Eddie Said's main beef in Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism?
Right Across Left Hook Combo
Lacenaire
"Right Across Left Hook Combo" <extreme...@hotmail.com> a écrit dans le
message news: 462e9bef.03100...@posting.google.com...
> What was the gist of Orientalism and his other book about Imperialism?
I don't think Said has a beef. He offers an analysis.
The gist of it is:
Orientalism:
First, a quote from the book:
"My principle operating assumptions were - and continue to be - that fields
of learning, as much as the works of even the most eccentric artists, are
constrained and acted upon by society, by cultural traditions, by worldly
circumstance, and by stabilizing influences like schools, libraries, and
governments; moreover that both learned and imaginitive writing are never
free, but are limited in their imagery, assumptions and intentions; and
finally, that the advances made by a "science" like Orientalism in its
academic form are less objectively true than we often like to think. In
short, my study hitherto has tried to describe the _economy_ that makes
Orientalism a coherent subject matter, even while allowing that as an idea,
concept or image, the word _Orient_ has a considerable and interesting
cultural resonance in the west.
"I realise that such assumptions are not without their controversial side.
Most of us assume in a general way that learning and knowledge move forward;
they get better, we feel, as time passes and more information is
accumulated...In addition we entertain a mythology of creation, in which it
is believe that artistic genius, an original talent, or a powerful intellect
can leap beyond the confines of its own time and place to put before the
world a new work. It would be pointless to deny that such ideas as these
carry some truth. Nevertheless the possibiliies for work present in the
culture to a great and original mind are never unlimited....
"A field like Orientalism has a cumulative and corporate identity, one that
is particularily strong given its association with traditional learning (the
classics, the Bible, philology), public institutions (governments, trading
companies, geographical societies, universities) and generically determined
writing (travel books, books of exploration, fantasy, exotic description).
The result for Orientalism has been a sort of consensus: cetain things,
cetain types of statement, certain types of work have seemed for thd
Orientalist correct. He has built his work and research upon them, and they
in turn have pressed hard upon new writers and scholars. Orientalism can
thus be regarded as as a manner of regularized (or Orientalized) writing,
vision, and study, dominated by imperatives, perspectives, and ideological
biases ostensibly suited to the Orient. The Orient is taught, researched,
administered and pronounced upon in certain discrete ways.
"The Orient that appears in Orientalism, then, is a system of
representations framed by a whole set of forces that brought the Orient into
Western learning, Western consciousness and later, Western Empire. If this
definition of Orientalism seems more political than not, that is simply
because I think Orientalism was i5self a product of certain political forces
and activities. Orientalism is a school of interpretation whose material
happens to be the Orient, its civilizations, peoples and localities. Its
objective discoveries - the work of innumerable devoted scholars who edited
texts and translated them, codified grammars, wrote dictionaries,
reconstructed dead epochs, produced positivistically verifiable learning -
are and always have been conditioned by the fact that its truths, like any
truths delivered by language, are embodied in language, and what is the
truth of language, as Nietzsche once said but 'a mobile array of metaphors,
metonyms, and anthropomorphisms - in short a sum of human relations, which
have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically,
and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people:
truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they
are.'
"Perhaps such a view as Nietzsche's will strike us as too nihilistic, but at
least it will call attention to the fatc that so far as it existed in the
West's awarenesse, the Orient was a word which later accrued to it a wide
field of meanings, associations, and connotations, and that these did not
necessarily refer to the real Orient but to the field surrounding the
word....
"For the Orient idioms became frequent, and these idioms took firm hold in
European discourse. Beneath the idioms there was a layer of doctrine
aboutnthe Orient; this doctrine was fashioned out of the experiences of many
Europeans, all of them converging on such essential aspects of the Orient as
the Oriental character, Oriental despotism, Oriental sensuality, and the
like. For any European during the 19th century, - and I think one can say
this almost without qualification - Orientalism was such a system of truths,
truths in nietzsche's sense of the word. 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 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....My contention is that Orientalism is fundamentally a political
doctrine willed over the Orient because the Orient was weaker than the West,
which elided the Orient's difference with its weakness."
