Three Relevant Principles in Edward Said’s Orientalism:

A Balanced Critique of

Postcolonial Theory & International Politics

Amidst the Current East versus West Conflict

By

Thomas Maldonado

An honors thesis submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the

UTEP Liberal Arts Honors Program

University of Texas at El Paso

El Paso, TX

May 3, 2016
 Acknowledgments

I would like to thank all the professors at UTEP who assisted me in completing this project,

without their assistance, time and patience, this would have been more difficult, almost near

impossible:

First and foremost, I am grateful to Dr. Michael Topp, and to Jecoa Ross for their constant

guidance.

To my honors project committee members: Dr. Ruben Espinosa and Dr. Maryse Jayasuriya for

reviewing my honors thesis and providing valuable feedback.

While not directly associated with assisting me in my honors thesis, the following English

professors provided me with the ability to interpret and explicate texts through proper literary

writing techniques: Dr. Tony Stafford, Dr. Mimi Gladstein, Dr. David Ruiter, Dr. Robert Gunn,

and Dr. Ezra Cappell.

Special thanks goes to Dr. Bernadette Andrea for her advice, insight and willingness to address

my questions about women Orientalists and Said, whether in person or via email. As we say in

Arabic, “Alf Shukr!”

And lastly, I thank my faculty mentor, Dr. Joe Ortiz for his professionalism, expertise, patience

and constant feedback throughout my research and writing. It has been a pleasure and an honor.

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 Introduction

Since the passing of Edward Said in 2003 and as a result of the attacks on 9/11, the

Middle East that Said critiqued then, has drastically changed, some may argue for the worse.

With the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan; the execution of Osama bin Laden; the overthrow of

the brutal dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen caused by the Arab Spring; and

with the rise of the so-called Islamic State in the face of the Syrian civil-war, the “othering” Said

warned of has once again reignited. New forms of anti-rhetoric and phobias have emerged

depicting a certain group of people with the same blame propaganda and tactics that an obscure

democratically-elected chancellor of Austrian background incited against another group of

people in the not-so-distant past. We are all aware of the disastrous events that soon followed.

Perhaps history will not be doomed to repeat itself on such a large scale, although given the

range of violence occurring in the world today, the future, appears somewhat bleak. At the same

time, this succession of chaotic events has ushered in a revival of what Said dubbed “New

Orientalism” among academics as well as non-academics critical of Said’s monumental work

Orientalism and its influence on how people view one another, especially biased ideas, notions

and opinions centered on the Middle East. Unfortunately, some of Said’s critics seek to silence

any validity of postcolonial theory and literary criticism, especially theory and criticism that stem

from his arguments in Orientalism. Instead, the New Orientalists and their supporters wish to

concentrate on the Eurocentric components of Middle Eastern studies viewing this part of the

world utilizing a one-sided, and often, stereotypical view of the region’s diverse peoples,

languages, cultures, religious beliefs and sects, governments and ideologies. Any intelligent

person would recognize that Said’s theories and concepts are not infallible or even free from

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scrutiny. Yet regardless of this reality, his ideas and viewpoints spark much needed debate that

challenges the way knowledge and information about the Middle East was and still is relayed.

This essay will examine the more relevant arguments in Said’s works on Orientalism, in

light of ongoing, largely academic, non-academic and political criticism of Said’s ideas. The

reader should keep in mind that Orientalism is filled with many concepts and theories about the

historical and current interaction between the East and the West, far too many to cover within

this essay. Some of Said’s key ideas concerning ‘worldliness,’ ‘secular criticism,’ ‘the text and

the critic in the world,’ the concept of ‘exile’ and ‘identity,’ plus Said’s views on humanism,

could and have filled numerous essays, articles, journals and textbooks. Therefore, I will focus

on only three core principles derived from Said’s thesis on Orientalism, the theory, including the

different, and sometimes contradictory, approaches used in critiquing Orientalism allowing for a

more balanced view of objectivity and critical theory.

I will draw attention to the following three perspectives: First, I will present a summary

of the three principles Said raises in Orientalism: the first principle focuses on the argument of

discourse and how it is used to generate knowledge that implements power leading to a

hegemonic domination over the Orient; the second principle discusses Orientalist representation

about the Orient and its imaginative geography; and the third principle analyzes the argument

regarding Orientalists and their function in enacting both discourse and representation. Second, I

will present some responses from various critics concerning their viewpoints of each of the three

principles that Said raises. And third, I will briefly explore a topic that continues to trouble the

essence of the third principle: the absence of female Orientalists within Orientalism along with a

critical response to this neglected aspect of Said’s thesis.

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 The First Principle: Orientalist Discourse & Its Four Components

The core of Said’s concepts and theories surrounding the idea of Orientalism, despite

Said himself denying Orientalism as being a “theoretical machine” and more a “partisan book”

(Said 339), begins with the first principle, the issue of discourse: the manner in which knowledge

about the Orient, produced by Orientalist scholarship, formed a “power” that was used by the

Occident to justify their control over the Orient; a power that Said states is still utilized today by

modern Western superpowers to influence, as well as dominate via hegemony, parts of Asia,

Africa and the Middle East (Said 343). Following Foucault and Flaubert, Said takes the

traditional use of discourse, originally meaning the spoken and written word about a certain

subject or concentration of knowledge, and gives it his own spin. In Said’s estimation, discourse

is:

A text purporting to contain knowledge about something actual, and arising out of

circumstances […] Expertise is attributed to it. The authority of academics,

institutions, and governments can accrue to it, surrounding it with still greater

prestige than its practical successes warrant. Most important, such texts can create

not only knowledge but also the very reality they appear to describe. In time such

knowledge and reality produce a tradition, or what Michel Foucault calls a

discourse, whose material presence or weight, not the originality of a given

author, is really responsible for the texts produced out of it. This kind of text is

composed out of those preexisting units of information deposited by Flaubert in

the catalogue of idées reçues. (Said 94)

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This passage concerns the idea of texts versus real human interaction; texts form what Said calls

a “textual attitude” and the “appearance of success” which influence the reader to believe beyond

the supposed reality of what has been actually written. An example of this “textual attitude” that

Said cites is the failure of travel books to capture the intended reality of a place after travelers

discover the destination does not meet the expectations of the written texts. The objective of the

writers of these travel books is to sensationalize everything about these places, creating a view

greater than its reality. From it an authority emerges which dictates how a place, its people,

culture, beliefs -everything, even food- are all viewed according to its textual attitude.

Concerning the “appearance of success,” Said uses the example of a book written on the claim of

a lion’s ferocity. If one were to encounter a fierce lion after reading about such projected

fierceness, then that reader will find other similar works and most likely believe them to be true.

Furthermore, if the book gives successful instruction on properly dealing with a fierce lion, the

writer will write on other similar functions. Said demonstrates how the reader’s experience is

based on their selection of works. He states that if, afterwards, a series of books is produced on a

lion’s ferocity and its origins, then the focus will be placed more on its fierceness than on the

lion itself. This “appearance of success” now gives the textual attitude that “the ways by which it

is recommended that a lion’s fierceness be handled will actually increase its fierceness, force it

to be fierce since that is what it is, and that is what in essence we know or can only know about

it” (Said 94).

On that note, discourse, or what Said later calls the “Orientalist discourse” or more

plainly “Orientalism,” is what causes readers to first, view “the Orient” in such a sensationalized

manner, above and beyond its reality, and second, view “the Oriental” as someone possessing the

qualities of an Oriental. They are qualities that are usually stereotypical and sometimes racist,

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such as being backward, lazy, violent, overly sexual, etc., above and beyond the Oriental’s real

appearance, attitude, mentality and qualities. The conglomeration of “textual attitudes” and

“appearances of success” create a mythical language that dominates the ideas of a people until

the myth becomes an idée recue, singular of idées reçues, i.e. a generalized idea or notion. In

another part of the text, Said describes the function of mythical language saying:

[…] the language of Orientalism plays the dominant role. It brings opposites

together as “natural,” it presents human types in scholarly idioms and

methodologies, it ascribes reality and reference to objects (other words) of its own

making. Mythic language is discourse, that is, it cannot be anything but

systematic; one does not really make discourse at will, or statements in it, without

first belonging – in some cases unconsciously, but at any rate involuntarily – to

the ideology and the institutions of an advanced society dealing with a less

advanced society, a strong culture encountering a weak one. The principal feature

of mythic discourse is that it conceals its own origins as well as those of what it

describes. (Said 321)

Thus, the real intent behind the mythical language of Orientalism is in presenting a dominant

viewpoint wherein the characteristics of a certain people, in this case those of the Orient, are

made to appear normal and real while in reality they are far from what they are attributed with.

As such, the discourse attributed to the Orient then becomes, “an integral part of European

material civilization and culture.” Orientalism, according to Said, is the discourse which is

defined and utilized in numerous ways throughout the text.

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 British philosopher, Ziauddin Sardar, refines the three well-known definitions Said gives

throughout his work into seven developed categories that analyze the Orientalist objective: the

first is the classical tradition of study through language and writing; the second is via a Western

European experience of “coming to terms with the Orient”; the third is a style of thought

historically derived from ontological and epistemological distinctions of the Orient and

Occident; the fourth is a western style of employing domination, restructuring and authority over

the Orient; the fifth is an archival library of information containing ideas and values that gave

Orientals a “mentality,” “genealogy,” “atmosphere,” and provided Europeans with an outlook to

view Orientals as a “phenomenon”; the sixth is a system of representations that developed from

Western learning into Western consciousness and then into Western empire; and the seventh is a

western corporate institution that implements absolute description, control, teaching, learning,

commentary, viewpoints and ruling over the Orient (Sardar 68). In more exact terms, Said

makes it clear that this thing called “Orientalism,” is, and has been, the traditional driving force

used for centuries by Europeans to, culturally and ideologically, express and represent the

knowledge-power-domination relationship over the Orient. To Said, Orientalist discourse is “a

discourse that is by no means in direct, corresponding relationship with political power in the

raw, but rather is produced and exists in an uneven exchange with various kinds of power,

shaped to a degree by the exchange with power political […], power intellectual […], power

cultural […], power moral” (Said 12). This affirmation of knowledge, power and dominance

leads to what Said introduces as “hegemony.” Said borrows the notion of hegemony from

Antonio Gramsci who makes a distinction between non-coercive affiliations, such as school,

family and unions, and direct domination, such as the armed forces, law enforcement and

government. Said makes the point that unlike non-coercive affiliations and direct domination,

8
culture functions within society based on ideas, institutions and people by using consent. This

consent in society culturally dominates and influences other existing ideas and cultures.

It is this notion of cultural hegemony that Said applies to his idea of Orientalist discourse

making it a final, vital component of the concept. Said comments:

It is hegemony, or rather the result of cultural hegemony at work, that gives

Orientalism the durability and the strength I have been speaking about so far.

