Not Reading Orientalism

8/12/2019 Not Reading Orientalism

1/14

(Not) Reading "Orientalism"Author(s): Graham HugganSource: Research in African Literatures, Vol. 36, No. 3, Edward Said, Africa, and CulturalCriticism (Autumn, 2005), pp. 124-136Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3821368.

Accessed: 17/07/2013 12:10

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at.http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Indiana University Pressis collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toResearch in

African Literatures.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 164.15.88.65 on Wed, 17 Jul 2013 12:10:19 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=iupresshttp://www.jstor.org/stable/3821368?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/3821368?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=iupress


2/14

(Not) Reading OrientalismGRAHAM HUGGANLeeds University

ABSTRACTSince its publication in the late 1970s, Orientalismhas been subject to awide varietyofnot always friendly nterpretations, romptingEdward Saidto offer ne or two additions, correctives, nd sideswipes of his own. Thisessay looks?highly selectively,s it must?at recentpatterns freceptionforOrientalism,rguingthat the book has been re-Orientalized by its readers,and might ven be considered to be Orientalist tself.The essaywill focus onprovocativecrossdisciplinaryreadings by Aijaz Ahmad, Meyda Yegenoglu,and David Cannadine, as well as on even moreprovocative responses tohisown work,and toresponses byothers,from aid himself. twill consider thedivergent laims made by appreciators nd detractors fOrientalism,claimssometimesapparentlymade less on thestrength f what has been than whathasn't been read.

Few

texts could be more excessive, in termsof theirproduction and reception,than Orientalism 1978), the best-known book of a man whose death last yeartook away from us one of the most eloquent and forcefulpublic intellectualsofthe present day (Viswanathan xi). Orientalism, lthough frequently een as flawed,even as one of Edward Said's weakest efforts,s far and away the most talked-aboutand influential of the twenty-odd books he wrote during an almost unimaginablyprolificcareer. The book, translated at the last count into thirty-six anguages, is theproduct of an equally protean personality,known alike forhis passionate humanism,his cultivation and erudition,his provocativeviews, and his unswerving commitmentto the cause of Palestinian self-determination Viswanathan xi-xii). Multiple andwide-ranging contributions to the fields ofliterary cholarship, cultural politics, andmusic are less suggestive of the achievements of a single figure han ofseveral,while,in the work itself, he dizzying pluralityofnot always compatible subjects, methods,and approaches similarly presents us with not one but a veritable surfeit of Saids.Given the astonishing range and lasting impact of Said's oeuvre, t s hardlysurprisingthat thereshould now be a booming Said industry, n which numerous scholars fromall corners ofthe world have taken the opportunityto engage in conversation?not all

* RESEARCH IN AFRICAN LITERATURES, Vol.36,No. 3 (Fail2005).? 2005 *

This content downloaded from 164.15.88.65 on Wed, 17 Jul 2013 12:10:19 PMAll use subject toJSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


3/14


4/14

126 * RESEARCH IN AFRICAN LITERATURES

process that involves the mapping of dominating practices of knowledge/poweronto peoples seen, however temporarily or strategically,as culturally marginal,economically undeveloped, or psychologically weak. The focus on the translocalor,perhaps better,the relocalizedrepresentational and administrative mechanisms ofOrientalism have produced some powerful anti-authoritarianscholarship: in Japanand Latim America, forinstance, and in many regions of the formerly olonizedworld. As mightbe expected, though, the loosely rhetoricalusage of the categoryoftheOrient that such an approach encourages has led at times to a reinscriptionof theverybinaries ( West versus Rest or,paradoxically, West versus East ) that Said'sown work had previously gone to such lengths to resist.A second pattern of response to Orientalismemerges here that we might callthe re-Orientalization fOrientalism the book). Within this pattern,Orientalism'sexclusionary and immobilizing strategies are either inadvertently reproduced bythose who seek to uncover alternative examples of its workings ( anti-OrientalistOrientalism ) or are consciously deployed by those who, constructing themselvesas the West's victims, turn against theiradversaries in uncompromising gestures ofcollective pride and righteous anti-imperialist revenge ( Occidentalism ). The phe-nomenon of anti-OrientalistOrientalism, in particular, begs the question as to theself-replicating endencies ofOrientalism, neatly captured inJames Clifford's lmostapologetic suggestion that Said's book, for ll the power of its criticism, sometimesappears to mimic the essentializing discourse it attacks (262). I will come back tothis suggestion in detail later,via Aijaz Ahmad's caustic reading of Orientalism. Forthemoment, sufficeto point out a thirdcategoryofresponse to Said's textthat drawsattention,explicitly or implicitly,to the unreflectedOrientalismofOrientalismitself.This largelyhostile view ofOrientalism the book) is founded on a series ofapparentlyembarrassing paradoxes: that it reproduces the enumerative, patientlycumulative,and paternalistic methods of the master Orientalists; that it reinstates broad tran-shistorical and cultural generalization in the service of magisterial expertise; thatits seemingly counterintuitive nsistence on the internal consistency ofOrientalismis inconsistent with Said's own Foucault-inspired discursive methods (but remainsuncannily consistent with the self-authorizingmaneuvers of classical Orientalismitself); that it assembles a textualized Orient with a view to establishing intellectualauthorityover it,even ifthis textual,contemplative Orient is never allowed, like itsnineteenth-centuryhistorical counterpart,to facilitate hecontrol ofthe geographicalOrient as an economic, administrativeand even military space (Orientalism210).My own view is that these criticisms are largelyvalid, even iftheyflirtwith thekind of self-congratulatory breaction that is perhaps more typical of second-order( anti-OrientalistOrientalist and/or Occidentalist ) responses to Said's work.Whatinterests me in this particular essay, however, is not to produce an inventoryof dif?ferent(mis)readings ofOrientalismbut to show the link between knowledge, power,and authoritythat derives fromthe ways it has been read. Read, and not read, orat least oftenread in isolation or selectively; forone of the most interesting aspectsof the continuing saga of (not) reading Orientalismhas been a tendency to bypassthe text,either in the interestsofdeclaring a political allegiance or in the more dis-guised attemptto make the book symptomatic forthe entiretyof its author's work.This tendency is all the more interestinggiven the connections Said himselfmakesbetween Orientalist textuality and reading. The Orientalists, Said suggests, pro?duced?among several other things?a kind ofcollective guidebook foruninitiated