-----
Said basically argues - reading Flaubert, Nerval, Burton, etc:
As the West - European nation-states - grow in global importance from
economic and cultural backwaters to dominant military, economic and cultural
powers (concentrating on 18th and 19th c.) and commence their imperial
projects in the East, European intellectuals, scholars, artists, writers
assist in the general actual and imaginary domination of Orientals
(including Semites - Arabs and Arabic language and culture, and also Jews
and Jewish culture) by reducing Orientals to passive objects of knowledge,
defined by European scholars and portrayed by European artists in a way
systematically convenient for a political-economic purpose.
The uses of knowledge and scholarship as tools of empire is disguised by the
pose of objectivity of intellectuals and the knowledge/learning/informqtion
they produce. Napoleon's Egyptian campaign - hugely assisted by Volney and
the sort of travelling academy - serves as illustration, most illuminating.
European literature and art constructs the "Orient" and "Orientals"
conveniently as an illuminating opposite/inferior, an "Other" of Europe/
Occident, subordinate - and therefore rightfully dominated - and seductive -
and therefore to blame for domination. Europe understands and portrays the
"Orient" and "Orientals" in the most convenient fashion for the oblique
creation of itself and its superiority. Both Occident and Orient - east and
west - are created and defined, in relation to each other, by the west for
the purposes of western domination and possession of the east. Europe cannot
imagine itself a possessor, a leader, a husband, a master, a light-giver, an
heroic individual without creating its Oriental possession, servant, bride,
slave, benighted place and undifferentiated mass.
Erotic and eroticised fascination (accompanied by european self-suspicion
and self-loathing) and a desire to possess (and exploit and destroy)
characterise "orientalism' as a european 'academic discipline' and a genre
of art/lit.
Said on Ernst Renan's invention of the semitic:
"Semitic was the scientific study to which Rensan turned right after the
loss of his Christian faith; I described above how he came to see the study
of Semitic as replacing his faith and enabling a critical future relation
with it. The study of Semitic was Renan's first full-length Orientlist and
scientific study (finished in 1847, fiirst published in 1855) and was as
much a part of his late major works on the origins of Christianity and the
history of the Jews as it was a propaedeutic for them. In intention, if not
perhaps in achievement...his Semitic opus was proposed as a philological
breakthrough, from which in later years he was always to draw retrodspective
authority for his positions (almost always bad ones) on religion, race and
nationalism. Whenever Renan wished to make a statement either about the Jews
or the Muslims, for example, it was always with his remarkably harsh (and
unfounded, except according to the science he was practising) strictures on
the Semites in mind. Furthermore, Renan's Semitic was meant as a
contribution both to the development of Indo-European linguistics and tp the
differentiation of Orientalisms. To the former, semitic was a degraded form,
degraded in both the moral and the biological sense, whereas to the latter
Semitic was a - if not the - stable form of cultural decadence. Lastly,
semitic was renan's first creation, a fiction invented by him in the
philological laboratory to satisfy his sense of public place and mission. It
should by no means be lost on us that Semitic was for Renan's ego the symbol
of European (and consequently his) dominion over the Orient and over his own
era.
"Therefore, as a branch of th Orient, Semitic was not fully a natural
object - like a species of monkey, for example - nor fully an unnatural or
divine object, as it had once been considered...
"Everywhere Renan treats of normal human facts - language, history,
culture,mind, imagination - as transformed into something else, as something
peculiarly deviant, because they are Semitic or Oriental, and because they
end up for anlysis in the laboratory. Thus the Semites are rabid monotheists
who produced no mythology, no art, no commerce, no civilization; their
consciousness is a narrow and rigid one; all in all they represent 'une
combinaison inferieure de la nature humaine.' At the same time Renan wants
it understood that he speaks of a prototype, not a real Semitic type with
actual existence (although he violated this too by discussing present-day
Jews and Muslims with less than scientific detatchment in many places in his
writings.) So on the one hand we have the transformation of the human into
the specimen, and on the other the comparative judgement rendered by which
the specimen remains a specimen and a subject for scientific philological
study....