Orientalism is […] a collective notion identifying “us” Europeans as against all

“those” non-Europeans, and indeed it can be argued that the major component in

European culture is precisely what made that culture hegemonic both in and

outside Europe: the idea of European identity as a superior one in comparison

with all the non-European peoples and cultures. There is in addition the

hegemony of European ideas about the Orient, themselves reiterating European

superiority over Oriental backwardness, usually overriding the possibility that a

more independent, or more skeptical, thinker might have had different views on

the matter. (Said 7)

In Said’s explanation, hegemony is not just the Orient’s consent to how the West portrays it, but

it is also consent to doubt anyone from among their own kind who would dare question the

Orientalist discourse. Therefore, whenever Said refers to his concept of discourse used within

Orientalism, he is referring to Orientalist discourse which is divided into four key components:

knowledge, power, domination and hegemony.

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 The Second Principle: Orientalist Representation & Imaginative Geography

A summary is now essential in order to understand Said’s second principle: the argument

of representation about the Orient. According to Said, a culture’s circulated information,

meaning the text, is not truth within itself, but rather it is a form of representation that reflects the

dominant ideas, truths, trends and doctrines of that particular culture (Said 21-22). Therefore

anything written about the Orient is not reflective of a “real Orient,” it is merely knowledge

conveying dominant ideas, truths, trends and doctrines predominant in a culture. Said states:

[…] that Orientalism makes sense at all depends more on the West than on the

Orient, and this sense is directly indebted to various Western techniques of

representation that make the Orient visible, clear, “there” in discourse about it.

And these representations rely upon institutions, traditions, conventions, agreed-

upon codes of understanding for their effects, not upon a distant and amorphous

Orient. (Said 22)

Thus, representation of the Orient began first with the text, in all its forms: dictionaries,

translations, grammars, accounts of histories, any art form was, and is, a Western technique of

representation that forms a discourse representing this imaginary place labeled “the Orient.”

Those textual specialists of representation from the past and present, were, and are, the

Orientalists. I will further elaborate on their function in the third principle; however it is essential

to understand the link between the first principle regarding discourse and its four components on

one hand, and with the art of representation, on the other. What is important to grasp here is that

Said is not concerned with defining the boundaries of the Orient; rather, the word itself

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represents the field of study that surrounds the Orient. To Said, there is a strategic function, an

objective in the use of this representation:

My whole point about this system is not that it is a misrepresentation of some

Oriental essence […] but that it operates as representations usually do, for a

purpose, according to a tendency, in a specific historical, intellectual, and even

economic setting. In other words, representations have purposes, they are

effective much of the time, they accomplish one or many tasks. Representations

are formations, or as Ronald Barthes has said of all the operations of language,

they are deformations. The Orient as a representation in Europe is formed – or

deformed – out of a more and more specific sensitivity towards a geographical

region called “the East.” (Said 273)

The use of Barthes is particularly interesting since it borrows a poststructuralist aspect of the

linguistic relation uniting the concept of “myth” to its meaning as a relation of “deformation.” I

will add that there are those who criticize the manner in which Said uses representation, but I

will save that for the section of the essay that deals with a critique of the second principle. My

main concern with the second principle is Said’s connection with geography and myth to

formulate what he calls “imaginative geography” used as a means of strategic representation of

borders that do not really exist. He says:

I have begun with the assumption that the Orient is not an inert fact of nature. It is

not merely there, just as the Occident itself is not just there either. We must take

seriously Vico’s great observation that men make their own history, that what

they can know is what they have made, and extend it to geography: as both

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 geographical and cultural entities – to say nothing of historical entities – such

locales, regions, geographical sectors as “Orient” and “Occident” are man-made.

Therefore as much as the West itself, the Orient is an idea that has a history and a

tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and

presence in and for the West. The two geographical entities thus support and to an

extent reflect each other. (Said 4-5)

The Orient is just as imaginary as the Occident and Said gives an example of imaginative

geography at play. Said states that certain objects take on an objective idea in one’s mind while

only being a fictional reality; to Said, some people living in isolation have the tendency to

fictitiously set up imaginary boundaries that they identify as their own. Anything out of those

boundaries is automatically distinguished as being foreign or belonging to others. In Said’s

specification, imaginative geography does not necessitate that the foreigners accept this

designation of being foreigners or the “other.” What is sufficient in the minds of these isolated

people is that their land belongs to them and the other lands belong to others. The people of the

isolated land accept themselves as unique and the foreigners as different. Said uses the

illustration of a fifth-century Athenian stating that the Athenian does not view himself as a

“barbarian:” instead, he views himself positively as an Athenian; Said’s point is that social,

ethnic and cultural boundaries follow geographical ones causing the native to have

“suppositions,” “associations,” and “fictions” of the boundaries that are outside of it. In like

terms, the Occident created an imaginary boundary between itself and the Orient where it fixed

its own identity separate from the identity of the Orient and viewed that other part of land as

foreign. This is the manner in which the distinction between the European and the “Easterner”

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came about, whether that Easterner was Arab, Indian, Persian, Hebrew or any other group of

people from the Middle East, Asia or Africa.

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 The Third Principle: The Orientalist

The third and final principal argument regarding Orientalists is vital to the first and

second principle. The Orientalist utilizes discourse via its four components combining

representation and imaginative geography to “Orientalize” the Orient. Said provides a summary

of these workings, saying, “Anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient – and

this applies whether the person is an anthropologist, sociologist, historian, or philologist – either

in its specific or its general aspects, is an Orientalist, and what he or she does is Orientalism”

(Said 2). This definition is not only limited towards academics, Said includes all writers of the

Orient, regardless of genre, as intellectual authorities responsible for contributing to Orientalism.

Said categorizes this authority into two types: “strategic location” and “strategic formation.” As a

methodological device, strategic location represents an author’s viewpoint of the Oriental text. In

the same way, strategic formation analyzes various relationships surrounding texts of all groups,

types, and genres obtaining meaning and power within the culture reading about the Orient. Said

uses this methodology in order to identify the difficulties Orientalists face in presenting the

overwhelming amount of information concerning the Orient. Of their writing process, Said

emphasizes:

Everyone who writes about the Orient must locate himself vis-à-vis the Orient;

translated into his text, this location includes the kind of narrative voice he adopts,

the type of structure he builds, the kinds of images, themes, motifs that circulate

in his text – all of which add up to deliberate ways of addressing the reader,

containing the Orient, and finally representing it or speaking in its behalf. None of

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 this takes place in the abstract, however. Every writer on the Orient (and this is

true even of Homer) assumes some Oriental precedent, some previous knowledge

of the Orient, to which he refers and on which he relies. Additionally, each work

on the Orient affiliates itself with other works, with audiences, with institutions,

with the Orient itself. The ensemble of relationships between works, audiences,

and some particular aspects of the Orient therefore constitutes an analyzable

formation – for example, that of philological studies, of anthologies of extracts

from Oriental literature, of travel books, of Oriental fantasies – whose presence in

time, in discourse, in institutions (schools, libraries, foreign services) gives it

strength and authority. (Said 20)

A prime example of this strength and authority can be seen in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. For

Shelley, the representational location is Turkey, a citadel of Islamic empire in her time despite its

rapid decline in the 1800s. The representational translation is the narrative voices of her main

characters, Victor Frankenstein, the protagonist, and the Creature, the antagonist, who narrate,

build imagery, outline themes and produce motifs that represent and speak for the Orient under

the influential representation of the Orientalists.

A close reading of Victor’s account into seeking knowledge reveals Shelley’s fondness

for the Orientalists. When Henry Clerval, Victor’s childhood friend, comes to visit Victor at the

University, Clerval introduces him to the study of languages. Clerval, already having mastered

the European languages of Greek and Latin, delves into the languages of the Orientals: Persian,

Arabic and Hebrew, much to the delight of Victor who exclaims:

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 I felt great relief in being the fellow-pupil with my friend, and found not only

instructions but consolation in the works of the orientalists. Their melancholy is

soothing, and their joy elevating to a degree I never experienced in studying the

authors of any other country. When you read their writings, life appears to consist

in a warm sun and garden of roses, - in the smiles and frowns of a fair enemy, and

the fire that consumes your own heart. How different from the manly and heroical

poetry of Greece and Rome. (Shelley 44-45)

Using Victor as her mouthpiece, Shelley describes her feelings of relief, guidance and

consolation in studying the Orientalists. She finds an effeminate and lively difference in their

works unlike the poetry of the Greeks and Romans that instead focus on manliness and heroism.

Shelley goes on to narrate, via the Creature, that after fleeing Ingolstadt due to Victor’s rejection,

the Creature makes his way to Germany where he hides under a cottage rented by an exiled

French family consisting of a brother, Felix, a daughter, Agatha, and their blind father, De

Lacey. The Creature learns to speak, read and write, observing mankind from afar while

evolving into a being of insight and intellect. Felix is soon joined by a “stranger” later introduced

as Felix’s fiancée, Safie, a Middle-Eastern woman of Arab and Turkish descent who flees her

oppressive father, the Turkish merchant, and her homeland of Turkey. The narrative proves

interesting: the constant use of Safie as “stranger” and “Arabian” embeds Safie’s “otherness”

into the reader’s mind. She is sensuously and exotically described as, “dressed in a dark suit […]

covered with a thick black veil,” then after removing her veil reveals, “a countenance of angelic

beauty and expression. Her hair of a shining raven black, and curiously braided; her eyes were

dark, but gentle, although animated; her features of a regular proportion, and her complexion

wondrously fair, each cheek tinged with a lovely pink” (Shelley 80-81). The only criticism

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against Safie, according to the Creature, is that during the French lessons he listens to from a

distance, Safie is slow to learn. The Creature says, “I may boast that I improved more rapidly

than the Arabian, who understood very little, and conversed in broken accents, whilst I

comprehended and could imitate almost every word that was spoken” (Shelley 82). It is as if

Safie, the mixed Turkish-Arabian, cannot learn due to her ‘Orientalness’: since she is from the

Orient she cannot comprehend, grasp or master the European languages without difficulty.

Ironically, the Creature fairs far better; -he is still a Westerner, fashioned from the body parts of

fellow Europeans, although this is debated by some scholars of Shelley’s work. Nevertheless,

Safie serves one purpose as an Oriental, and to Felix: she is merely an exotic object of beauty

and sexual desire, a hard-to-obtain commodity rarely enjoyed by the European man. Shelley

makes it clear that upon learning the ways of the Europeans, Safie comes to an epiphany that the,

“prospect of marrying a Christian, and remaining in a country where women were allowed to

take a rank in society, was enchanting to her” (Shelley 86). Felix, as European Frenchman, is

Safie’s only way to intellect, independence and rank nobility, unlike living among her own in the

Orient where she would remain within the walls of the harem entertained with just her thoughts,

in complete boredom. Interestingly, Shelley tells the reader that Safie’s mother, an Arab

Christian, instilled in her daughter the love for Christianity, yet when it comes to Islam, she,

“taught her to aspire to higher powers of intellect, and an independence of spirit, forbidden to the

female followers of Mahomet” (Shelley 86).