5/14

GRAHAMHUGGAN * 127

Western readers, but less a guidebook that informed them than one that confirmedwhat they already knew (Orientalism81). Hence the constitutivetension in Oriental?ism between the need to accumulate detailed scholarly knowledge of the Orient andthe desire to fail back on prescriptive formulations that distilled it into a version ofwhat was already known before.More knowledge was needed, but not reallyneededsince the Orient was already known (or at least intelligently ntuited); more readingwas needed, but not reallyneeded since it confirmedwhat had already been writtenbefore. Images of the Orient were thus added to the stockpile of familiarrepresenta?tions, while these individual images were made to stand in metonymically fortheOrient whole. Orientalism hus emerged as a coordinated systemofrepresentations,structured largely through readily identifiablerepetitions,which perpetuated itselfat the institutional level, eventually becoming fullyformalization into a repeatedlyproduced copy of itself Orientalism197). Prescriptive ratherthan descriptive, theOrientalist systemofrepresentationwas as likelyto impede knowledge of the Orientas to produce it. Certainly, itwas disinclined to the production of new knowledge:its contradictoryrealitywas that t fostered textual attitude or predisposition thatallowed the Orient to be regularlyrewritten,but that effectively revented it frombeing criticallyreread (Orientalism 80-81). Now, while objections mightbe raisedto Said's provocative account of Orientalism's self-perpetuating capacities, my con?tention here is a differentfperhaps, in its own way, equally provocative one: thatOrientalism the book) has oftenbeen approached via Orientalism (themethod); andthat a side-effect f Orientalism (the method) is a paradoxical tendency forthe verybooks on which itdepends to go criticallyunread. The rest of this essay goes someway toward explaining what mightbe at stake in such a critical reading, beginningwith Said's own retrospectivecomments on Orientalism nd continuing with a brieflook at how threegifted nti-Orientalistcritics?Aijaz Ahmad, Meyda Yegenoglu, andDavid Cannadine?responded to the book in such a startinglypre-emptivefashionthat it almost seemed as if ts contours must have been known to thembefore twasactually read.In the preface to Beginnings1975), Said distinguishes between beginningsand origins. [T]he latter, e says, are divine,mythical and privileged, while theformer are] secular, humanly produced and ceaselessly re-examined (xiii). For Said,the idea of re-examination has inspired the recent revisionisms of countermemoryand the archive, revitalizing such intellectual trends as the critique of domination[. . .] and the [re-evaluation] of suppressed history feminine, non-white,non-Euro-pean, ete.) (xiii). Beginnings, suggests Said, are renewals rather than repetitionsorrecurrences;beginning, in thissense, is about themaking orproducing ofdifferences:it is tantamount to beginning again (xvii). For Said, a beginning can be understoodin the double sense of an intentionnd a critical intervention:ritical consciousness,he argues, has facilitated that constant re-experiencing of beginning and begin-ning-again whose force s neitherto give rise to authoritynor to promote orthodoxybut to stimulate self-conscious and situated activity, ctivitywith aims non-coerciveand communal (xiv). In this part of the essay, I want to gauge to what extent theinterventionistspirit of beginnings, and beginnings-again, stands behind Said'sown responses to Orientalism, tselfconceived by many,unreflectingly erhaps, as afoundational critical work (see, forexample, Ashcroft t al). I also want touse Said'snotion of criticalconsciousness, elaborated in laterworks such as TheWorld, heText,and the Critic 1983) and Culture nd Imperialism 1993), to examine the argumenthe