"Read almost any page by Renan on Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic or proto-Semitic
and you read a fact of power, by which the Orientalist philologist's
authority summons out of the library at will examples of man's speech, and
ranges them there surrounded by a suave european prose that points out
defects, virtues, barbarisms and shortcommings in the language, the people,
the civilization...
"For Renan, Semitic is a phenomenon of arrested development in comaprison
with the mature languages and cultures of the Indo-European group....he is
everywhere...proving that.. Semitic languages are inorganic, arrested,
totally ossified, incapable of self-regeneration; in other words he proives
that Semitic is not a live language, and for that matter, neither are
Semites live creatures....He constructs, and the very act of construction is
a sign of imperial power over recalcitrant phenomena as well as a
confirmation of the dominating culture and its 'naturalization.'...Even the
culture he calls organic and alive - the European - is also a creature being
created in the laboratory by philology."
So anyway:
Through the discipline of "orientalism" - the west's concieving of and
defining the east in order to invent its own virtues and create and make
natural its dominance - ideological positions (which we've inherited as
"knowledge") are created and made so acceptable they are almost invisible:
the "European" is male, active, rational and honest; the "Oriental" is
feminized/effeminate/feminine, passive, mystical, dishonest. (Kooky Kagan
borrowed this for his American chauvinist Europe bashing before the war,
somewhat, associating 'old europe' with the debased 'orient', via men from
mars women from venus). 'Europe' is new, vital, clean, forward-looking,
rational...the Orient is old, decadent, schmutzy, irrational....Europe is
transparent; the Orient is mysterious. Europe makes wealth out of
wilderness; The Orient squanders (Arab) or hordes (Jew) naturally occurring
or ill-gotten riches. Et cetera.
Such positions are not exactly _asserted_ - which invites challenge - but
deeply assumed so that they influence scholarship relating to everything and
can be signalled in imagitive lit merely by the presence of something
"Eastern' - a name, a servant, a product, a setting, an image. The Orient
conjures sex, decadence, danger, etc, quite easily in art-film-literary
vocabulary of the west (culture-producers and consumers, pop-politicians,
assume this was always so. It was not.) European orientlist "scholarship"
repeats and repeats: European languages are dynamic, fertile,
adaptable...Semitic languages (Arabic, Hebrew) are dry, unfertile,
inflexible, just inferior and opposite in every way. This kind of thing is
what "Orientalists" uniformly of the 19th century assert as "discoveries" -
the product of their disciplined intellectual investigations. Europe is the
platonic latitudinarian christian sort of monotheism...progressive and
adaptable and lacking superstition - the Orient is the crusty nasty dogmatic
old testament, senselessly violent, anti-humanist, backward. The European is
himself and makes himself, an individual with free will and agency; the
Oriental is a corrupt decadent echo of his past and origins, thus inevitably
hypocritical and uncreative.
"In no people more than in the Oriental Semites was it possible to see the
present and the origin together. The Jews and the Muslims, as subjects of
Orientalist study, were readily understandable in view of their primitive
origins: this was and to a certain extent still is the cornerstone of modern
Orientalism. Renan had called the semites an instance of arrested
development, and functionally speaking this came to mean that for the
Orientalist, no modern Semite, however much he may have believed himself to
be modern, could ever out-distance the organizing claims on himself of his
origins....No Semite advanced in time beyond the level of a "classical
period"; no Semite could ever shake loose the pastoral, desert environment
of his tent and tribe. Every manifestation of actual 'Semitic' life could
be, and ought to be, referred back to the primitive explanatory category of
'the Semitic.'
"The exevcutive power of such a system of reference, by which each discrete
instance of of real behavior could be reduced down and back to a small
number of edxplanatory "original" categories, was considerable by the end
of the 19th century."
Many examples of the crudest forms of this operation on the NG
soc.culture.jewish, of course, and in the mainstream American press
withregard of late to Arabs. Thomas Friedman, Bernard Lewis for example are
grinding away at this all the time (exempting Jews, though, but otherwise
the 19th century practise is pretty much untouched.)