As Said makes clear, every writer of the Orient assumes previous knowledge of the

Orient, and in Shelley’s case, one of her references may well have been her mother, Mary

Wollstonecraft, who writes in her infamous treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Woman:

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 In a treatise, therefore, on female rights and manners, the works which have been

particularly written for their improvement must not be overlooked; especially

when it is asserted, in direct terms, that the minds of women are enfeebled by

false refinement; that the books of instruction, written by men of genius, have had

the same tendency as more frivolous productions; and that, in the true style of

Mahometanism, they are treated as a kind of subordinate beings, and not as a part

of the human species, when improveable reason is allowed to be the dignified

distinction which raises men above the brute creation, and puts a natural scepter in

a feeble hand. (Wollstonecraft 214)

Oddly enough, Wollstonecraft confuses Islamic culture and tradition, which she incorrectly calls

“Mahometanism,” with religious Islamic texts that provide Muslim women with the same rights

and manners that Judaism and Christianity provide Jewish and Christian women. Through her

affiliation with Orientalist works, audiences, institutions and aspects of the Orient, Shelley forms

a preconceived notion of what the Orient is. Notions, such as her depiction of Safie’s father, the

Turkish merchant, via the Creature’s narrative voice, as being “the Turk,” “obnoxious,”

“unfortunate Mahometan,” “treacherous,” “traitor,” and “tyrannical” leaving the reader with the

impression that the Muslim Turk is not to be trusted and that their womenfolk cannot stand them

to the point that they wish to flee their homelands, en masse, to live among Christian European

men. Shelley may not have been an Orientalist scholar as Said describes in the previous passage;

however, her imagery of the Orient provides an intriguing view of the manner in which some

British women of her day understood the world around them based strictly on Orientalist

representations of the people of the Middle East. Said further comments about this type of

representation:

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 It is clear, I hope, that my concern with authority does not entail analysis of what

lies hidden in the Orientalist text, but analysis rather of the text’s surface, its

exteriority to what is describes. I do not think that this idea can be

overemphasized. Orientalism is premised upon exteriority, that is, on the fact that

the Orientalist, poet or scholar, makes the Orient speak, describes the Orient,

renders its mysteries plain for and to the West. He is never concerned with the

Orient except as the first cause of what he says. What he says and writes, by

virtue of the fact that it is said or written, is meant to indicate that the Orientalist

is outside the Orient, both as an existential and as a moral fact. The principal

product of this exteriority is of course representation. (Said 20-21)

Influenced by the Orientalists of her time, Shelley projects Orientalism into her own work

bringing “her” Orient to life, while at the same time, producing nuances of factual representation:

the Turks and their women are like this, Constantinople is like that, therefore the written word

about Muslims and the Islamic world must be the truth. According to Said, in this way the

Orientalist, as a professional and as an expert, presents Western society with imagery,

knowledge, insight and representation of the Orient. In accordance with this idea, Said states

there are five attributes of Orientalist representation that every Orientalist employs: the first is

conveying his or her distinct imprint of representation; the second is illustrating his or her own

conception of the Orient’s being; the third is thoughtfully disputing another’s view of the Orient;

the fourth is providing Orientalist discourse with what it appears to be in most need of; and the

fifth is responding to the cultural, professional, national, political and economic necessities of the

times (Said 273). Based on these five attributes, everyone who ever wrote about the Orient or

currently writes about the Orient, whether the Greeks: Homer, Aeschylus, Euripides, Herodotus,

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et al.; those from the Renaissance in England: Milton, Marlow, Shakespeare, etc.; or from among

the modern academics: Sacy, Renan, Lane, Flaubert, Newal, Burton, especially the five

traditionalists: Goldziher, Macdonald, Becker, Hurgronje and Massignon; and up until our

current time: Gibb, Harkabi, and Bernard Lewis, are all considered Orientalists and what they

did or do is unadulterated and explicit Orientalism in the pejorative sense. With that said, these

three principles, and the passages I cited as evidence for them, form the crux of Said’s thesis.

One can think of them as a sort of formula that encapsulates Orientalism as a theory: the

discourse is the theoretical aspect, representation is the practical aspect, and the Orientalist is the

one who practices the theory and application of the discourse and representation within

Orientalism.

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 The Critics on Said’s First Principle

With Said’s three principles of Orientalism outlined, I will now present some of the main

criticisms and comments of critics and theorists along with some of my own feedback. Of all the

arguments discussed among critics concerning Orientalism, the issue surrounding Orientalist

discourse has been the most troubling due to its philosophical content and conspiracy-theory like

rhetoric. Most critics take issue with Said’s use of Foucault and Gramsci to form his concept of

discourse and hegemony. Robert Irwin points out the major differences between Foucault and

Gramsci is enough to make it impossible to combine their theories together to form Said’s level

of discourse. One example Irwin sites is regarding the contradictory relationship between

knowledge and power: Foucault holds that power is everywhere, Gramsci holds it to be a

hegemony that is an imposed system of beliefs placed upon the ruled (Irwin 290). Where Irwin

sees contradiction, William Spanos sees a merging of two unique ideas that complement one

another. Spanos bases his view on the fact that Said’s “imaginative geography” relies heavily on

the poststructuralists’ understanding of the modern West’s “spatialization” or “territorialization”

of the knowledge of being, Gramsci’s view of historical geography, and Foucault’s emphasis on

territorialized temporality (Spanos 92-93).

In actuality, Said only references Foucault nine times in Orientalism. I have quoted

Said’s explanation of the Foucauldian sense of discourse in the first principle, but I would like to

briefly show how he presents Foucault analyzing the remaining eight passages. In the beginning

of his argument, Said makes the purpose of Foucault clear, stating:

21
 I have found it useful here to employ Michel Foucault’s notion of discourse, as

described by him in The Archaeology of Knowledge and in Discipline and

Punish, to identify Orientalism. My contention is that without examining

Orientalism as a discourse one cannot possibly understand the enormously

systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manage – and even

produce – the Orient. (Said 3)

Spanos is of the opinion that the Foucault influencing Said here is not the Foucault of The

Archaeology of Knowledge, but rather the Foucault of Discipline and Punish. Spanos describes

the methodological relationship between Said’s Orientalism and Discipline and Punish which he

believes is connected with Heidegger’s deconstruction and Nietzsche’s genealogical

historiography establishing, what he labels, “eight interrelated and fundamental methodological

propositions” fundamental to Saidian discourse (Spanos 72-73). From these eight interrelated

and fundamental methodological propositions, Spanos points out Said’s use of discourse in the

adopted Foucauldian sense. The summarization and detail of each proposition is rather lengthy,

so whoever wishes may refer back to Spanos for the whole discussion. Said then adds Gramsci’s

hegemony, completing the Saidian discourse and its four key components that I explained earlier

in the first principle. Said states:

My whole point is to say that we can better understand the persistence and the

durability of saturating hegemonic systems like culture when we realize that their

internal constraints upon writers and thinkers were productive, not unilaterally

inhibiting. It is this idea that Gramsci, certainly, and Foucault and Raymond

Williams in their very different ways have been trying to illustrate. (Said 14)

22
While Spanos is correct in associating Discipline and Punish from a methodological sense, there

are other instances where Said mentions influences from Foucault’s other works such as in his

statement regarding the advent of the modern Orientalists: “A new powerful science for viewing

the linguistic Orient was born, and with it, as Foucault has shown in The Order of Things, a

whole web of related scientific interests” (Said 22). As Said goes further into his thesis, he

begins to distant himself from Foucault, or rather making clear what he is taking from Foucault

and what he is leaving:

Yet unlike Michel Foucault, to whose work I am greatly indebted, I do believe in

the determining imprint of individual writers upon the otherwise anonymous

collective body of texts constituting a discursive formation like Orientalism. The

unity of the large ensemble of texts I analyze is due in part to the fact that they

frequently refer to each other: Orientalism is after all a system for citing works

and authors. (Said 23)

In another reference to Foucault, Said delves into the issue of “types” or the Orientalist study of

classifying people and race into categories and the various forms of research that emerged among

the Orientalists. Quoting from The Order of Things, he says:

In natural history, in anthropology, in cultural generalization, a type had a

particular character which provided the observer with a designation and, as

Foucault says, “a controlled derivation.” These types and characters belonged to a

system, a network of related generalizations. (Said 119)

Focusing on Renan’s pioneering contribution to Arabic philology and grammar among the

European Orientalists, Said stresses the importance of Renan’s place within the nineteenth

23
century, “Renan is a figure who must be grasped, in short, as a type of cultural and intellectual

praxis, as a style for making Orientalist statements within what Michel Foucault would call the

archive of his time” (Said 130). With Renan’s philology still in mind, Said stresses the advent of

a new philology that ushered in the secular reasoning that Oriental languages, such as Hebrew,

were no longer considered divine, but a human phenomenon. Said makes clear, “What Foucault

has called the discovery of language was therefore a secular event that displaced a religious

conception of how God delivered language to a man in Eden” (Said 135). And in his last

reference to Foucault, Said comments on Flaubert’s sexist commentary on the Arabs, especially

in interacting with Arab women, saying, “All of Flaubert’s immense learning is structured – as

Michel Foucault has tellingly noted – like a theatrical, fantastic library, parading before the

anchorite’s gaze” (Said 188). When comparing all of these references, one can easily see

Foucault’s influence on Said while at the same time noting their differences. Despite Spanos’

opinion that Said drew mostly from Discipline and Punish, he states, “The difference between

Foucault and Said is that the former locates his analysis of knowledge/power at the site of the

European nation (not necessarily the state), whereas Said, in a gesture that could be said to fulfill

the transdisciplinary imperative of the logic of the continuum of being, overdetermines the site of

Western imperialism” (Spanos 75). Whereas Foucault focuses on the Romans as the origin of

Western civilization and concentrates on them as the sustainers of the Occident while anything

not Roman is viewed as “other,” Said bases his on the Greeks and moves all the way through the

other Western nations up until the current times with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict along with

the manner in which they “othered” those from the Orient.

For Bill Ashcroft and Pal Ahluwalia, the issue is not so much Foucault’s influence on

Said or how much or how little he takes from Foucault, but rather the question of Foucault’s lack

24
of resistance. Both critics note key points in their defense of Said’s discourse explaining that

unlike Said, Foucault is passive when it comes to political commitment concerning how and why

power is obtained, utilized and retained; Foucault does not stress change within the framework of

the way power operates in a society, leaving out any opportunity for resistance (Ashcroft and

Ahluwalia 65). Ashcroft and Ahluwalia also stress Said’s desire to avoid the entrapment of

Foucault’s limits on power articulating the ability to resist and recreate. Orientalism is a form of

resistance against the power and knowledge of the Orientalists through knowing the Orient

outside Orientalist discourse. Said’s response to them is an authentication of the Orient via an

Oriental, a rebuttal of their fallacy of authenticity (Ashcroft and Ahluwalia 66). As Ashcroft and

Ahluwalia state regarding Said’s resistance:

Despite his obvious debt to Foucault methodologically, he maintains distance and

allows for authorial creativity. Thus, despite accusations of his misappropriation

of Foucault, Said is adamant that the theoretical inconsistency of Orientalism is

the way it was designed to be […] But even more explicit than this, he arrived at a

notion of non-coercive knowledge at the end of the book ‘which was deliberately

anti-Foucault […] For Said, the location of critical consciousness lies in

challenging the hegemonic nature of dominant culture as well as ‘the sovereignty

of the systematic method.’ (Ashcroft and Ahluwalia 66)

Ashcroft and Ahluwalia end their defense of Said’s resistance by acknowledging this anti-

Foucauldian view that other critics ignore or simply dismiss. In terms of Said’s theory on ‘the

‘text and the critic in the world,’ Said initiates this resistance as critic to critique both the stated

and hidden meanings within a text.

