At the Maze of Clandestine Knowledge of the West, or Edward SaidНазад
At the Maze of Clandestine Knowledge of the West, or Edward Said
It is 30 years in 2008 since the day of publication of "Orientalism. Western concepts of the East", a well-known book by Edward wadi Said (Said E. Orientalism. L., 1978). Both the anniversary and other reasons make us take another look at the work of this outstanding Palestinian. Present-day developments in different parts of the world, including Iraq, Somalia or Kosovo, perceived through the prism of E.Said`s "orientalism", gain brightness, as if some kind of eggshell breaks to expose the essence of things. However, as 30 years ago this concept has not been in demand with either science or politicians. Even though aggressiveness of "westernism" (Aleksandr Zinoviev`s phrase) in the past several years calls for an explanation of this phenomenon. Edward Said offered it. His concept of "orientalism" half opens the entrance to the maze of "clandestine" Western knowledge. But let`s begin with a few words about Said, an extraordinary person and scholar.
Edward wadi Said was an Arabic Christian, an expert on the English literature who got western education and acted as a lecturer in the West. A versatile person, he did a lot to find ways of understanding the wealth of cultural diversity, and his inner world was an original field of a dialogue between Islam and Christianity, the Arabic Orient and the Anglo-Saxon West. At the same time (you have to pay for everything!) his talents constantly created problems for Said, estranging him from many people. It was not accidental that he called his memories "Out of place". Indeed this extraordinary person was an intellectual, scholar, musical and literature critic, a piano player. But he was a stranger to both Muslims (He`s Christian!) and oriental scholars (He`s an English literature expert!).
Said was born November 1,1935 in Jerusalem (Talbiye quarter) to a wealthy and quite conservative Arab Christian family. In 1943 the family moved to Cairo, where Edward`s father headed the Cairo affiliation of the Palestinian Education Company that sold books and stationery. In 1951 Said went to the United States to study in Princeton, Harvard and Columbia universities. If his scholarly career went on smoothly, life was full of bad surprises to his family. After Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Saids` family business, they moved to Lebanon.
After the Israeli annexation of the western quarters of Jerusalem, Said had regarded himself a Palestinian refugee. Nevertheless he denounced anti-Jewish terror, reiterating in his writing that Jews and Arabs should live together in one and the same state and spoke against the most rigid provisions of the Palestinian Charter. He censured U.S. policies in the Middle East as arrogant, eventually finding himself under crossfire of criticism as a stranger to both his own and other people.
Till his last gasp in 2003 Said was a hard worker. It would be hard to say what the priorities of his versatile activities were: political struggle, science or the arts. One thing is clear: his "Orientalism" paved the way for him to both the treasure house of science and the practice of political relationships between Islam and the West.
Of course, Said`s "Orientalism" was not the only book dealing with the problem of the need of mutual understanding between the East and West. The very 1978 saw B.Turner`s "Marxism and the End of Orientalism", and J.P.S.Oberoi`s "Science and Swaraj"1. But still, it was exactly Said`s book that became pivotal for further studies whose main idea can be described as follows: identification of political roots and origins of the European social science and its limitations as regards understanding of cultures other than European.
By smelting Said`s arguments into pure logic his main conclusion is: the scholarly western orientalism was created to exert "control by comprehension" rather that comprehension of oriental civilisations as understood by a western orientalist to a degree, in which a representative of one civilisaion acting in one`s own interests is able to control representatives of other civilisations. Another outstanding thinker`s ideas immediately come to mind. Analysing the "microphysics of authority" Michel Foucault in his "Surveiller et Punir" he stressed the especial significance of the following three postulates: a) authority produces knowledge; b) authority and knowledge directly presuppose each other; c) neither authority without resting on a corresponding field of learning, or knowledge that does not presuppose formation of authority relationships are possible (Foucault M. Surveiller et punir. Paris, 1975).
"Orientalism" is both a body of texts and a manner of thinking, a corporate institution and a political doctrine dealing with relationships between East and West, and a leverage of dominance (Antonio Gramsci called it "the cultural hegemony"). As Said stresses, the neo-European culture took shape and grew stronger by counterpoising itself to the East that for Europeans was "an embodiment of something alien."
Said thought that "orientalism" was given rise to by certain political forces and trends, therefore "successes scored by "science" similar to orientalism in its academic form had less correlation with objective truth than we would like to think at times." But what price the truth? To recollect Martin Luther: "The spirit of truth is morbific ... For the truth is not complimentary."
In "orientalism" the East is presented as static and incapable of developing of its own accord. Oriental dynamics complete with its specific evolution laws was presented as static for no other reason than it being not western. Its original, specific "oriental" way of development was viewed as the lack of development that did not meet western standard rates of development perceived in accordance with the concepts of a linear ascension progress. That way the orientalist mythology was created with one such myth stating that the East was inert and ossified. Not only scholars, but writers, poets and travellers contributed to it. Travellers would visit Eastern countries taking notice of nothing but the exotic, looking for new evidence to reinforce the stale western stereotypes of "oriental laziness, oriental despotism, oriental sensuality, etc. In turn, according to the law of feedback, these stereotypes formed the basis for the construction of scholarly schemes. Along these lines, orientalism ceased to be a scientific discipline, turning into a system of frozen truths, so (going too far in his polemics) Edward Said wrote: "It would be fair to say that every European who spoke about the East has demonstrated that he/she is a racist, imperialist and almost an ethnocentrist."
The significant role in imposing orientalism on educated easterners as a means of their self-study was that of English and French, the administrative colonial languages. The cognitive activities of Asians and Africans were based on foreign rather than their native languages. Studies of one (non-western) civilisation based on the language of another (western civilisation) could not fail to kead the way to an introduction of European centrism.
As any other new concept, Said`s "orientalism" was not devoid of contradictions, which his critics could not fail to mention - most interestingly, not western, bur Arab critics. For example, in his view the European orientalism as a form of negative attitude to the East began to develop in ancient times, with milestones like the writings of Homer, Aeschylus, Euripidis and later - Dante. At the same time Said stressed the role orientalism played in the servicing of colonial interests. The question arises: is orientalism something extra-temporal, or were the things Said criticised only those of the 2oth century in the epoch of the colonial division of the world?
As Said emphasises the open-ended character of the historical hostile attitude the West takes towards the East, his "orientalism" proves to be something extra-historical, always restricted to its own confines. It is hard to disagree with those critics of Said who write that reproaching the West for the creation of an image of a hostile East he created the image of the West that had been hostile to the East since the days of Homer.
What can be the most precious about Edward Said`s book is his untunnelled vision and his ability to look into a problem from a different vantage point, representing the "blooming complexity" of the world community in a different logic than that of dominance and obeisance, which the neo-European West has for several centuries tried to impose on the rest of the world.
By and large "orientalism" is quite a sophisticated construction, and as time indicates, Said`s work asks more questions than it answers. However, using his book as a starting point one can go forward in the criticism of west-centrism in the analysis of processes going on in the Middle East, China, India, Japan and other non-western societies, especially Russia and the Balkans. In scholarly terms it boils down to the problem of adequacy of modern social science (as a product of the neo-European West) in the face of the objectives of studies of the world that comprises the absolute majority of mankind. In political terms, the work of Edward Said viewed from today`s perspective is a significant and largely untapped resource for resisting the destructive impact of the western "global democratic revolution."
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