So Said is looking at how Europeans - European culture and Empire - refined
and defines itself, asserted and assets itself and justifies itself by the
_creation_ of a convenient 'Orient" that exhibits Europe's superiority by
comparison and through a specific relation, a way of thinking convenient for
empire and also for nationalist extremism, leading first to imperial rape
requiring the portrayal of the Orient as a passive seductive slave woman,
inferior but enticing, and "asking for it" and eventually also to Nazism -
whose ideology posits the possibility of "repurification" of the European
from the effects of its degrading Oriental Embrace. The master requires the
slave in order to be a master and understand himself as master, just as the
'masculine' requires an inferior/dominated/opposite 'feminine' to exhibit
its specialness, power and value, and so bold enlightened West requires
sneaky, passive shadowy East to portray and justify itself. What these
binary oppositions disguise is more than any/ all attractive qualities of
the "other" culture, but the actual dialectical and interactive relation
between the actual living referents of the categories which scholarship
offers as mutually exclusive opposites - the real beings and culture of east
and west, involved in a continuous exchange within a context of power and
empire.
So that's in Orientalism.
In Culture and Imperialism, Said looks at major works of european culture,
as well as european/american institutions, through this same lens for ways
in which imatinitive works assume/perpetuate/justify the rightness of empire
or critique it and develop the image of Europe and Europeans which emerges
from this formulation of what is not European, what is distant and other and
dominated (and perhaps threatening revolt.) He reads Mansfield Park and Aida
and Heart of Darkness but also 'modernism' and the university, etc. In this
book, the way the imperial order troubles European
literature-culture-ideology is explored via a vis factors of gender, race
and also class, which is not an issue in _Orientalism_. "I... have tried
here to expand the arguments of the earlier book to describe a more general
pattern of relationships between the modern metropolitan West and its
overseas territories." In this book Said responds to a point to works in
'sub-altern studies' originally influenced by his book but also to
unfortunate developments in academic disciplines and ideological fashions:
"Culture is exonerated of any entaglements with power, representations are
considered only as apolitical images to be parsed and construed as so many
garmmars of exchange, and the divorce of the present from the past is
assumed to be complete. And yet, far from this separation of spheres
[socio-cultural, politico-economic] being a neutral or accidental choice,
its real meaning is as an act of complicity, the humanist's choice of a
disguised, denuded, systematically purged textual model over a more
embattled model, whose principle features would inevitably coalesce around
the contiuning struggle over the question of empire itself." He develops
here also the arguments in Representations of the Intellectual, which is a
reading of Benda's Treason of The Clerks.
Lacenaire
Lewis Mammel
Lacenaire wrote:
>
> In Culture and Imperialism, Said looks at major works of european culture,
> as well as european/american institutions, through this same lens for ways
> in which imatinitive works assume/perpetuate/justify the rightness of empire
> or critique it and develop the image of Europe and Europeans which emerges
> from this formulation of what is not European, what is distant and other and
> dominated (and perhaps threatening revolt.)
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28904
DAY OF INFAMY 2001
Airline denied Atta
paradise wedding suit
At last minute, American turned
away luggage containing
cologne, gold Koran
... so we got that goin' for us.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Lacenaire
"Lewis Mammel" <l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> a écrit dans le message news:
3F822F6F...@worldnet.att.net...
I don't get it. Who has what going for them?
Lacenaire
Lewis Mammel
Well, Mohammed Atta is stranded in the afterlife. That's gotta be worth
something. Didn't you see Little Big Man? ... Caddyshack ?
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Lewis Mammel
I might as well add, in the interest of honesty, that my idea in
citing this news item, which I remembered and had to search out, was
to illustrate the apparently undeniable "otherness" of the proxima
orientalis (sic) . But then it struck me, as it never ceases to, how
strange it is that I actually take satisfaction in the objectively
meaningless circumstance described therein, which to me
illustrates the hold that the extra-rational has over all of us,
and that the "other" is always present within us, and that we
are all one, notwithstanding our habit of killing one another,
to cease doing which would surely be to the advantage of all,
but can we do it ? Nobody wants to be a chump.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Lacenaire
.