25
 Instead of focusing on Foucault and Gramsci’s influences on Said to form the concept of

Saidian discourse as many critics on Said usually do, Sardar presents the earlier discussions of

Marshall G.S. Hodgson in the historian’s collection of essays entitled Rethinking World History:

Essays on Europe, Islam and World History. Sardar outlines Hodgson’s recognition of

Orientalism as a discipline and discourse of power that perpetuates the West’s dominance over

the East (Sardar 66). He elaborates that unlike Said, Hodgson’s argument is free of Foucauldian

discursive theory. According to Hodgson, as explained briefly by Sardar, the West had its

historical notion of its own civilization and of the Orient’s civilization. Both civilizations possess

“essences” that are found in the historical books he calls “the Great Books.” Hodgson argues that

these “Great Books” minimize history rendering it into a dramatic form of “tragedy” where the

history of the East is seen as despotic and culturally stagnant while the history of the West is

rendered into a dramatic form of “triumph” seen as free and rational. Using his knowledge of

Islamic history in his three-volume Venture of Islam, Hodgson presents Muslim civilization from

an Islamic viewpoint where it is seen as an independent maker of its own representation within

the larger history of the West. Burke elaborates that Said and Hodgson share similarities in their

own forms of essentialism; affirm the use of texts and textuality among civilizations; and

acknowledge discourse in the sense of moral and cultural superiority of the West over the East,

but makes clear that “While the concept of discourse was unavailable to Hodgson, his

understanding of the essentializing tendency in Westernist scholarly precommitments anticipates

in important ways the work of Foucault, Said, and others” (Hodgson xv). Burke also notes three

of the following differences distinguishing between Hodgson and Said: the first is Hodgson’s

commitment to civilizational studies whereas Said doubts its validity; the second is Hodgson’s

use of essences instead of Said’s discourse and its four key components; and the third is

26
Hodgson’s view that all history, whether from East or West, is part and parcel of one another.

That is because Hodgson sees Islamic civilization as a sister to Western civilization, both sharing

a common understanding despite their differences, while Said appears to utilize resistance as a

form of anti-history (Hodgson xiv-xv). Undoubtedly, there are stark similarities among both

authors; however, after analyzing Hodgson’s viewpoints, one will note that unlike Said, Hodgson

offers solutions to bridge the gap between the so-called East and West instead of leaving it open

ended as Said does at the end of Orientalism. In his essay World History and a World Outlook,

Hodgson addresses the problems of Orientalism and Occidentalism by concentrating on the issue

of understanding and propagating authentic world history. Directed towards a white audience in

the 40s mostly from the West, Hodgson questions why when world history is presented in

Western text books, only a chapter or two is provided on the Orient instead of devoting the

remainder work to European history? Hodgson gives three responses confiding that the first

reason is due to a snobbish misunderstanding between the East and the West exclusively; the

second is due to focusing on the dominating powers and neglecting the dominated in order to

obtain a true picture of the world; and the third is that since the West is based on European

civilization, focus is naturally placed on everything European (Hodgson 35-36).

Where Said separates the Orient from the Occident to refute the manner in which the

Orient was viewed and portrayed by Orientalists via history, Hodgson does the opposite by

encouraging the study of all histories in order to understand one another. The reason for this,

according to Hodgson, is to understand the real world around us based on each other’s history,

not on false representations or stereotypes. Hodgson outlines that the problems of the East are

also problems of the West; therefore we need to recognize our faults and issues while at the same

time eradicating the plague of ethnocentrism. This is exactly what is missing in Said’s argument

27
against the Orientalists. If we rely solely on resistance, without reevaluating all histories and

placing them in their respective places, blame and denial will continue without any real results. It

is also my opinion that Said’s notion of discourse is problematically one-sided and biased. If

there exists a real Orient, and I will delve more into this controversial side of the thesis in the

next principle, then certainly the people of those lands have their own preconceived notions

about those from the Occident. Not only do they have their own preconceived notions about the

Occident they also have their own notions about one another as the Orient itself is a vast land

with different cultures, languages, religions, philosophies, etc. that are bound to conflict with one

another. There are numerous works by Muslim scholars of Arabia, Persia, Asia and Africa who

documented ideas of their own people and the Occidentals. One need not go far to find examples

of this in the writings of Ibn Khaldun in his Muqaddimah (The Introduction). Written in the

1300s, Ibn Khaldun devotes a section to analyzing the Arabs, Berbers and non-Arab peoples of

his own land. Ibn Battuta, a contemporary of Ibn Khaldun, wrote his ar-Rihlah (The Travels) in

which he describes large portions of the Orient: Africa, South and Central Asia and China. Even

before the both of them, in the 1100s, Usama Ibn Munqidh wrote his Kitaab-ul-Itibaar (The

Book of Reflections) chronicling his experiences among the Crusaders in what can be considered

a form of “Occidentalism” from an Arab perspective. In the same way that Said describes the

Christians of Medieval times portraying the Orient via Orientalism, Ibn Munqidh does the same

with the Frank occupiers in the Middle East, devoting a whole chapter entitled, “The Wonders of

the Frankish Race.” Ibn Munqidh says, “Indeed, when a person relates matters concerning the

Franks, he should give glory to God and sanctify Him! For he will see them to be mere beasts

possessing no other virtues but courage and fighting, just as beasts have only the virtues of

strength and the ability to carry loads” (Ibn Munqidh 144). If the same statement was made by an

28
Orientalist, Said would use it to show the power of the discourse, yet here we have an Oriental

using the discourse of Occidentalism to view the “other.” Other Muslim scholars from the 1100s

like Abu al-Fath Muhammad ash-Shahrastani of Iran and author of al-Milal wan-Nihal (The

Book of Sects and Creeds), writes about the philosophical aspects of Socrates, Plato and

Aristotle from a Muslim Oriental perspective. Another contemporary, to show the inner-strife

among those from the Orient, Abu al-Farj Abdur-Rahmaan al-Jawzi devotes a whole treatise,

Tanweer al-Ghabash fee Fadhli as-Sudaan wal-Habash (Illuminating the Darkness concerning

the Importance of Sudan and East Africa), to address the rampant racism among white and black

Muslims, saying, “Indeed, I saw a group of the best East African brothers troubled because of

their black skin, so I told them that consideration is given to one’s good deeds not to one’s looks.

I then compiled this booklet for them as a reminder of some of the good qualities that the people

of East Africa and Sudan possess, dividing it into twenty eight sections relying on God’s

assistance alone” (Al-Jawzi 29). In regards to the Occident as “other,” there are numerous

Muslim scholars who documented their travels such as the tenth century scholar, Ahmad Ibn

Fadlan, in his Risaalah Ibn Fadhlaan (The Message of Ibn Fadlan). Sent by the Abbasid Caliph

of Baghdad to Europe with an embassy of other Iraqis, Ibn Fadlan wrote about his encounters

with the Russians and the Slavs (Attar 23). And in the 1800s, Rifa’a al-Tahtawi, in his Takhlees-

ul-Abraz fee Talkhes Baareez (A Paris Profile), described the French people while sent as a

Muslim missionary by the Islamic University of al-Azhar in Cairo, Egypt to educate them about

Arabs and Islam (Attar 378). All of this shows that the discourse Said is theorizing has serious

problems that does not address the dual role of Orientals writing about Occidentals and vice

versa. A final aspect that one must not forget is that while the Orient critiqued itself and the lands

of the Occident through the writings I previously provided, Said fails to mention those from the

29
Occident who critiqued “others” from among their fellow Occidentals such as the British on the

Irish or the Germans on the Spaniards, etc., proving there was never a united “Europe” that wrote

against the Orient throughout history.

30
 The Critics on Said’s Second Principle

The critique of Said’s second principle identifies two main problems: those who interpret Said’s

words of a “real Orient” to mean his suggestion of a real physical Orient and his use of

“imaginative geography” to describe a literal representation of the lines of an Orient concocted

by Orientalists. Reina Lewis makes clear that:

One of the problems that critics identified in Orientalism was the troubling status

that Said accords to the ‘real’ Orient: the Orient figures both as construction, ‘the

written statement is a presence to the reader by virtue of its having excluded,

displaced…any such real thing as “the Orient,”’ and a real thing that can

simultaneously be misrepresented by Orientalism and directly conquered by the

West. (R. Lewis 17)

Irwin finds the same dilemma within both possibilities highlighting what he states is a

misrepresentation rather than a true representation of Orientalists’ discourse:

Said’s insistence that the Orient does not exist, but is merely a figment of the

Western imagination and a construction of the Orientalists, seems hardly less

improbable. If indeed the Orient did not exist, it should not be possible to

misrepresent it. But he was not consistent and at times he lapsed into writing

about a real Orient and, for example, he wrote about Orientalism in the second

half of the twentieth century facing ‘a challenging and politically armed Orient.’

(Irwin 291)

31
Other critics, such as Ahmad, delve further than Irwin and ask the central question, “Where does

the line between representation and misrepresentation lie?” Ahmad holds that all representation

is misrepresentation, any claims to a ‘true’ representation is one of cultural and political

authority. Ashcroft and Ahluwalia respond to this criticism by stating that:

Said’s own problem with discourse lies in its retreat from politics. That is not to

say there is a ‘real’ Orient somewhere outside of, or beyond, its representations,

but that the material urgency of colonial experience – or to put it another way, the

representations by the colonized of their own experience – must be taken into

account. This tension between the materiality of experience and the

constructedness of identity forms one of the most crucial issues in Said’s work, as

it does in political discourse of all kinds. Whereas he is criticised by Porter and

others for implying a real Orient, he is criticised by Ahmad for not invoking an

Orient that is real enough. (Ashcroft and Ahluwalia 74)

Earlier in the essay, I provided textual evidence from Said to support his negation of a real

Orient, but some critics are correct to assume, due to other explicit passages in Orientalism, that

Said is alluding to a real Orient that only Orientals can represent. Said acknowledges this in the

introduction of Orientalism where he readily admits that he has never, “lost hold of the cultural

reality of, the personal involvement in having been constituted as, ‘an Oriental’”(Said 26).

