Page 111 - Introducing Cultural Studies
P. 111
orerunners to Orientalism
Edward Said was not the first to discuss Western images of the non-
West or to introduce the notion of Orientalism. Over a decade before
the publication of Orientalism, the Syrian scholar Abdul Lafit Tibawi
had covered similar ground in his monograph, English Speaking
Orientalists (1965). In Europe and Islam (1977), the Tunisian
historian and philosopher Hichem Djait presented arguments and
evidence about European representation of Islam remarkably similar
to those of Said. And the Malaysian sociologist Syed Hussain Alatas
in his seminal work, The Myth of the Lazy Native (1977)...
Many other writers - amongst
them Anwar Abel Malek,
Abdullah Laroui, Talal Asad,
K.M. Panikkar and Ramila
Thapar - had also produced
formidable texts on Orientalism
before Said's Orientalism.
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