6/14


makes in his work fora certain kind of reading:one that opens up to what he callsthe non-coercive and communal aims of ntellectual activity, nd that s alertto thecomplicities and self-aggrandizingtendencies of modern academic work.Said's firstdetailed response to Orientlalismwas in the influential 1985 essayOrientalism Reconsidered, an essay that itselfgave rise to several critical recon-siderations, some of them even more extreme than in the firstnstance, of the placeof cultural politics in Said's collected work. For his part, Said is largely content inthe essay to repeat the central ideas behind Orientalism: that,writ large, it chartsa 4,000-year-old historyof cultural relations between Europe and Asia; that,morespecifically, t refersto a scientificdiscipline that, emerging in the early nineteenthcentury, specialized in the study ofvarious Oriental cultures and traditions ; andthat, deologically, it legitimizes the circulation ofimages and fantasies ofthe Orientdesigned, in large part, to confirm the epistemic authorityof the West ( OrientalismReconsidered 128). As he did in the earlier book, Said acknowledges his own per?sonal investment n Orientalism as part of currentdebates, conflicts and interpreta-tions of the Arab-Islamic world ( Orientalism Reconsidered 129). However, Saidgoes further han he does in Orientalism n conceding his own involvement,for s headmits, there is no Archimedean point outside the Orient fromwhich the Orient,and the strategies used to represent it, can be objectively understood ( Oriental?ism Reconsidered 129-30). Said's confession, however, only heightens his affrontthat the Orient, generally,and the Arab world, in particular, have all too often beenconstructed as Europe's silentOther, frozen nto place as the fixedobjects of a self-privilegingWestern gaze (130-31). Thus, while he initiallyacknowledges the widevarietyof nstructive Western-academic responses he has received to Orientalism,hethenpoints out thatmany ofhis respondents have continued, possibly inadvertently,to drown out the voices of those on whose behalf theyhave appeared towant to speak(127-28). He stresses, however, that this dialogue ofthe deaf has developed on bothsides of the Oriental/Occidental divide, not only in certain sympathetic kinds ofWestern anti-Orientalist criticism,but also in those anti-Western (Said calls themnativist or fundamentalist )readings that have chosen tomisinterpretOrientalism,froma position of cultural insiderism (142), as an apology for slam or a wholesalecondemnation ofthe iniquities oftheWest (132). Ironically,then, Said sees his bookas having become subject to an Orientalism freceptionn which the critics have oftenfallen nto an alternativeOrientalism, and thecritics ofthe critics have been unwillingor unable to engage the critics in a genuine intellectual exchange (132).Here, as so often in his work, Said lets his impatience get the better of him,launching into an all-out attack on the programmatic ignorance of readers, likeDaniel Pipes, who are merelackeys of US neo-imperialism or, ike BernardLewis, whoare tacitapologists forZionism, despite theirhypocritical insistence that theirstudiesofthe Orient,Arabs, and Islam are not political at all (133-35). Betternot to read atall, Said implies, than to read in this reprehensiblyexpedient fashion,exhibiting inthe process a sheerheedless anti-intellectualismunrestrained or unencumbered bythe slightest race of criticalself-consciousness (133). It is worthnotinghere thatSaidtends not to attribute critical self-consciousness to those who happen to disagreewith him?to those who have read him but not readhim, as itwere, or to those whohave read him but eitherhad the temerity o rebuffhim or to filter is work in sucha way as only to see what theyhave expressly wanted to see. Said's own reading ofhis work oscillates, similarly,between the veryformofpolitical partisanship he is so