Certainly if Said is a self-proclaimed Oriental, then there is an Orient that he came from that

really exists. As for the second problem concerning “imaginative geography,” Ashcroft and

Ahluwalia offer a comment that seems to suggest that Said is alluding to a geography that goes

beyond the metaphorical “theatre” where the Orient is a stage on which the whole East is

confined:

32
 Imaginative geography legitimates a vocabulary, a representative discourse

peculiar to the understanding of the Orient that becomes the way in which the

Orient is known. Orientalism thus becomes a form of ‘radical realism’ by which

an aspect of the Orient is fixed with a word or phrase ‘which then is considered

either to have acquired, or more simply be reality.’ (Ashcroft and Ahluwalia 58-

59)

Within World History and a World Outlook, Hodgson lays the groundwork for not just

the eradication of this “imaginative geography” that Ashcroft and Ahluwalia allude to, but also

provides a global view where whites should acknowledge the differences in other parts of the

world. Hodgson places the responsibility on educators, historians, scholars and social scientists

to accomplish two types of encouragement: (1) encourage the writing of a world history that

includes the Orient; and (2) encourage a global view of the world directed at the layperson in

order to address distorted views and ideas of one another (Hodgson 38). To illustrate this advice,

Hodgson advises those in academia to avoid three things in their writings: the first is to avoid the

elevation of the European peninsula to a continent, the second is to discontinue use of the terms

“East” and “West,” and the third is to avoid placing Europe as the center of world history.

Regarding the first, Hodgson solidifies four points concerning the avoidance of elevating the

European peninsula to continent status:

Therefore, in order to avoid encouraging the idea that Europe is a continent on par

with the rest of Eurasia, we should: (1) not refer to “the whole continent” of

Europe, but rather to “the mainland,” or “the whole peninsula” of Europe; (2)

avoid that use of maps which carry a pointless line through the middle of Russia;

(3) not speak of “Asiatic” as if it characterized anything specially concrete as does

33
 “European” or “American”; (4) scrutinize everything we say about “Asia” or its

subdivisions to make sure we are not making inapplicable comparisons with

Europe or its subdivisions. (Hodgson 39-40)

Reducing Europe to a peninsula instead of a continent places it alongside the rest of Asia,

making it controversially a part of the Orient as well. It is also interesting to note, and Said points

this out in Orientalism, that the languages of Europe have an ancestry that originates from India,

an Asian country long colonized by the British. The second advice contains four important points

as well that Hodgson advises academics to observe:

Therefore, the need is not just to point out that the “East” is a cultural entity

complementary to that of Europe at all. Hence we should among other things: (1)

refuse to refer to this or that characteristic as “Eastern” – even when a careful

study has shown this to be true of all “Eastern” lands and of no “Western” lands

(a rare situation) – because of the danger of supporting the idea that the Occident

is coordinate with the sum of all the “East”; (2) avoid all use of the terms

“Eastern” and “Orient” as ambiguous, and use instead Far Eastern, Indian, Near

Eastern, African, Chinese, etc.; (3) be exceedingly careful in the use of the terms

“Western,” “Occidental,” etc.; (4) stop talking about the “incomprehensibility of

the East,” and refer if necessary instead to the “incomprehensibility of cultures

other than one’s own.” (Hodgson 41)

This avoidance of labeling removes the notion of “imaginative geography” found in this second

principle and allows both the Orient and Occident to blend into one, harmonious geography that

can be studied, critiqued and assessed through global history within the proper world outlook

34
that Hodgson advocates. The third, avoiding the placement of Europe as the Mecca of world

history, corrects the view that civilization began with the Europeans at the exclusion of the other

ancient people and nations of the Orient. Hodgson advises:

In order to avoid encouraging the idea that “Babylon, then Greece, then Rome,

then northwestern Europe have occupied the center of the stage of history,”

historians should, among other things: (1) stop talking about the “known world,”

as that expression is usually used – known to provincial Europe; (2) stop talking

about Rome’s being “mistress of the civilized world” – or of “her world,” since

the ordinary person will not get the difference subtly admitted between these

phrases; (3) stop talking about the fall of the Roman Empire, when only the loss

of three of four western provinces is meant […]; and (4) stop talking about the

Dark Ages as if they were a period of history. (Hodgson 42)

These various forms of advice provide an effective resolution of how the East and West can

better cast aside differences, acknowledge faults, and bridge the gap that Orientalism and

Occidentalism have kept the peoples of both nations at a distance from one another- a unique and

diplomatic solution not found originally in Said’s text.

35
 The Critics on Said’s Third Principle

Orientalists themselves have responded in numbers to Said’s third principle concerning

the active role of Orientalists in propagating Orientalism. Irwin states that Said’s thesis against

Oriental agency centers on what he defines as a dilemma concerning the dual portrayal of the

Orientalist. He explains that there are two main issues: the first issue is Said’s inability to decide

whether Orientalism as a discourse constrains the Orientalists making them victims of an archive

they are unable to free themselves from, or second, that the Orientalist is a willing and conscious

collaborator who fabricates hegemonic discourse that is used to subjugate others. In Irwin’s

mind, by applying these contradictory passages regarding discourse and hegemony, the

Orientalist simultaneously becomes both victim and perpetrator (Irwin 290).

Bernard Lewis likens the “absurdity” of Said’s depiction of Orientalists to an imaginary

scenario where, by substituting the Greeks for Arabs, the classicists for Orientalists, and the

works written about the Greeks for the texts written about the Orient as Orientalism: the Greeks

demand that no one can represent depictions of the Greeks except for themselves and the

classicists must be refuted for their academic works of and about Greek culture, language,

history, etc. (B. Lewis 1-2). Lewis explains that Orientalism in the past consisted of two

categories; the first was a school of art with origins from Western Europe; the second is an

academic school that studied vast fields of scholarship such as Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Arabic and

Hebrew. The term “Orientalist” was originally a term applied to scholars who specialized in

languages and texts, but over time they branched out into other disciplines and subjects focusing

on India, Africa, China and the Middle East. Lewis goes on to describe the official recognition of

36
Orientalists to collectively discontinue use of the term during the 29th International Congress of

Orientalists in Paris that occurred in 1973 several years before Said wrote Orientalism (B. Lewis

4). One of the reasons for discontinuing the term cited by the Congress was objection from

Eastern scholars who found it absurd to apply such a term to a scholar who studies Indian studies

while he or she is an Indian. Intriguingly, a group of Eastern scholars objected to abolishing the

use of “Orientalist” as they felt the term accurately described their line of work and had been in

use for ages. Considerations were made, but after the vote, the Congress ruled in favor of

abolishing the term, even changing its original name to the “International Congress of Human

Sciences in Asia and North Africa” (B. Lewis 5). What “Orientalists” was substituted with by the

congress Lewis does not mention; however, he singles out Said as the “main exponent of anti-

Orientalism” for reviving the word and giving it a negative connotation. Consequently, Lewis

holds the opinion that any scholar who is professionally concerned with the language, history,

and culture of the Arab lands is an Arabist.

In regards to Said’s attacks on the Orientalists, Lewis brings four main arguments against

his thesis: the first deals with the knowledge and power Orientalists use to dominate the Orient.

Lewis agrees that there were some Orientalists who served in the interest of imperial domination,

but not all Orientalists. He questions that if the pursuit of power through knowledge is the prime

motive of the Orientalist why did the study of Arabic and the Arabs begin in Europe before

Muslim conquerors were driven from Eastern and Western Europe? He responds that these

studies flourished in Europe in areas where there was no domination of the Arabs. From a

scholastic level, Lewis feels the Orientalists devoted more time in deciphering and recovering

monuments and relics of the Middle East while the Arabs ignored this. The second argument

Lewis puts forward is against the accusation of Orientalists’ bias against the people they study.

37
Lewis states that some scholars as human beings are prone to their own bias; however, the

difference is between those who recognize their bias and correct it, and those who give it rein (B.

Lewis 17). Lewis’ third argument deals with the epistemological problem centered on scholars of

one society studying and interpreting another society along with the prejudices and stereotypes

that will emerge from those studies. Lewis states that these prejudices and stereotypes will

continue to exist among all people irrespective of culture, race, class, profession, etc. The

important thing is that Orientalists, as far as Lewis is concerned, conduct themselves with

precision and discipline (B. Lewis 18). The fourth, and the most relevant to Lewis, is that Said

fails to recognize the scholarly merits and validity of Orientalists’ findings. As Lewis puts it:

Scholarly criticism of Orientalist scholarship is a legitimate and indeed a

necessary, inherent part of the process. Fortunately, it is going on all the time –

not a criticism of Orientalism, which would be meaningless, but a criticism of the

research and results of individual scholars or schools of scholars. The most

rigorous and penetrating critique of Orientalist scholarship has always been and

will remain that of the Orientalists themselves. (B. Lewis 18)

Lewis is of the opinion that Orientalists can only criticize one another, which makes them

untouchable, and the use of criticism impossible and unbeneficial. If literary critics, of which

Said is one, cannot critique the works of Orientalists, new ideas, theories and concepts would

never develop. In fact, Orientalism, as a practice, would remain as static as the Orient some

Orientalists proclaim is static itself.

While Lewis’ views are valid concerning the errors and bias of Orientalists, he does not

differentiate between what an Arabist does and what a Muslim scholar of the Arabic language

38
does. Instead he gives the appearance that Orientalists and Muslim scholars are one and the

same, as shown in his defense of Edward Lane:

Mr. Said makes a remarkably arbitrary choice of works. His common practice

indeed is to omit their major contributions to scholarship and instead fasten on

minor or occasional writings. An example of this is his treatment of the

nineteenth-century English scholar Edward Lane, who is discussed – and

incidentally maligned – for his book on modern Egyptians. This work, a

byproduct of his stay in Egypt in the 1830s, is interesting and in many ways

useful. It pales into insignificance in comparison with Lane’s lifework, his

multivolume Arabic-English lexicon, which was and remains a major

achievement of European Orientalism and a landmark in Arabic studies. On this

Mr. Said has nothing to say. (B. Lewis 11)

And yet ironically, Lewis does not give his readers any information about the background and

compilation of Lane’s eight volume lexicon, known in Arabic as Maadd-ul-Qaamoos, which he

worked on diligently for thirty years and, unfortunately, did not complete.

While Lane’s Lexicon remains a major achievement among the English-speaking

community striving to learn the detailed aspects of early Arabic words via the English medium, it

is not a landmark in Arabic studies as Lewis alleges. This is due to two reasons: the first is that

Lane originally sought to compile an Arabic-English lexicon by translating Zebeedee’s

monumental Taaj al-Aroos. Muhammad bin Abdur-Razzaaq Zebeedee, a great Muslim scholar

of Yemeni-Iraqi origin born in India, compiled this dictionary as an explanation of

39
Farozabadee’s colossal al-Qaamoos al-Muheet. Lane admits to this in his introduction to the

Lexicon:

The object proposed was not to do in English little more than what Golius and

others had already done in Latin, by translating and composing from a few Arabic

lexicons of the class of epitomes or abstracts or manuals; but to draw chiefly from

the most copious Eastern sources; one of which, comprising in about one seventh

part of its contents the whole of the celebrated Kamoos, I knew to exist in Cairo.