I did see Little Big Man...many times as a kid. I never saw caddyshack.
> I might as well add, in the interest of honesty, that my idea in
> citing this news item, which I remembered and had to search out, was
> to illustrate the apparently undeniable "otherness" of the proxima
> orientalis (sic) .
Excellent:
"Us" = Europeans/White Folks.
Mohammad Atta - not all of him, just his afterlife conception and crime -
represents Semites, the typical Semite, the Semitic type.
No one in particular represents Europeans. (It's not possible for any
individual adequately to represent full-fledged humanity such as is found
among Europeans.)
Religious freaks, suicides, mass murderers, cannibals, war criminals, child
molesters, insider traders, torturers, death camp commandants among white
folks exist - are indeed legion - but are nonetheless meaningless and
exceptional.
Mohammad Atta however is the rule, since "they" ("we" I think for me perhaps
in this context) tend to be as indistinguishable from one another as
cockroaches, not individuals but expressions of a static, collective ancient
history, an unchanging "Semitic character," while "we" ("you" I think I
have to say, as a percieved Semite) have the option to choose or reject
beliefs and behaviours on an individiual basis.
A good illustration of what's under examination in "Orientalism."
Lacenaire
>
> Lew Mammel, Jr.
Zspider
I don't think Said has a beef. He offers an analysis.
**********
Thanks for the enlightening comments on Orientalism. I'm not
very knowledgeable about the various literary theories, and it
was interesting to read about it on a level that I can under-
stand. So much of the rhetoric on literary theory is so con-
voluted and cryptic that it leads one to suspect that maybe
there's a degree of bullshitting going on. Semiotics comes to
mind.
Michael
francis muir
2774a1e1.03100...@posting.google.com, "Zspider"
<robi...@crane.navy.mil> wrote:
Terry Eagleton is your man, and if he's too heavy then just
go back to square one and re-read *Alice in Wonderland*.
smw
Zspider wrote:
> Lacenaire wrote <most snipped>:
> I don't think Said has a beef. He offers an analysis.
>
> **********
> Thanks for the enlightening comments on Orientalism.
Yes, thank you for posting all these excerpt. What a lovely tribute.
Intelligence, elegance, passion -- how many achieve either one of those?
to think he did them all, and so consistently.
Lewis Mammel
Lacenaire wrote:
> I did see Little Big Man...many times as a kid. I never saw caddyshack.
Interestingly, the salient lines are both featured as lengthy
"memorable quotes" on imdb.com
Old Lodge Skins:Do you see this fine thing? Do you admire the humanity of
it? Because the human beings, my son, they believe everything is alive. Not
only man and animals. But also water, earth, stone. And also the things from
them... like that hair. The man from whom this hair came, he's bald on the
other side, because I now own his scalp! That is the way things are. But the
white man, they believe EVERYTHING is dead. Stone, earth, animals. And
people! Even their own people! If things keep trying to live, white man will
rub them out. That is the difference.
Calr Spackler: So I jump ship in Hong Kong and make my way over to Tibet,
and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas. A looper, you
know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you
think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The
flowing robes, the grace, bald... striking. So, I'm on the first tee with him. I
give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one---big hitter, the
Lama---long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this
glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga... gunga,
gunga-galunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say,
"Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you
know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on
your deathbed, you will receive total consiousness." So I got that goin' for me,
which is nice.
Notice that he never calls the Dalai Lama a cockroach.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Lewis Mammel
francis muir wrote:
> Terry Eagleton is your man, and if he's too heavy then just
> go back to square one and re-read *Alice in Wonderland*.
Tuesday October 7. 2003, NYT crossword puzzle: 47 Across
Where a stumped puzzle solver goes? - answer:
BACKTOSQUAREONE
What are the chances ?
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Susan Cohen
"smw" <sm...@ameritech.net> wrote in message
news:3F832FF6...@ameritech.net...
To think that anyone swallows this!
Susan
francis muir
Mammel" <l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
Same as Jesse Jackson's attempts to overturn the Kali Recall.