7/14

GRAHAMHUGGAN * 129

quick to deride in others and his cultivation of a decentred critical consciousnessbased, unlike Orientalism, on investigative,open models of analysis, and com?mitted to the dismantling of systems of domination, like Orientalism, which arecollectivelymaintained (141-43). The typeofreading Said favors?though does notnecessarily practice himself?thus gestures not only toward the possibility of newbeginnings, but toward nothingless than the creation ofnew objects for new kindofknowledge (129).Two furtherattempts on Said's part to begin Orientalism again?to take adominating system of knowledge and prise it apart to create the conditions foranew kind of knowledge ?should be mentioned here. These are the afterword tothe 1995 edition of Orientalismand the preface to the 2003 edition, one of the lastpieces ofwritingSaid completed beforehe died. In the 1995 afterword,Said carrieson where he leftoff n Orientalism Reconsidered. Recognizing thatOrientalism, inalmost a Borgesian way,has become several different ooks, Said sets out to accountfornearly a decade ofreception, reading back into the book what his many appre-ciators and detractorshave said (Orientalism330). As in Orientalism Reconsidered,Said gives short shrift o those who have seen the book as resolutely anti-Westernor as an unadulterated celebration of the collective Arab cause. One scarcely knowswhat to make, Said complains, of [such] caricatural permutations of a book that toits author and in its arguments is explicitlyanti-essentialist,radically skeptical aboutall categorical designations such as Orient and Occident, and painstakingly carefulabout not defending' or even discussing the Orient and Islam (331; emphasis inoriginal). Much of the argument of Orientalism Reconsidered (and, indeed, Orien?talism tself) is repeated: the Orient and the Occident are a combination of theempirical and the imaginative, and should in no way be understood as correspond-ing to a stable ontological realm (331); Orientalism is not just the antiquarian studyof Oriental languages, societies, and peoples, but is an evolved systemof thought[that] approaches a heterogeneous, dynamic, and complex human reality fromanuncritically essentialist standpoint (333); Orientalism presupposes a non-Orientalreader insofar as [t]he discourse of Orientalism, its internal consistency [sic] andrigorous procedures, were all designed forreaders and consumers in the metro?politan West (336). This familiar roll-call is then followed by an equally familiardemolition of Bernard Lewis, Said's intellectual nemesis, whose verbosityscarcelyconceals both the ideological underpinnings of his position and his extraordinarycapacity forgettingnearly everything wrong (343). Lewis and his followers,fumesSaid, specialize in the elaborate confection of ideological half-truths intended] tomislead non-specialist readers (346), therebyreconfirmingthe veryprejudices hisown book had been explicitly designed to contest. These are theargumentsone finds,again and again, in Orientalism: hat routinemisreadings and misinterpretationscanhave devastating consequences for those routinelymisread and misinterpreted;thaterudition in the service ofignorance is another formofignorance; thatreading itselfmay produce knowledge?as in knowledge of the Orient?that confirms the author?ityof the knower without creatingnew possibilities forunderstanding or extendingthe boundaries of the known.As in Orientalism Reconsidered, Said concedes a few points, namely thescholarly and humanistic achievements (Orientalism3420 of at least some Ori?entalist practitioners,or the tendency of Orientalism to confess it own attraction tothe works ofwriters, scholars, and administrators who clearly condescended to or



8/14


[actively] disliked the Orientals they either [studied] or [ruled] (336). In general,though, the 1995 afterword has a confirmatoryring to it. This is corroborated bySaid's view that some ofhis later work?Culture and Imperialism,for nstance?wasprimarilyan amplificationof,rather than a departure from,Orientalism'sgoverningcultural theses: on the symbiotic link between culture and empire; on theconstitu-tivehybridity fcultures; and on the continuing existence ofOrientalism as a willedformof human activity?as cultural work (349). But ifSaid himselfwas always morelikely to revisit than to revise Orientalism,he was also appreciative of others' effortsto push theirreadings of the text nto libertarian initiativesof their own. As Said saysproudly in the afterword:

I intendedmybook as partof pre-existingurrent f hought hosepurposewasto liberate ntellectuals orm he shackles ofsystems ikeOrientalism: wantedreaders o make use ofmywork o thattheymight henproducenewstudiesoftheir wn thatwould illuminate hehistorical xperienceofArabs and others na generous, nablingmode. Thatcertainly appened nEurope, heUnitedStates,Australia, heIndian subcontinent,heCaribbean, reland,LatinAmerica, ndparts fAfrica. he nvigoratedtudy fAfricanistnd Indologicaldiscourses, heanalysesof subalternhistory,hereconfigurationfpostcolonial nthropology,political cience, rthistory,iteraryriticism,musicology,naddition o thevastnewdevelopmentsn feministndminorityiscourses?to all these, ampleasedand flatteredhatOrientalism ade a difference.340)The updated 2003 prefacereissues thecompliment,with an importantclarifica-tion.The clarification onsists ofan impassioned defenseofhumanism nd humanisticcritique's capacity to open up [. . .] fieldsofstruggle,to introduce a longersequenceof thought and analysis [thatmight] replace the short bursts of polemical, though-stopping furythat so imprison us in labels and antagonistic debate whose goal is abelligerent collective identityrather than understanding and intellectual exchange(Orientalismxvii). Said's humanism, itself the subject of sustained critique, is trium-phantlyreasserted here: not as an excuse fornostalgic traditionalism,but rather s aninstrumentfor rational interpretive nalysis at a time when patientand skepticalinquiry is needed to counteract the perceived need for instant action and reaction,and equally needed to retrieve a lost sense of the density and interdependence ofhuman life n a world often dehumanized in the extreme (xx, xxii). The contextsforthe preface?continuing violence in Israel/Palestine, fundamentalistdogma andintolerance, the bellicose post-9/11 invasions ofAfghanistanand Iraq?reveal a Saidmore concerned than ever with the crudely differentiatingabels thatpeople pin onone another,and with the lack of a reasoned discourse thatmight help themcome toterms with repeatinghistories ofconflict, s well as tonegotiatethefraught omplexi-