There, also, I had reason to believe that I might find other sources unknown in

Europe, and obtain more aid in the prosecution of my design than I could

elsewhere; and thither, therefore, I betook myself for this purpose. […] This work,

entitled “Taj el-Aroos,” a compilation from the best and most copious Arabic

lexicons, in the form of a running commentary on the Kamos […] I found, from

the portion before me, that it would of itself alone suffice to supply the means of

composing an Arabic lexicon far more accurate and perspicuous, and

incomparably more copious, than any hitherto published in Europe. But I should

not have been satisfied with making use of it for such a purpose without being

able to refer to several of the most important of the works from which it was

compiled. (Lane v-vi)

The current published edition of Zebeedee’s Taaj al-Aroos is approximately twenty-one

volumes, a copy of which I skimmed through myself at a local mosque while living in Egypt in

2009. Lane’s translated Lexicon is somewhat half of that and was uncompleted from volumes six

to eight. The second reason is logical; Lane’s lexicon is virtually unknown in the Arabic-

speaking world. That is because it is sufficient enough for Arab students studying the grammar,

40
etymology and detailed aspects of the language to refer to the hundreds of lexicons compiled in

their native tongue, many of which Lane himself used to compile his own work. This

differentiation between the Arabist and the Muslim scholar is imperative in order to understand

Said’s criticism of what some Orientalists are guilty of committing when trying to pass

themselves off as scholars of Islam and Islamic studies. While some Orientalists are of the

caliber Said describes, others cannot and should not be equated with such a negative portrayal.

One interesting critique on Said’s views against Orientalists is his direct attack against

anything Israeli. Said devotes the last section of Orientalism towards Israeli Orientalists,

specifically Yehoshfat Harkabi, a jack-of-all-trades military general of the Israeli Defense

Forces, deputy director to the Israeli Prime Minister, and Professor of International Relations at

the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (Abed 81). Harkabi wrote numerous works on the Arabs and

the Middle East; his Arab Attitudes to Israel is the main work Said criticizes, stating:

One need only glance through the pages of General Yehoshfat Harkabi’s Arab

Attitudes to Israel to see how […] the Arab mind, depraved, anti-Semitic to the

core, violent, unbalanced, could produce only rhetoric and little more. One myth

supports and produces another. They answer each other, tending towards

symmetries and patterns of the sort that as Orientals the Arabs themselves can be

expected to produce, but that as a human being no Arab can truly sustain. (Said

307)

Harkabi’s Arab Attitudes to Israel does contain a large amount of distortions and stereotypes

that, if written equally about Jews or African-Americans, would be considered highly anti-

Semitic or racist. Despite the harsh tones in his book, Harkabi maintains that the “Arabic culture

41
has various aspects and characteristics. Certain social and historical conditions evoke certain

aspects of this culture. There are positive and negative aspects in the Arabic culture, as in any

other culture” (Abed 82). As for Harkabi on Said’s comments, his response shows a balanced

side of the author:

There is no relationship between the Orientalists and the domination of other

nations. It seems that the Arabs are pained by the fact that most studies

concerning their culture and language have been conducted by non-Arabs.

Edward Said has a case, but it is much less of one than he thinks it is. Said is far

from being an expert on Islamic culture, not to mention the fact that he himself is

not a Muslim. Said’s thesis in Orientalism is dead in academic circles, although it

is still alive on the popular level. (Abed 82)

Said differs from Harkabi in viewing both Arabs and Jews as two different groups; instead he

makes it clear that both are Semites, both are parts of a bigger myth concocted by the Orientalist,

but somewhere along the way the Jew, imitating the West and adopting an extreme form of

Zionism, viewed the Arab as a separate entity. Said remarks:

By a concatenation of events and circumstances the Semitic myth bifurcated in

the Zionist movement; one Semite went the way of Orientalism, the other, the

Arab, was forced to go the way of the Oriental. Each time, tent and tribe are

solicited, the myth is being employed; each time the concept of Arab national

character is evoked, the myth is being employed. The hold these instruments have

on the mind is increased by the institutions built around them. For every

Orientalists, quite literally, there is a support system of staggering power,

42
 considering the ephemerality of the myths that Orientalism propagates. This

system now culminates in the very institutions of the state. To write about the

Arab Oriental world, therefore, is to write with the authority of a nation, and not

with the affirmation of a strident ideology but with the unquestioning certainty of

absolute truth backed by absolute force. (Said 307)

The response of the Israeli Orientalists concerning their works on Arabs and the Middle East was

tremendous, many deeply resenting their association with the types of labeling and stereotypes

that the Nazis employed against the Jews during the Holocaust. Abed mentions ten Israeli

Orientalists, Harkabi included, who oppose Said’s ascription of Orientalism to their research.

The likes of Shlomo Avineri, Aluf Hareven, Mose Maoz, Menahem Milson, Mattityahu Peled,

Zvi al-Peleg, Shimon Shamir, Emanuel Sivan and Shmuel Toldano all disagree with Said in his

approach, but agree with the issues that exist between Arabs and Jews. Shamir states about his

education in the Middle East:

We were not educated as “Orientalists” in Said’s sense, but rather as people who

really loved the Arab culture and considered it a great thing. No one of the

generation under whom I studied attempted to plant in us a negative attitude

toward the Arabs; none of them, in other words, tried to create budding

Orientalists in the negative sense discussed by Said in his Orientalism. (Abed 90)

This group of Israeli Orientalists, like Lewis before, also denounces the use of the word

“Orientalist” to describe their field of work, choosing instead the word “Arabist;” as al-Peleg

states, “Arabists are practical anthropologists who have really lived with the Arabs and learned

their manners, language, and way of thinking directly from them. Orientalists have studied the

43
Arab culture in an ‘academic’ way, and then have sought contact with Arab society” (Abed 88).

For these Israeli Orientalists, their love and zeal to study the Arab world was a means that

brought them closer to the Arabs. As Maoz emphasizes, if it were not for their study and research

of the Arab people, Israeli Orientalists would still hold negative opinions of everything Arab

(Abed 83). Also not mentioned in Orientalism are those Israeli Orientalists who speak out

against Israeli aggression towards the Palestinians. Unknown to the reader are former Israeli

officials, novelists, journalists, soldiers and professors like Ilan Pappe, Shulamit Aloni, Uri

Avnery, Ami Ayalon, Michael Ben-Yair, Meron Benvenisti, Yigal Bronner, Neta Golan, Neve

Gordon, David Grossman, Jeff Halper, Baruch Kimmerling, Yitzhak Laor, Aviv Lavie, Shamai

Leibowitz, Gideon Levy, Adi Ophir, Assaf Oron, Tom Segev, Avi Shlaim, Yigal Shochat, and

Gila Svirsky (Carey & Shainin 208). This does not make Said anti-Jewish, although some would

argue that he is anti-Zionist based on his views towards an extreme strain of Zionism; however,

Said does make it clear that he supports full co-existence between Arabs and Jews. Discussing

the issue of Palestine and the Israeli occupation, Said clarifies:

And the pattern so far has been the Zionist pattern which is to say that ‘its’

promised to us, we are the chosen people, everybody else is sort of second rate,

throw them out or treat them as second class citizens.’ In contrast to that, some of

us, not everybody, but many Palestinians have said, ‘well we realize that we are

being asked to pay the price for what happened to the Jews in Europe, under the

Holocaust, it was an entirely Christian and European catastrophe in which the

Arabs played no part, as we are being dispossessed, displaced by the victims.

We’ve become the victims of the victims. But, as I say, not all of us say, well they

should be thrown out. Because we have been thrown out and so we have another

44
 vision, which is a vision of co-existence, in which Jew and Arab, Muslim,

Christian and Jew can live together in some polity, which I think it requires a kind

of creativity, and invention that is possible – a vision that would replace the

authoritarian, hierarchical model. (“Edward Said”)

Finally, in relation to secular Arab scholars of the Middle East, Said does not mention the

Arab Orientalists among them. Daniel Varisco points out that Orientalists such as Ihsan Abbas,

G.C. Anawati, Mohammed Arkoun, Aziz Atiyeh, Abd al-Aziz al-Duri, Phillip Hitti, Albert

Hourani, George Makdisi, Muhsin Mahdi, Said Nafisi, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Fazlur Rahman,

Hisham Sharabi and Farhat Ziadeh are either never mentioned or only have a passive name drop

or two (Varisco 43). Regrettably missing from Varisco’s list is Samar Attar, the Syrian-born

scholar of works such as Borrowed Imagination: The British Romantic Poets and Their Arabic-

Islamic Sources and Debunking the Myths of Colonization: The Arabs and Europe. Attar

brilliantly taps into the postcolonial effects on Arab novelists and poets while blending literary

criticism, feminism and philosophy throughout her work.

Keeping these criticisms in mind, the main issue that I have with Said on the Orientalists

is in his failure to deal with the role of European Muslim converts who were Orientalists. Not all

Orientalists wrote negatively about the Orient. Many devoted their lives writing for and in

support of the Orient, in turn, dispelling prevalent information that depicted the Orient in a

negative light. Even though Said acknowledges Oriental scholarship, there are passages that

belittle the role of the Orientalist. One such passage states:

It is therefore correct that every European, in what he could say about the Orient,

was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric. Some of

45
 the sting will be taken out of these labels if we recall additionally that human

societies, at least the more advanced cultures, have rarely offered the individual

anything but imperialism, racism, and ethnocentrism for dealing with “other”

cultures. So Orientalism aided and was aided by general cultural pressures that

tended to make more rigid the sense of difference between Europe and Asiatic

parts of the world. (Said 204)

Ironically, there were many British Muslim converts who were Orientalists, during the time of

the British Empire, who do not fit the prerequisites of Saidian discourse and the four key

components of knowledge, power, domination and hegemony. Facey and Taylor mention that

historians chronicled the lives of British Muslims going as far back as the Middle Ages during

the Crusades when Englishmen were captured and converted into Muslim slaves. They also add

that in the 16th and 17th centuries many Britons were renegade seamen who converted to Islam to

either escape the Protestant-Catholic wars or to serve the Muslims in the North African ports

they frequented. The court records of Spain reveal thirty-nine Britons who converted to Islam as

well as one Alexander Harris, in the Inquisition of 1631, who was tried for leaving the faith. The

18th century finds Voltaire remarking on the large number of Spanish, French and English

renegades living in Morocco. Hundreds of such renegades also served Muhammad Ali Pasha

during the French occupation of Egypt in 1799. Facey and Taylor document a Thomas Keith of

Edinburgh who became an interim governor of Medina in 1815 during the campaign against the

First Saudi State (Cobbold 65-66). From the late 1800s onward, the most prominent and well-

known British Muslim Orientalists include: William Henry Quilliam, from Liverpool, who

established a mosque and Islamic center after travelling throughout Turkey and Morocco;

Marmaduke Pickthall whose English translation of the Quran is still widely read today; William

46
Richard Williamson of Bristol, a noted figure in Iraq and the Gulf area; David Cowan, a master

teacher of Arabic at the School of Oriental and African Studies as well as local imam of the

London mosque; and Lady Evelyn Cobbold who wrote the first account of a British female’s

pilgrimage to Mecca (Cobbold 66-69). I will comment more on Cobbold when I deal with the

issue of the absence of female Orientalists. Most interesting is the manner in which Said deals

with Harry St. John Philby, also a British Muslim convert, who worked closely with the Saudis

in helping them establish the Saudi kingdom and acting as a liaison between them and other

Western governments as the country developed (Cobbold 37). The five times that Philby is

mentioned in Orientalism, usually negatively alongside Lawrence and Bell, it is only as an

imperial agent of the Empire working against the Orient. Philby’s conversion or his work with

the Saudis during the long years he spent in Arabia is never mentioned. All of these converts

wrote extensively in favor of the Orient and its people, many of them clarifying common myths,

stereotypes and lies in addition to aiding the Arabs who were seeking to establish separate Arab

states and rule independently of the Ottoman Empire. I believe that Said’s reason for remaining

silent about this specific group of Orientalists, combined with the Israeli and Arab Orientalists I

mentioned beforehand, raises more questions than answers concerning Saidian discourse. Even

more so is the fact that the presence of European Muslim Orientalists proves that not every single

one was racist, imperialist or ethnocentric; there were definitely Orientalist friends among the so-

called Orientals. Not only did they not display racism, imperialism or ethnocentrism among the

non-Europeans, they adopted the language, culture and mannerisms of the people they lived

among. Despite numerous and beneficial criticisms concerning the portrayal of Orientalists in

Orientalism, Said’s views still show the relevancy of his argument: there were some Orientalists

47
who wrote about the Orient in a negative manner in order to forward their own Eurocentric

views.

