Islamophobia in society and in the media itself.

Hegel's excess: Indology, historical difference and the post-secular turn of theory

Arguably the most important theoretical movement to have influenced post-colonial studies of India stems from Edward Said's critique of Orientalism. Now built into the very fabric of discourse on S...

Forging a North-South Perspective: Nikkei Migration in Karen Tei Yamashita's Novels

This article assesses the significance of Yamashita's attempts through an examination of three of her novels that focus on Japanese-Brazilian interaction: Through the Arc of the Rain Forest (1990), Brazil-Maru (1992), and Circle K Cycles (2001).2 Previously, Asian American literary studies have been largely informed by U.S.-centered historical research and by premises originating in Edward Said's critique of Orientalism. Recent investigations of Asian American literary production, however, self-consciously foreground a transnational perspective, emphasizing the multiple trajectories of Asian diasporas, the transcendental force of commercial market, the fluidity of cyberspace, and the growing impact of Asian capitalisms. Yet many such efforts do not go beyond normative postnational procedures and the larger map of a now reified East- West analysis. Consequently, they often end up affirming the rhetorical underpinnings of a U.S.-inspired imaginary of mobility,3 while they continue to ignore the ongoing soci...

The Orientalization of Gender

Said’s critique of Orientalism provokes a comprehensive review by post-colonial theorists of the bulk of western knowledge regarding non-western countries. This Orientalist literature buttresses the colonial notion of a civilizing mission, which is also supported by many western feminists who provide theoretical grounds to such colonialist perceptions. Such post-colonial feminists as Gayatri Spivak, Chandra Mohanty, and Rajeswari Rajan analyze western feminism’s ideological complicity with Orientalist and imperialist ventures.

The Occidental Tourist: Said, Orientalism, and the Mediterranean

At the close of the 19th century, an emergent urban bourgeoisie in Catalonia emulated its counterparts in more affluent European countries and developed distinctive cultural behaviour, such as travel to exotic locations. Egypt, and particularly Cairo, became a preferred destination. The initial aim of this paper is to present the images of Cairo as reflected in the travel narratives of several Catalan travellers. Although this was a familiar fascination, it reveals greater complexities concerning the relations between East and West, between different regions of the Mediterranean, and even within Spain itself. From these narratives, we initiate a critique of Orientalism on the grounds that duality necessarily masks more than it reveals.

Hoaxer visionaries of the global

The hoaxer is not adequately conceived in discourses on postcolonialism and globalization, despite questions of identity being central to both. Ethnic hoaxes and deceptions thrive in a world of increased migrancy in proportion to the commodification of stereotypes. The global success of the guru is in part a symptom of a persistent Orientalism (though the critique of Orientalism needs updating in a world of increased migrancy), which arguably the guru now exploits for his own benefit partly in revenge on the violence of representation. In a counter‐attack, the guru is perceived as a hoaxer in many representations made by the industries of entertainment and scepticism. The possibility that a guru might be a threat to Western rationalism or even a threatening kind of “national intellectual” (in Fanon's sense) is part of an implicit agenda in these attacks. The attacks, however, do not succeed in their goal of subversion, since they do not recognize the attraction for something that they themselves promote, which we call the ‘global imaginary’. Furthermore, sceptics in particular miss how the guru can always fall back on presenting the world as illusory in order to disarm attacks that focus on their trickery.

An Orientalist in the Orient: Richard Garbe's Indian Journey, 1885-86

Richard Garbe, a German professor of Indology, lived and studied in India for one year in the 1880s. Using Garbe's travel journal, a novel he wrote on India, and other writings, this article seeks to locate German Orientalism and Orientalists vis-�-vis Edward Said's critique of Orientalism and the debates arising from his critique. Although Germany was not a major colonial power, this study finds that German Orientalism reflected and benefited from European power, even if it did not contribute overtly to its growth.