So what do we think about this guy?
Does he reveal a nefarious, pervasive, historically-ingrained undercurrent of the Western psyche? Or is he just an ideologue and intellectual hypocrite who spouts Occidentialism to advance his own political causes?
Edward "Ayatollah Khomeni did literally nothing wrong" Said is definitely the latter.
>Asking about Edward Said on Veeky Forums
Here comes a sophisticated discussion...
He never implied that Orientalism was "nefarious," just that that Western scholars always approach the East as an "Other."
Personally, I think he is correct. The most obvious example being the use of "Allah" in the West to refer exclusively to the Islamic conception of the Abrahamic God, when it's also used by Arabic speaking Christians to refer to their capital G God.
>He never implied that Orientalism was "nefarious,"
He more or less does, especially if you read/listen to later interviews.
He made it clear that he believed that Orientalism was used by Western Imperial powers to make the Orient subservient to their colonial Empires, but I hardly think that you can call that being an "ideologue" or "hypocrite."
His views on the Iranian Revolution definitely make him an ideologue and hypocrite. Orientalism is too reductive and lacks nuance.
>His views on the Iranian Revolution definitely make him an ideologue and hypocrite
I have no ideas whether Said's views on Iran where lifelong or just a naive knee-jerk reaction against what he saw as the removal of an oppresive US puppet that he later regretted, but how did Said's political endorsement of the Iranian Revolution make his cultural, literary and literary analysis of Western views on the East invalid?
>Orientalism is too reductive and lacks nuance.
That the exact same can be said about the vast majority of Western texts written on the East was Said's argument. How does that lack nuance?
>just that that Western scholars always approach the East as an "Other."
Well, how exactly do you expect a culture to approach *other* cultures?
Muslims literally call the West Dar Al Harb(The House of War), or Dar Al Kufr(The House of Non-Believers).
Said's "Orientalism"was never about how it should be written about, just how it was and is written about. I think you and I would both agree to the idea that texts that present themselves as being factual correct should follow an objective process of research and present their finding in an unbiased matter.
I just think it's a very very complex topic that cannot be reduced to some kind of post-structuralist power game, and one of the reasons I think so, is that it's not even 100 years ago that the entire Middle-East was an imperial power itself.
Whatever cultural stereotyping the West had of the Ottomans was probably as true for Barbary pirates who enslaved American sailors as much as it was true for Lawrence of Arabia.
I think Said's argument falls over a lot on the basis that he basically ignores the centuries of imperial skirmishes and settlement into Europe conducted by the Ottoman Empire, and the Caliphates before it. These don't dismantle his argument completely, but they make it much harder to justify so he simply chooses to ignore it. Further, he doesn't seem to countenance inter-Orient colonisation at all.
It's as though history begins 1800 for him.
Given he was a literary critic rather than an historian, his historical errors are understandable. But it does make his thesis less convincing given Orientalism is essentially an intellectual history of Western Europe that is highly critical of its subjects.
>how did Said's political endorsement of the Iranian Revolution make his cultural, literary and literary analysis of Western views on the East invalid?
Not invalid, just very hypocritical. His reasoning led him to fall into the very same trap he accused Western discourse on the East did. He too denies that they have an autonomous existence by completely and utterly ignoring the religious underpinnings of the Iranian Revolution. It really clouded his judgement.
Khomeini: We're going to enact Islamic justice under the banner of Islam and the flag of the Qur’an
Said: This has nothing to do with Islam but instead with social justice and wealth redistribution
Yeah, Said really should've asked himself why the Balkan region of Europe is half Muslim, half Catholic.
Both of your arguments are based on the fact that the Europeans weren't the only colonisers, which is of course 100% true.
However, I think you're really misreading Said's argument. The power structures he was talking about are both the political ones justified by the texts produced by European writets, i.e. the need to "civilise" the Middle East and depictions and the power structures within the books themselves. It's a study of Western literature and partly its effects on Imperialism, not Imperialism as a subject. He wasn't a historian or expert on Middle Eastern politics and colonisation, he was writing on how the West saw the East.
I'm not really knowledgeable on Said's views on Iran, so thanks for bringing this aspect of his career to my attention. It's unfortunate that a lot of really bright people can be idiots when politics is involved.
>butthurt Palestinian
>"REEEEE STOP OTHERING MEEEEEE"
>It's a study of Western literature and partly its effects on Imperialism, not Imperialism as a subject. He wasn't a historian or expert on Middle Eastern politics and colonisation, he was writing on how the West saw the East.
But that's the point. He essentially engages in a study of intellectual history, and mounts a critique of his subjects based on that study, yet is seemingly oblivious to the broader context in which these writings took place. Historical texts don't exist in a vacuum.
Maybe Said should have also looked at how Ottoman scholars talked about Christians and slavic people. Maybe then he'd realise he wasn't talking about something that is a unique pathological tendency of Europeans. He even implies that the ancient Greek philosophers were 'orientalist' in their world view.
Edward Said basically said the West should stop being such enormous weebs/haters with their skewed, overly broad, stereotypical view of "the Orient" and look at those cultures in the exact same way they would look at various European cultures.
>Historical texts don't exist in a vacuum.
Divorcing a literary text from its context is perfectly acceptable in Said's line of work. Also, how exactly do you classify what fits into the "broader context" of a number of texts written across a period of over 2000 years?
>he wasn't talking about something that is a unique pathological tendency of Europeans
It's perfectly "rational" to think of another group of people as an "Other." It isn't acceptable if you're writing a text that aspires to objectivity, and that is what Said was critiquing. Said was basically just pointing out the fact Western Europeans were writing with rose tinted glasses that made them see the East as a wonderland.
>Divorcing a literary text from its context is perfectly acceptable in Said's line of work
Just because it's "acceptable" in his discipline doesn't mean that it makes an historical analysis meritorious when its littered with errors and omissions. Maybe if he was writing a paper on "Flaubert and the Orient" or something narrow like that.
>how exactly do you classify what fits into the "broader context"
Perhaps by considering the experiences of Ottoman colonisation in Europe as an equivalent to French and European colonisation of the Orient. He could also consider that much of the significant European orientalist scholarship was conducted by citizens of countries that had no colonial holdings in the Orient.
>Said was basically just pointing out the fact Western Europeans were writing with rose tinted glasses that made them see the East as a wonderland.
He was arguing a lot more than that. He was arguing that it was an essential, and indeed unique, characteristic of Europeans to look down upon and use their power to dominate non-Europeans. And I'm saying he used a selective reading of history to justify this point, beneath a veneer of literary scholarship.
*blocks your career*