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a failing that it gave so little weight to the religious mo- actual intercultural relationships and transfers between
tivations of Orientalists with Christian or Jewish back- the continents, his critics have considered Said’s model
grounds who write about Muslim peoples.Yet while both to be too strongly based on the idea of a monologue;
history and religion were certainly crucial to the nineteenth- they argue for a dialogue that will eventually bring the
century understanding of Islam and Muslims, criticism Third World back into the debate.
of Said’s thesis have come mainly from the fields of liter- Notwithstanding the problematic character of many of
ary criticism, cultural studies, or feminism. (Feminist schol- Said’s generalizations, which his critics have pointed out
ars have taken issue with the fact that Said presented are often oversimplifications, it remains a particular merit
Orientalism as the domain of white male scholars and of Orientalism that it focused and intensified research on
writers without paying enough attention to its female the delicate relationship between an academic discipline
aspects.) Above all, it remains questionable whether high and imperialism. Sensitized by Orientalism, scholars have
literature, in particular, the novel, is a suitable medium reformulated questions concerning representations of the
for conveying the message of imperialism on a massive “Oriental” and the “European,” intercultural communica-
scale; possibly Said the professor of literature overesti- tion, and the conditions under which knowledge about
mated the influence of Dickens, Kipling, Conrad, and the other in opposition to the self can be gained.
their contemporaries.
Benedikt Stuchtey
On the other hand, Said revealed that although liter-
ary texts such as travel reports and diaries were often fic- See also Ethnocentrism; Eurocentrism
tional, they purported to reflect realistically on the Orient.
But can literary works that deliberately painted a fictional
image of the East be accused of Orientalism? Said’s crit- Further Reading
ics claim that the converse was true with regard to the Breckenridge, C. A., & van der Veer, P. (Eds.). (1993). Orientalism and
“Oriental discourse” of professional linguistics, for exam- the postcolonial predicament: Perspectives on South Asia. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press.
ple, namely that their subject was certainly not Oriental- Carrier, J. G. (Ed.). (1995). Occidentalism: Images of the West. Oxford,
ist. Said did not discuss why in the nineteenth-century UK: Clarendon Press.
Clifford, J. (1980). Review article of E.W. Said ‘Orientalism.’ History and
Western world it was above all professional linguistics
Theory, 19, 204–223.
that formed the core of the sciences of the Orient, while Codwell, J. F., & Macleod, D. S. (1998). Orientalism transposed: The
it was the relatively new disciplines of geography and his- impact of the colonies on British culture. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
Dallmayr, F. (1996). Beyond Orientalism: Essays in cross-cultural
tory that exercised the greatest influence upon political encounter. Albany: State University of NewYork Press.
decision making in colonial and imperial matters. This Freitag, U. (1997).The critique of Orientalism. In M. Bentley (Ed.), Com-
panion to historiography (pp. 620–38). London: Routledge.
means that critics of Orientalism overestimate the impact
Inden, R. (1990). Imagining India. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
of Orientalist scholars, while they underestimate the im- King, R. (1999). Orientalism and religion. London: Routledge.
pact of those academic disciplines in which the Orien- Lewis, B. (1993). Islam and the West. Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press.
talist attitude was less visible, but probably more inherent. Lowe, L. (1991). Critical terrains: French and British Orientalisms.
Finally, critics of the concept of Orientalism have Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Macfie, A. L. (2000). Orientalism: A reader. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh
claimed that the idea of a culturally united West as sug-
University Press.
gested by Said never existed. While Said rejected the Macfie, A. L. (2002). Orientalism. London: Longman.
assumption that there was an entity such as “the Orient” MacKenzie, J. M. (1995). Orientalism: History, theory and the arts. Man-
chester, UK: Manchester University Press.
constructed by Orientalism, he nonetheless had no reser- Majeed, J. (1992). Ungoverned imaginings: James Mill’s The History of
vations about speaking of a monolithic “West,” a single British India and Orientalism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Osterhammel, J. (1997). Edward W. Said und die “Orientalismus”-
Western civilization able to dominate the world by every
Debatte. Ein Ruckblick [Edward W. Said and the “Orientalism”
means, including cognitive and cultural ones. Given the debate: A review]. Asien-Afrika-Lateinamerika, 25, 597–607.