ties ofthe modern globalized world. More interesting,perhaps, is thatthese contextsalso reveal a Said as insistent as ever on the value of humanistic research and itssymbiotic dependence on the book culture [. . .] and general principle ofmind thatonce sustained humanism as a historical discipline (xx). This culture, increasinglyreplaced by the fragmentedknowledge[s] ofthe mass media and the internet, aidnow sees with more than a hint ofwistfulness as having almost disappeared (xx).Reading reappears here as a mantra forthe type ofpatient interpretive nalysis thatis needed to offset ormulaicconceptions ofourselves and others,eventuallyallowingus to livetogether n farmore interestingways than an abridged or inauthenticmode



9/14

GRAHAMHUGGAN * 131

ofunderstanding can allow (xxii). It is reading thatbest fosters he development ofthe decentred critical consciousness ?but not anyreading, ratherreading in whatSaid problematically, fcharacteristically,calls the proper sense of theword (xxii).Reading, in otherwords, of the kind that stimulates reflection,debate, and rationalargument, and that is informed by the sturdy moral principles that reinforce theidea ofhistorybeing made and remade by human beings in a modern secular world(xxii). Whether this reading is so different romthe reading ofmany of the EuropeanOccidentalists is a point, understandably, on which Said is not too keen to linger.Sure enough, though, Said's critics have been alert to the apparent contradictions inhis humanist philosophy; and these contradictions are made apparent, explicitlyorimplicitly, n the three readings below.

Probably the most notorious attack on Orientalismhas been that of the IndianMarxist criticAijaz Ahmad, whose coruscating critiques ofSaid,Jameson,and a num?ber ofother leading Leftist ntellectuals in his wide-ranging book In Theory:Classes,Nations,Literatures1992) leftmuch ofthe academic world wondering where, ifsuchpotential allies could so effectively e turned into enemies, Ahmad himself mightwant to findhis friends. In his chapter on Said, Ahmad wastes little time in mov-ing onto the offensive. While Ahmad expresses solidarity with Said's anti-Zionismand his beleaguered location in the midst of imperial America (160), he disagreesstronglywith his historical and theoreticalmethods, which he sees as being rivenbyambivalences and self-cancellingprocedures, particularlyin Orientalismbut alsoin much of his laterwork (219). Some ofAhmad's criticisms?and there are many?are as follows: that Said's attemptto write a counterhistoryto the European literarytradition thatmightbe posed against, say, Erich Auerbach's Mimesis 1946) falls intothe same elitisthumanism fromwhich itsinspiration s taken (163-64); thatthisidealhumanism contradicts Said's awareness ofthe complicityofEuropean humanism inthehistoryofEuropean colonialism, and thus runs therisk ofturningOrientalismnotinto a strategicallycounterhistorical,but a fundamentallyantihistorical work (167);thatOrientalism s methodologically muddled, denouc[ing] with Foucaultian vitriolwhat [italso] loves withAuerbachian passion, and alternatelydebunking and prais-ing to the skies and again debunking the same [canonical European] book[s], as ifhehad [somehow] been betrayedby the objects of his passion (168); that it duplicatesthe tactics of Orientalism (the method) by refusingto take on board the numerousways in which non-Western intellectuals have responded to, resisted, or refuted thedominant representationsofthe Orient in the West (172); thatOrientalism thebook)remains confused as to whetherOrientalism (the method) is a historical byproductofcolonialism or whether it is a constitutive element of theEuropean imagination,fromthe Greeks to the present day (181); that it is equally confused about whetherOrientalism is an interlocking set of discursive representations or an accumulatedrecord ofmisrepresentations n the narrowlyrealist sense (185-86); and thatit goesso far s tomake a virtue out of these and otherconspicuous inconsistencies, raisingcontradiction to the level ofa method, and providing therationale for saying entirelycontrarythings n the same text, ppealing to differentudiences simultaneously butwith the effect hateach main statementcancels out the other (175).Ahmad scores a number ofpalpable hits here. However, much like Said, he hasa tendency to let his eloquence get the better of him, and in the chapter he provessingularly adept at matching his opponent's sweeping generalizations with severalofhis own. Hence we findstatements,attributedastonishingly to Said, ofthe order