48
 Exploring the Third Principle:

The Absence of Female Orientalists

While old arguments and accusations still linger, new arguments have developed

focusing on better ways to grasp the power of discourse, representation and the workings of the

modern Orientalists, or Arabists, as they choose to be called. Perhaps the biggest critique

concerning Orientalists revolves around the absence of female Orientalists in Said’s thesis. When

Said says that anyone teaching, writing or researching the Orient, specifically or generally, is an

Orientalist, “and what he or she does is Orientalism,” then it is assumed, textually, that the use of

this feminine pronoun also includes the female Orientalist. Yet, bizarrely, the only female

Orientalist given any attention throughout Orientalism is Gertrude Bell. Interestingly, when she

is mentioned, a mere six times, it is usually alongside a long list of male British Orientalists that

Said labels “imperial agents.” The seventh time that Bell is mentioned independently is to

misquote her concerning the Arabs. “Bell’s Arab,” as Said classifies it, is the “Static Arab” who

over centuries never changes or advances because the Arab is devoid of “experience” and

“wisdom” living in a constant state of primitiveness. In Said’s opinion, this view is not from

Bell’s own intelligence, rather it is influenced by the “White man,” the “agent,” “expert” and

“adviser” for the Orient. According to Varisco, “Gertrude Bell is an easy target for Said, because

she was instrumental in bringing Prince Feisal to Iraq after World War I. Said ignores her earliest

work on Persia, including a well-regarded translation of the poems of Hafez” (Varisco 376).

Wright mentions that this early work on Persia entitled Safar Nameh is one of her best works and

was met with critical acclaim. Her mastery of Persian while studying in Teheran in 1894 gave

her the ability to translate Hafez’s Divan to such an extent that today it is still hailed as a

49
remarkable translation by an Orientalist. Without a doubt, Bell is renowned for her linguistic

abilities, her knowledge of archaeology, and her ability to negotiate between sectarian parties as

she did in Iraq. Bell not only served the British government, she also worked for the

improvement of the Iraqi people (Wright 295).

Instead of mentioning Bell’s academic contributions, in addition to the gender position

within her work, Said chooses to focus on an out-of-context passage to fit his concept of

Orientalism. Many critics have focused on Said’s handling of Bell as a female Orientalist. Reina

Lewis comments:

Although his subsequent work, particularly Culture and Imperialism, refers more

clearly to the impact of discourses of gender and references feminist scholarship,

in Orientalism gender occurs only as a metaphor for the negative characterization

of the Orientalized Other as ‘feminine’ or in a single reference to a woman writer

(Gertrude Bell, in which he pays no attention to the possible effects of her

gendered position on her texts.) Said never questions women’s apparent absence

as producers of Orientalist discourse or as agents within colonial power. This

mirrors the traditional view that women were not involved in colonial expansion

(itself a subplot of a masculinist view of history in which women, if they appear at

all, are strictly marginal). (R. Lewis, “Gendering” 17-18)

What is clear, historically and textually, is that Occidental women did in fact play a part in being

producers of Orientalist discourse, some before there were any colonial powers and others during

and after colonial power in Europe and America took place. For example, in the 1600s, several

female European playwrights wrote about the Orient in the same manner as their male

50
counterparts, Shakespeare and Marlowe. Plays such as Delarivier Manley’s The Royal Mischief,

Mary Pix’s Ibrahim, the Thirteenth Emperor of the Turks and Catharine Trotter’s Agnes de

Castro focused on themes of female Orientalism that introduced Europeans to positive images of

Muslim female characters (Andrea 85). In the 1700s, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the

British ambassador to Turkey, Edward Wortley Montagu, traveled along with him to the

Ottoman empire and wrote the Turkish Embassy Letters where she corrected many

misconceptions about the Orient, Turkish women and the harem (Andrea 79). Varisco mentions

that between 1821 and 1914, a survey documented that 187 female Orientalists wrote about the

Middle East and another account that recorded travel books by 200 European women (Varisco

156). Facey and Taylor provide the names of several female Orientalists known for their travels

abroad, Europeans such as: Vita Sackville-West, Isabella Bird, Freya Stark, Rosita Forbes, Lucie

Duff Gordon, Amelia Edwards, Lady Anne Blunt, Kathleen Kenyon, Florence Nightingale, and

Sir Richard Burton’s wife, Isabel, to name a few (Cobbold 55).

However, not all female Orientalists focused on just plays or travel memoirs. Others were

known for painting beautiful portraits of the Orient, writing essays about its people, and writing

extensive works on Oriental languages such as E. Smith’s extraordinary dictionary A

Vocabulary: Hebrew, Arabic and Persian. Thus, the availability of works from female

Orientalists that Said could have referenced is endless. With such a large amount available to

work from, one would wonder why Said only mentions one. Perhaps it is because many female

Orientalists worked to dispel false images of the Orient, images that Said attempts to use in

Orientalism to promote his theory, especially those concerning Oriental women. While this

dismissiveness towards female Orientalists is problematic to Said’s thesis, it is not as

problematic as the issue surrounding two types of female Orientalists: the European convert to

51
Islam who lived and wrote about the Orient, defending it and educating the ignorant about

Islamic beliefs, philosophy, government, culture, etc., and the Muslim Oriental woman who

wrote about the Orient she was born and raised in. As for the first type, there were the likes of

Isabelle Eberhardt of Switzerland who immigrated to Algeria with her mother where they both

accepted Islam. Eberhardt mastered Arabic, joined a Sufi Order, married an Algerian Muslim

man and wrote a diary about North Africa. She was also a staunch supporter of the Algerians and

spoke out against French colonialism (Chilcoat 949). Another convert, Lady Evelyn Cobbold,

from England, wrote the first account of the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1933 entitled Pilgrimage to

Mecca. In it, Cobbold describes everything about Saudi Arabia in great detail: the position of

women in Arabia, the harem, polygyny, the differences between Islam and Christianity, and a

detailed description of the pilgrimage along with its hardships. In regards to the second type,

Halide Edib of Turkey comes to mind with her works Memoirs of Halide Edib and The Turkish

Ordeal. Written in exile while living in London after the suppression of Kemal Ataturk’s party

against the nationalist party she belonged to, Edib was renowned for her works detailing the lives

of Muslim women while promoting women’s rights and nationalism (R. Lewis, “Rethinking” 36-

42). These examples of female Orientalists create a paradox within Said’s discourse that some

critics have tried to rectify. Lewis suggests the following:

Attention to women writers and artists, therefore, does not just add to but actively

reforms Said’s original version: it disallows a conceptualization of discourse as

intentionalist and unified by highlighting the structural role of sexual as well as

racial difference in the formation of colonial subject positions; it destabilizes the

fiction of authorial intent and control by highlighting the discursively produced

and unresolvable contradictions in women’s accounts; it insists on the impact of

52
 imperialism on the lives of women and men (colonizers and colonized); and, by

so doing, disrupts the masculinism found in accounts and critiques of imperialism.

(R. Lewis, “Gendering” 20)

As interesting as Lewis’ ideas for reforming Said’s theory of discourse deal with

Orientalism from the time of colonialism onwards, her four suggestions for reform still leave out

the time frame before imperialism that Said mentions in the third principle. Other scholars, such

as Bernadette Andrea, respond to this by presenting the reality of the West’s weakness, at the

time, in the face of the East’s mighty empires that reveals a feminist Orientalism far from the

male Orientalism Said tries to push. Andrea makes the case that:

Despite the detailed historical documentation of England’s initial encounter with

the Ottomans, literary and cultural studies of the era present two striking lacunae.

The first derives from the false dichotomy between a powerful West and a

correspondingly subordinate East resulting from anachronistic applications of

Edward Said’s Orientalism. As part of a cadre of scholars who recognize that

early modern imperialism in the “Greater Western World” involved Ottoman,

Spanish, and only belatedly English claims, I consider the decisive place Islamic

powers occupied in the network. The second lacuna results from the effacement

of women’s agency in recent studies on Anglo-Ottoman relations, most of which

focus on gendered representations in male-authored travel narratives and dramas

to the exclusion of sustained attention to woman’s cultural productions. (Andrea

1-2)

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Andrea goes on to prove the manner in which British female writers during the early periods of

empire, in particular the playwright and author Delarivier Manley, used elements of the Orient to

protest the oppression of English male society instead of laying blame on the cultural practices of

the East. This in turn produced a feminist brand of Orientalism that differs significantly from the

discourse Said uses in his work towards male Orientalists. All of this brings to light the

following: if female Orientalists have no agency in Orientalist discourse and representation of

the Orient, is Orientalism male-centered or is Said the one who is male-centered? If Orientalism

is male-centered, since the female Orientalist plays no role in “othering,” then that means the

“Oriental” woman has no agency in the discourse as well. Consequently, that would also mean

that Said’s arguments about the negative portrayal and lusting of “Oriental” women dissolves,

especially his use of Kuchuk Hanem, the seductive Egyptian dancer of Flaubert’s narrative. On a

final note, Said’s thesis would then appear to also “other” women, viewing them in the same way

that Said argues the Occident “others” the Orient.