Lacenaire
Yes, I remember Old Lodge Skins...and the 'fine thing' is a human scalp, I
believe? The Human Beings of Little Big Man are a very 70s sort of
progressive folk, nature loving liberals, positive about sex, lacking
hypocrisy, but not silly peaceniks, vegetarians or embarrassing bra-burning
feminists, and not lacking healthy nationalism (the are the Human Beings,
after all, not the nasty Pawnee collaborators)...I suppose the ease with
which they are used as a trope is helped along by not being White Folks, but
its a film pretty critical, in the ways mainstream American films aren't
anymore, about American society and the writing of history and empire
(Hoffman is the last great living Indian-killer)...
The Dalai Lama...not a cockroach, no...everyone loves the Dalai Lama! He's
our favorite Oriental of all, and the sort of throw-back nice theocratic
society he would like in Tibet is just what "we" would like to see in the
Orient (they wouldn't know what to do with a democracy, anyway, would
they?). But then again he's pretty inscurtable, which makes business a
little difficult to do....
Bernardo Bertolucci has pointed out to us, hasn't he, how progressive it is
at heart...those monks...even a girl and a blonde kid from Seattle can be
born the holy head of the Tibetan state-in-suspension (the kid of the
wealthy dot.com couple will rule Tibet one day, rather observation than
prediction)...how simple and how mysterious is the Dalai Lama!...maybe
Little Buddha is really a blistering attack...now that I think about it,
maybe it is; those monks are so quaint, so cute, such little wise cartoon
chinamen, speaking in fables and riddles, so serene and so lacking in
anxiety....looking for their leader among the little sages of the American
west, also experts in code and simple paths to spiritual and social
health....and born to rule, too.
Maybe its the hangover...I don't get your point wholly, I think...but these
speeches in these films seem to me to confirm most persuasively Edward
Said's observation on how (and what) Orientals and the Orient and (and
others of empire) mean for the west and how imaginitive product uses them to
mean to produce, affirm, and critique the west. I don't see how the Dalai
Lama playing golf would be funny, otherwise. Ideological auras capable of
making jokes funny all by themselves need to be comprehended quickly,
without reflection. Of course the actual Dalai Lama's popularity in the West
depends a lot on his far more familiar and comforting attitude toward debt
repayment than the joke requires...
I saw _Network_ on tv the other day...such a great movie...prophetic and
clever...but its ability to produce its meaning has changed a lot since the
first time I saw it - feminism has made aspects of the movie's ironies kind
of dead, as the fact that the Faye Dunaway character and the Angela Davis
lampoon are women, once upon a time, had the ability to convey content, and
it no longer does. Just the fact of Faye Dunaway's gender signalled the
twistedness of the environment and its corruption - a woman out of her
sexual role and seductive without being either susceptible to sentiment or
fulfilling to screw mirrored television's operation on art and society, and
the affair with William Holden mirrored his relationship to
journalism/telejournalism - "Diana, you are television!" - and now it
really doesn't 'mean' that she's a beautiful woman with sexual and emotional
disfunction, its just run out of ideological juice.
Lacenaire
> Lew Mammel, Jr.
Lisa R.
> "Right Across Left Hook Combo" <extreme...@hotmail.com> a écrit dans le
> message news: 462e9bef.03100...@posting.google.com...
> > What was the gist of Orientalism and his other book about Imperialism?
>
> I don't think Said has a beef. He offers an analysis.
>
>
> European literature and art constructs the "Orient" and "Orientals"
> conveniently as an illuminating opposite/inferior, an "Other" of Europe/
> Occident, subordinate - and therefore rightfully dominated - and seductive -
> and therefore to blame for domination.
Well, maybe if you're suffering from testosterone overload. In that
case, you see "everything" in sexualized terms.
Hey, the Muslims had the ball, and then they dropped it. Once they
were on top, and now they're not. That's life.