10/14


that all European knowledges ofnon-Europe are bad knowledges because theyarealready contaminated with [Orientalism's] aggressive Identity-formation ;r, on thesame page, that Europeans [are] ontologicallyncapable ofproducing any true knowl?edge about non-Europe (178; emphasis in original). One hardly knows which bookAhmad is referring ohere; surelynot Orientalism.Why thispassionate denunciationof a book Ahmad submits to the closest of close readings yetseems, at other times,not to have read at all? Said's anti-Marxism?predictably?turns out to be at the rootofAhmad's problem,with the latterman not frightened o nail his colors to themast,which are veryred. Orientalism's uccess, Ahmad sourly suggests, was unsurprisinggiven the prevailingneoconservative political climate in which the manifestlyreac-tionaryanti-humanisms (192) ofFoucault, Derrida, and otherswere intellectually nthe ascendancy, as was the type of crudely essentialist identity politics thatblithelydivided the world into European and non-European literatures,globally domi?nant and historically marginalized societies and cultural groups. This caricaturalportrait of Western academic politics in the late '70s and on into the '80s mighthave gained from ome of the historicist nsightthatAhmad accuses Said oflacking;similarly,one of the main charges he levels at Said?the essentialist assumption ofan ontological division between the West and the Orient, between colonizingand colonized societies and cultures?is arguably replicated in his own embattledrhetoric and his appropriation of a spokesperson's role for victimized non-West.What is interestingabout Ahmad's attack is neitherthe level ofits ferocitynorthe carelessness of his reading ofOrientalism nd selected others of Said's works. Whatis interestingabout it, I would suggest, are the characteristics it shareswith Oriental?ism: the weakness forpolemic, usually transferred nto another authoritativebody;the muscular use of eloquence and erudition to outflankan opponent whose viewsare so clearly misbegottenormisguided as to inviteattack; and, not least, the Battle ofthe Books that such a use ofeloquence and erudition fosters,with intellectual tiltingat intellectual on the basis of historical and theoreticalunderstandings derived fromwhat theyhave, or haven't, properly read.This tendency to out-Orientalize Orientalism s also apparent in feministcri-tiques of Said's study, t least some of which reinforce hetypeofbinarythinking theyhastilyaccuse Said ofpracticing,butwhich they ee theirwork (looking rightpast theconsiderable deconstructive activity n Said's own text) as seeking to dismantle anddisrupt. The example I have picked out here is the Turkishsociologist Meyda Yegeno-glu's book-length studyColonial Fantasies (1998), which advertises itself n itssubtitleas working toward a feministreading ofOrientalism (the method, though, as as issoon made clear, this method is closely tied in with theworkingsofSaid's eponymoustext). Colonial Fantasies, it has to be said, is a good step forward fromseveral earlierfeministapproaches to Orientalismthat eitherfalselyassumed the gender-blindnessofSaid's methods or prematurely udged him to have joined themassed ranks oftheOrientalists, thus reinforcing he male gender specificityof Orientalism and givingthe impression that all Orientalists, to paraphrase Wordsworth, are men speaking toother men (see, forexample, Emberley and Lewis). Like most ofthese earlier critics,Yegenoglu believes thatthere is a connection between the production ofcultural ndgender differences n Orientalism, and that representations of the Oriental Otherrequire an understanding of the unconscious nature ofWestern male fantasies anddesires. The Orient, she suggests, is a fantasybased upon sexual difference 11): adifference, owever,that has frequently een unaccounted for r strategically ffaced.



11/14

GRAHAMHUGGAN * 133

She falls short,however, of accusing Said himself of conspiring in this effacement;afterall, he readily acknowledges in Orientalismthat Orientalism [has oftenbeen]an exclusively male province; like so many professional guilds during the modernperiod, it [has] viewed itselfand its subject matterwith sexist blinders (Orientalism207). What she objects to is Said's suggestion that the Orient as sexualized site is nottheprovince of [his own] analysis (Orientalism188); as ifwhat he calls, afterFreud,the latent (sexual) and manifest (cultural) constructions of the Oriental Othercould somehow be separated out (Orientalism206). This is a reasonable objection; foras Yegenoglu convincingly argues, sexual fantasyand the production of sexual dif?ferenceare constitutive ofOrientalism, as is the link between (imagined) knowledgeofthe Orient and (unconscious) sexual desire. Less convincing is her insistence thatthe Western subject's desire for ts Oriental other is always mediated by a desire tohave access to the space of tswomen, to thebody of ts women and to the truthof tswomen (Yegenoglu 62-73). While she is surelyrightthat [t]heprocess ofOriental-ization ofthe Orient is one thatintermingleswith itsfeminization 73), her nsistencethat the Orient is alwaysmediated through the feminineclearly overstates the issuewhile recoding the process of Orientalization in what appear to be exclusivelyhet-erosexual terms.Equally questionable is herassertion ofthe dualistic nature of Said'sapproach to Orientalism: latent'versus manifest Orientalisms; synchronic versusdiachronic Orientalisms; scholarly versus sensual Orientalisms; and so on.These are binary categories Said admittedly deploys, but also repeatedly interrogatesand challenges in Orientalism; ike several otherpoststructurallyoriented analyses ofOrientalism,Yegenoglu's seems reluctantto acknowledge the deconstructive activityalready atwork within the text.Yegenoglu's book certainlyreveals her, n themain, tobe a careful reader and reviser ofOrientalism, ut at the risk ofwithholding a similarstatus to Said himself as a reader and reviser of his own text.