54
 Final Thoughts

That the “othering” Said theorizes in his work continues to dominate our society, culture,

ideology, religious belief and philosophy is indeed absurd in an era where global

communications allows us to freely interact in this vast world we live in. Regardless of the many

disagreements and rebuttals concerning the contents of Orientalism, especially from the New

Orientalists hell-bent on ensuring there is no unity among all peoples of various religious, ethnic

and cultural backgrounds, those in academia who openly embrace these differences continue to

formulate new theories and concepts derived from Said’s text while still debunking, enhancing,

correcting and evolving his core ideas. The end result has been broader university studies in

Islamic history; more programs focusing on the Arabic language and other Islamic languages at

the high school, college and university levels; cultural missions with the people of the Middle

East, Asia and Africa where interaction and the exchange of ideas is occurring in large numbers;

and more interfaith dialogue between all faiths including atheists and agnostics. Said never

claimed that Orientalism is free of errors or exempt from criticism; this is a disclaimer quite clear

in his introduction:

Yet even though it includes an ample section of writers, this book is still far from

a complete history or general account of Orientalism. Of this failing I am very

conscious. The fabric of as thick a discourse as Orientalism has survived and

functioned in Western society because of its richness: all I have done is to

describe parts of that fabric at certain moments, and merely to suggest the

existence of a larger whole, detailed, interesting, dotted with fascinating figures,

55
 texts, and events. I have consoled myself with believing that this book is one

installment of several, and hope there are scholars and critics who might want to

write others. (Said 24)

Orientalism as a text was meant to continue the discussion on how the world sees itself among

its differences while moving past those differences in order to progress towards a higher sense of

humanity. While Said’s critics raise valid points about contradictions concerning his views on

representation, some do not take into consideration that his response is a counter response

towards “othering” of any kind and the fallacies that go along with it. Said says:

But this idea that somehow we should protect ourselves against the infiltrations,

the infections of the Other, is, I think, the most dangerous idea at the end of the

twentieth century. Unless we find ways to do it, unless we find ways to do this,

you know there is going to be wholesale violence of a sort represented by the Gulf

War, the Rwandan massacres and so on. I mean those are the pattern of emerging

conflict that is extremely dangerous and needs to be counteracted and I think

therefore it’s correct to say that the challenge now is – I wouldn’t call it anything

other than coexistence. How does one co-exist with people whose religions are

different, whose traditions and languages are different but who form part of the

same community or polity in the national sense? How do we accept difference

without violence and hostility? (“Edward Said”)

As this essay argues, there are two things that Said accomplishes that should not be overlooked

and that provide a manner in which to prevent the current state of affairs occurring between those

from the East and the West: the first is the fact that Said’s three principles of Orientalism, despite

56
several methodological flaws that I outlined in each principle, allow us to reevaluate discourse,

representation, and the work of the scholar by focusing on the theoretical and application aspect

of one’s theories and concepts to the point that proper criticism and analysis is achieved.

Through the three principles, Said erases the idea that a scholar is beyond criticism. Such a

concept prevents static viewpoints that stifle true academia and further the likes of Orientalism

and Occidentalism. The second, and with this I end, is that, under the guise of Said’s humanistic

formula, the fallacies of every ideology, religious belief, philosophy, political affiliation, ideal,

and moral that promotes “other” can be properly analyzed and scrutinized, accepting only what

is in accordance with creating a real sense of balance and open-mindedness among all peoples.

This results in new studies and research to emerge that makes it imperative for current scholars

and researchers in all fields of academia to come under one umbrella of knowledge working

towards gathering and producing works that present the world from a global and human

perspective, the common goal being the acquisition and propagation of such knowledge and

research. How we choose to go about it as rational and knowledge-seeking human beings will

ultimately determine our future.

57
 Appendix

Final Comments on Thomas Maldonado’s Liberal Arts Honors Program Thesis, “Three
Relevant Principles in Edward Said’s Orientalism: A Balanced Critique of Postcolonial
Theory and International Politics amidst the Current East versus West Conflict”

Dr. Joseph Ortiz, Thesis Director:

This is an impressive thesis. One of the things I really like about this project is that it grew out of
an initial interest in the recent responses, some of them very critical, to Said’s theories of
Orientalism and your astute observation that many of these critiques appeared to be motivated by
political agendas rather than a desire to think through Said’s theoretical claims and premises. In
this way, you recognized a lacuna (gap) in Said studies, insofar as critiques of Said have not
gone far enough in identifying Said’s theoretical or ideological assumptions, much less affirming
or rejecting his larger claims with respect to these assumptions. As an initial attempt to address
this critical gap, your thesis methodically and efficiently identifies three “principles” that govern
and underscore some of Said’s large claims in Orientalism. Additionally, your thesis discusses
some of the responses to Said’s work, pointing out the ways in which they reject or distinguish
themselves from (and in some cases, surprisingly, actually agree with) one or more of these
foundational principles.

Certainly, this is an ambitious project, but you succeed in it beautifully, in large part because
your sophisticated knowledge and facility with literary theory (which surpasses that of most
graduate students in literature) allows you to get at the heart of Said’s arguments and point out
their assumptions and ideological positions. For example, in your careful discussion of the first
principal, “Orientalist discourse,” you clearly and persuasively show how Said’s understanding
of discourse is indebted both to Foucault’s definition of discourse (4) and Gramsci’s notion of
cultural hegemony (8). From this perspective, it’s easier to see how, for Said, any language about
the East must always be a “mythic language,” since it both constitutes (i.e., produces) knowledge
about the East while making that knowledge appear as “reality.” At the same time, because you
do such an excellent job of situating Said in relation to other theorists, you are able to illuminate
and highlight the theoretical fault lines between Said and his critiques. For example, Hodgson
cannot fully agree with Said, since his work on Islamic history is premised on the idea that there
is an “essential” East independent of any Western constructions— so that “Muslim
civilization…is seen [by Hodgson] as an independent maker of its own representation of the
larger history of the West” (26). This kind of analysis is truly impressive, partly because it is not
at all easy to discuss these theoretical divisions with such clarity, but also because it requires you
simultaneously to be “in the weeds” of the specific writings and still have the bigger picture in
mind.

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In the spirit of constructive dialogue, I would still say that your account of “imaginative
geography” seems less like a second principle, and more like an application of the first principle:
i.e., your discussion of imaginative geography seems to rely on the same notions of
representation and discourse that you associate with the first principle, only in this case showing
how these notions are useful (necessary) for constructing geographical boundaries along
ideological lines—for having “social, ethnic and cultural boundaries follow geographical ones”
(12). At the same time, it’s important to note that I can make this point in large part because you
lay out your points so clearly and articulately. Overall, I have to say that I’m extremely pleased
with the development of your writing, as writing, over the last semester. This last revision, in
which you took to heart my instructions to add paragraph structure and organize your discussion
around key sentences (e.g., the sentence that begins the paragraph at the top of p. 9 is a model
key sentence), represents yet another leap of improvement in your writing style, which was
already very strong to begin with. Keep working on your writing—as I can tell you from
personal experience, writing style is always a “work in progress” and something that we
academics never stop fretting about.

In sum, this is an excellent thesis and an absolute pleasure to read. I appreciate and admire the
maturity, professionalism, and enthusiasm that you displayed throughout the entire process—
you’ve set an inordinately high standard for any future LAHP thesis writers whom I might direct.

Dr. Ruben Espinosa, Reader:

The scope of this undergraduate honors thesis is impressive, and I found the essay to be
thoughtfully researched. Indeed, given the breadth of critical engagement with, and responses to,
Edward Said’s seminal work, Orientalism, I have to admit that I was uncertain of Thomas
Maldonado’s ability to reign in his research. From my perspective, he accomplished this
masterfully.

I believe that Maldonado’s organization offered a clear outline and explanation of the
three principles that his thesis scrutinizes – Orientalist discourse, Orientalist representation and
imaginative geography, and the Orientalist. By first explaining, with impressive clarity, the thrust
behind each principle, Maldonado is then able to unpack some of the major critical responses to
Said’s ideas. Maldonado’s objectivity in this enterprise was both admirable and insightful, as he
not only engaged a host of critical views of Said’s work, but also pointed to alternative views at
every turn. It was this careful attention to an array of perspectives – both within and without the
Arab world – that I found most engaging. If Maldonado were to decide to develop this thesis into
a larger project, I think his sharp observation of these alternative perspectives deserve more
careful attention (I’d be curious to see how other critics have responded to these alternative
views of Orientalism/Orientalist, for example). To be certain, this is a project that could be
much, much larger, and Maldonado’s keen attention to the various energies that inform and
destabilize the three principles in question is laudable.

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 In Maldonado’s penultimate section, “Exploring the Third Principle: The Absence of
Female Orientalist,” Maldonado engages with an important facet of studies on Orientalism – that
is, the seeming invisibility of women Orientalists in Said’s work. Because I was present when
Maldonado first began questioning this idea – that is, during an informal meet and greet with
Bernadette Andrea during her visit to UTEP – I was all the more impressed with his careful
follow through on this topic. I was quite happy to see that Maldonado took on this issue, and I
found his exploration of the many women Orientalist perspectives to be rife with possibilities for
further studies. It is my sincere hope that Maldonado explores this further.

On the whole, I found Maldonado’s honors thesis to be exemplary. Clearly, Maldonado

has a strong interest and investment in this topic, and I think he should continue engaging in both
research and criticism of Said. It was truly a pleasure to read Maldonado’s work.

Dr. Maryse Jayasuriya, Reader:

This project is very thoughtful and attempts to give, as the title says, a balanced perspective on
Said's Orientalism. It is well-organized and well-argued and a pleasure to read.

Here are a few suggestions:

It might be good at the outset to mention a couple of things about Said's work (that is implied but
not explicitly stated right now): that he didn't coin the term "Orientalism" but defined it in a new
and different way. More importantly, Said was writing a polemic and therefore does overstate
certain things and ignore other issues for the sake of making a point that needed to be made at
the time that he wrote the book. This is reminiscent of what Chinua Achebe did in his famous
lecture (later revised into an essay) called "An Image of Africa" where he criticizes Joseph
Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness as a racist work that should not be taught in the classroom,
in order to start a much-needed discussion about important issues that had been, for the most
part, ignored up to that point. So, while it is very important and necessary to analyze Said's
overall work and point out what it lacks and how it contradicts itself in certain problematic ways,
it is also important to mention the polemical nature of the work and the reasons for that.

There are others who made assaults on "orientalism"--Anouar Abdel-Malek; A.L. Tibawi; Bryan
S. Turner--but Said's has been the most effective. It might be good to consider why Said's work
has been so influential.

The critique that those Orientalists who converted to Islam cannot be considered Orientalists
seems a little problematic because Said is talking of discursive structures that are not necessarily
dependent on an individual's religious beliefs.

There are some additional works that might be very useful for this project--for example, Aijaz
Ahmed's In Theory; Billie Melman's Women's Orients; Lisa Lowe's Critical Terrains; Bart
Moore-Gilbert's Kipling and Orientalism as well as his Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices,

60
Politics (which has an extensive and very balanced discussion on Said's Orientalism); John
MacKenzie's Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts. I would recommend Orientalism: A
Reader edited by Alexander Lyon Macfie as an excellent overall resource.

The project uses rather a lot of block quotes. It might be good to analyze the block quotes a little
bit more to justify their length and/or their inclusion.

I have made some edits in the body of the text and made some suggestions.

Overall, I am impressed by the amount of hard work, research and analysis that the student has
put into this substantial project.

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