Page 92 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

orientalism 1393

the Middle East; for others it includes all of Asia. A fur- But in the nineteenth century a more ethnocentric atti-
ther dimension comes into the discussion with Western tude became the norm, as typified by opinions such as
approaches to Africa.Yet this dimension has largely been that of the philosopher G. F. W. Hegel (1770–1831),
ignored so far, not least by Said himself who emphasized who notably called Africa a continent without history. It
the congruency of the orientalist debate, including the was out of this sense of superiority that Orientalism
geographical East. Marxist scholars, by contrast, have emerged and upon which it was based. It reflected the
pointed to a multiplicity of problems and differences evi- conviction that the peoples of the Orient (whatever that
dent from many disciplines and resulting from a multi- comprised) were ontologically different and represented
dimensional relationship between knowledge and power. a different type of character.
Knowledge, in short, was neither scientifically innocent Knowledge about the Orient was thus constructed by
nor politically disinterested. generations of intellectuals and writers, politicians and
artists. It was part of a broader imperial culture relating
Knowledge and Power to Antonio Gramsci’s understanding of cultural hege-
According to Said and Orientalism, knowledge of the mony. The work of individual scholars spoke less for
Orient produced in the West helped European colonizers itself than for the uniformity of knowledge about the
maintain their subjugation and exploitation of the colo- Orient as presented by the West.Thus nineteenth-century
nized on the one hand and their pretence of objective Western scholars were prisoners of their own academic
and detached science on the other. Knowing and naming world, unable to overcome the intellectual limits set by
the other, they said, preceded control over the other.The the methodology and the semantics of their approaches
consequence of linguistic, literary, philological and his- and thus following up an ongoing monologue on a sub-
torical learning about Islam and Muslim peoples could ject about which they were not objectively informed. As
be, for example, that it could be used as an instrument Said pointed out, these scholars often did not even travel
by the West to impose its worldwide superiority. Further- to the countries about which they wrote, and therefore
more it was believed that Orientalism was also displayed they could hardly claim to be well and objectively in-
in museums and in the academy as well as in biological formed. The West claimed mastery of a special way of
and anthropological arguments. knowing called “science,” a supposedly objective route to
In his History of British India (1817), the philosopher universal truths, but the omniscient attitude that went
and historian James Mill (1773–1836) expressed the con- along with Western scientific inquiry was devoid of any
viction that modernization was synonymous with West- experience of Oriental reality. The message of the Ori-
ern imperial expansion, which, according to Said, also entalist discourse was this: The East was purely receptive,
coincided with the Anglicization of the world. Thomas a passive reactor described by adjectives such as “female,”
Babington Macaulay (1800–1859), probably the most while the West was the actor of history, structuring life
famous nineteenth-century English historian, suggested and judging the other.This was the relationship between
that the evangelical and utilitarian values that were gen- the colonizer and the colonized, the ruler and the ruled.
erally predominant in his age were instrumental for the
reeducation of the Indian subcontinent. In the eighteenth Orientalism and
century cosmopolitan views had been possible, indeed Its Traditions
highly attractive for many intellectuals, who experienced In the introduction to a later edition of Orientalism, Said
an openness that had made possible comparisons be- claimed that in the last quarter of the twentieth century
tween the European and Asian civilizations, encouraging research on the Middle East, Islam, and the Arabic world
the mutual reception of similarities and common ground. had not developed much in the United States. Europe, by