Mylast example, theBritishhistorian David Cannadine's Ornamentalism2001),occupies a ratherdifferent tatus, since it is a book that grudgingly acknowledgesSaid's work beforeproceeding studiously to ignoreit,despite the existence ofOriental?ism as a kind ofghostlymarker or invisible referenthovering behind the titleof thetext. Ornamentalism s less a response to than a departure fromOrientalism, eavingthe post-colonial approach to Empire inspired by Said, among others,trailingvainlyin its wake (Ornamentalismxv-xvi). Like several other contemporary historians ofEmpire, Cannadine has little time for post-colonial and/or anti-Orientalist critics,to the extent thathe usually conflates them to dismiss them: on the grounds not somuch, as some of these historians think (see, forexample, Dewey and MacKenzie),thattheyoftendo bad history,but ratherbecause theyare unhealthily fixatedby theidea of superiorityof the white European race. Cannadine admits?how could henot?that the race played a factor n how the British saw theirempire,butjust as biga factor, nd an undervalued one, was theperception of rank and social status: [T]hehierarchical principle that underlay Britons' perceptions of their empire, arguesCannadine, was not exclusively based on the collective, colour-coded ranking ofsocial groups, but depended as much on the more venerable colour-blind ranking ofindividual social prestige. This means that therewere at least two visions ofempirethatwere essentially (and elaborately) hierarchical: one centred on colour, the otheron class (9). What this means, more provocatively put, is that we [. . .] need torecognize thattherewere otherways ofseeing the empire than in the oversimplifiedcategories ofblack and white withwhich we are preoccupied. It is timewe reoriented



12/14


orientalism 125). It is uncertain who is tobe included in Cannadine's we, and whoit is, exactly,who is so preoccupied with the oversimplified categories ofblack andwhite. But Said and his followers are certainlyamong those on Cannadine's mind,as he also suggests in the following early rejoinder: [T]he BritishEmpire was notexclusively (or even preponderantly) concerned with the creation of 'otherness' onthe presumption that the imperial peripherywas different rom, nd inferior o, theimperial metropolis: itwas at least as much (perhaps more?) concerned with [a] 'con?struction of affinities'[operating] on the presumption that society on the peripherywas the same as, or even on occasions superior to, society in the metropolis (xix).Cannadine's suggestion forthe reorientation of Orientalism is ornamental?ism, by which he understands the grand display by which the BritishEmpire madevisible, immanent and actual the hierarchical values forwhich it collectivelystood(122). It does occur to Cannadine that this mightbe as large an order ofgeneraliza-tions as that which he accuses Said and his ilk of perpetrating; as he contentiouslysuggests,however, thetheory nd practiceofsocial hierarchy inthecolonies] servedto eradicate the differences, nd to homogenize the heterogeneities,ofempire to theextent thata littleunderstood aspect of the Britishcivilizing mission was the attemptto create other versions of the intricately ayered structure of British society backhome (8-10).I am less concerned here with thevalidityof Cannadine's argument (althoughmy tone immediately gives me away as skeptical) than I am with the ways in whichOrientalism s being read, or rathernotread, into the fabricofhis text. The most obvi-ous thingtosayhere is that Orientalism and thepostcolonial criticismwith which it sassociated are largelytreated as strawcategories. Cannadine, itappears, is a historianin a hurry?so much ofa hurry, n fact,that he feels no need to define or elaborateon entirecategories ofanalysis (Orientalism, postcolonialism) he summarily rejects.This is a pity, ince a closer look at Ornamentalism eveals doubtless unwanted affini?ties with theduplicated anti-OrientalistOrientalism forwhich Said and othershavebeen regularlyattacked. Loftygeneralizations are made with minimal historical orsociological evidence; polemic is substituted foranalysis; an anti-elitistargument isassembled, but by using an elitistapproach. A phrase ofAijaz Ahmad's, used againstSaid, mightequally be turned against Cannadine: It sometimes appears thatone istransfixedby the power of the veryvoice that one debunks (Ahmad 173). Certainly,Cannadine seems at times to be almost nostalgic for the empire his class analysisskewers, as in passages such as the following:

Theheadof heCommonwealth nd thedivisible overeigns no longer he conicking-emperorfold, a symbolofunity nd order nd subordination; nd whilethe adventof air travelhas made [royal]visitsmoreeasy and morefrequent,familiarityas also served oundermine heirmysteryndmagic.Thesix-monthvoyages n British attleships, hetranscontinentalourneys n splendidtrains,themassed throngs feagerand expectantcrowds,the obsequious behaviourof colonial princesand premiers, he hushed and reverent ones of ournalistsand authors: ll thishas longsincegone,and alongwith ttheverynotionthatthe monarchwas the supremeembodimentof imperialunityand hierarchy(Ornamentalism69-70)The jury remains out on whether Orientalism s one of the landmark works ofthe contemporary era or whether its flaws condemn it to secondary status; whether



13/14

GRAHAMHUGGAN * 135

it will be remembered fondlyfor atalyzing critical debates across a large number ofdifferent cademic disciplines or, more grudgingly,as a deeply contradictoryworkthathardlymerits the attention t nonetheless continues to receive. Whatever thecase,it seems likely that Orientalismwill continue to be at the center of livelydebates onself-authorizingWestern scholarship, thepolitics of crosscultural representation,theconnection between cultural production and imperial power, and the privileges thataccrue to race. No doubt, it will still be seen in some quarters as a continuation,rather than a critique, of the conceptual legacies ofOrientalism, while, as I have sug?gested here, readings will still be produced thatthemselves replicate these Oriental-izing strategies,often n the name of libertarian scholarship and anti-authoritariancritique. Orientalism, n short, will continue to be read: meticulously, selectively,sometimes carelessly. Sometimes, I suspect, itmay well be referencedby those whohave not read it at all. Perhaps that is the fate of books that acquire what Said mighthave described as their own imaginative geography, nd which, farexceeding theboundaries within which theywere originallydesignated, have theuncanny capacitytogenerate anynumber of simulacral copies ofthemselves. Take it or leave it,read itornot,Orientalism s such a book. Oscar Wilde once famouslysaid thatthere s onlyonethingworse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. Said seemsunlikely to suffer he latterfate, ven if t sometimes seems as ifhis work has been allthe more enthusiastically talked about the less it has been comprehensivelyread.WORKS CITEDAhmad,Aijaz. In Theory: lasses, Nations,Literatures. ondon: Verso, 1992.Ashcroft, ill,GarethGriffiths,nd Helen Tiffin. heEmpireWrites ack:TheoryndPrac?tice nPost-Colonial iteratures.ondon: Routledge,1989.Cannadine, David. Ornamentalism: ow theBritish aw TheirEmpire.London: Penguin,2002.Clifford, ames. On Orientalism. ThePredicamentfCulture:Twentieth-Centuryhnogra-phy, iterature,nd Art.Cambridge:HarvardUP, 1988.Dewey,Clive. How theRaj PlayedKim's Game. TimesLiteraryupplement Apr. 1998:9-10.Emberley, ulia. ThresholdsfDifference:eminist ritique,NativeWomen'sWriting,ostco?lonialTheory. oronto:U ofTorontoP, 1993.Gates,HenryLouis. CriticalFanonism. CriticalInquiry 7 (1991): 457-70.Lewis, Reina. GenderingOrientalism:Race, Femininitynd Representation.ondon: Rout?ledge, 1996.Lowe, Lisa. CriticalTerrains: rench ndBritish rientalisms.thaca: CornellUP, 1991.MacKenzie, J.M. Orientalism:History, heory nd theArts.Manchester:ManchesterUP,1995.Miller,Christopher.BlankDarkness:Africanistiscourse nFrench.Chicago: U ofChicagoP, 1985.Prakash,Gyan. OrientalismNow. Historynd Theory1995): n.p. (online offprint)Said, Edward W. Beginnings: ention andMethod.New York:Columbia UP, 1985.-. Culture nd Imperialism. ew York:Knopf,1993.-. Orientalism. ondon: Penguin,2003.



14/14

136 # RESEARCH IN AFRICAN LITERATURES

. OrientalismReconsidered. Postcolonial riticism. d. B. Moore-Gilbert,G. Stan-ton,and W. Maley.London: Longman, 1997. 126-44.?. TheWorld, heText, nd theCritic.Cambridge:HarvardUP, 1983.Viswanathan, Gauri, ed. Power, olitics nd Culture: nterviews ithEdwardSaid. London:Bloomsbury, 004.

Yegenoglu,Neyda. ColonialFantasies:Toward Feminist eading fOrientalism. ambridge:CambridgeUP, 1998.

Documents

Not Reading Orientalism