> Europe understands and portrays the
> "Orient" and "Orientals" in the most convenient fashion for the oblique
> creation of itself and its superiority. Both Occident and Orient - east and
> west - are created and defined, in relation to each other, by the west for
> the purposes of western domination and possession of the east. Europe cannot
> imagine itself a possessor, a leader, a husband, a master, a light-giver, an
> heroic individual without creating its Oriental possession, servant, bride,
> slave, benighted place and undifferentiated mass.
>
> Erotic and eroticised fascination (accompanied by european self-suspicion
> and self-loathing) and a desire to possess (and exploit and destroy)
> characterise "orientalism' as a european 'academic discipline' and a genre
> of art/lit.
I'm not fascinated by the current Middle East, and I don't care what
some scribbler writes.
> Said on Ernst Renan's invention of the semitic:
>
> "Semitic was the scientific study to which Rensan turned right after the
> loss of his Christian faith; I described above how he came to see the study
> of Semitic as replacing his faith and enabling a critical future relation
> with it. The study of Semitic was Renan's first full-length Orientlist and
> scientific study (finished in 1847, fiirst published in 1855) and was as
> much a part of his late major works on the origins of Christianity and the
> history of the Jews as it was a propaedeutic for them. In intention, if not
> perhaps in achievement...his Semitic opus was proposed as a philological
> breakthrough, from which in later years he was always to draw retrodspective
> authority for his positions (almost always bad ones) on religion, race and
> nationalism. Whenever Renan wished to make a statement either about the Jews
> or the Muslims, for example, it was always with his remarkably harsh (and
> unfounded, except according to the science he was practising) strictures on
> the Semites in mind. Furthermore, Renan's Semitic was meant as a
> contribution both to the development of Indo-European linguistics and tp the
> differentiation of Orientalisms. To the former, semitic was a degraded form,
> degraded in both the moral and the biological sense, whereas to the latter
> Semitic was a - if not the - stable form of cultural decadence. Lastly,
> semitic was renan's first creation, a fiction invented by him in the
> philological laboratory to satisfy his sense of public place and mission. It
> should by no means be lost on us that Semitic was for Renan's ego the symbol
> of European (and consequently his) dominion over the Orient and over his own
> era.
His problem. Some writers write crap. Martin Heidigger wrote crap.
Carl Schmitt wrote crap.
> "Therefore, as a branch of th Orient, Semitic was not fully a natural
> object - like a species of monkey,
That's what Muslims call us Dhimmis. Monkeys. Then they tell us to
convert.
> for example - nor fully an unnatural or
> divine object, as it had once been considered...
>
> "Everywhere Renan treats of normal human facts - language, history,
> culture,mind, imagination - as transformed into something else, as something
> peculiarly deviant, because they are Semitic or Oriental, and because they
> end up for anlysis in the laboratory. Thus the Semites are rabid monotheists
> who produced no mythology, no art, no commerce, no civilization; their
> consciousness is a narrow and rigid one; all in all they represent 'une
> combinaison inferieure de la nature humaine.'
And Martin Heidigger thought the Nazis were fabulous. How much can
anyone care about the lunatic writings of a single author?
<snip. Boy, these guys really get paid by the word, don't they?>
So Westerners saw Middle Easterners through the prism of their own
mental constructs. What a revelation. So do you think that perhaps
Middle Easterners saw, and still see, Westerners through the prism of
THEIR mental constructs?
How about the curricula in those Palestinian schools? Do you think
that maybe they're a little warped?
How about the curricula in those madrassas all over the Islamic world?
Where they teach children that Jews and Westerners are devils, and
that Western women are sluts?
What about THAT, huh?
Lisa
John McCarthy
from an obligation to refute directly what the orientalists wrote.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
John McCarthy
> Mohammad Atta however is the rule, since "they" ("we" I think for me perhaps
> in this context) tend to be as indistinguishable from one another as
> cockroaches, not individuals but expressions of a static, collective ancient
> history, an unchanging "Semitic character," while "we" ("you" I think I
> have to say, as a percieved Semite) have the option to choose or reject
> beliefs and behaviours on an individiual basis.
>
> A good illustration of what's under examination in "Orientalism."
>
> Lacenaire
Lacenaire is substantially right and maybe even Said to some extent.
Fit this item from today's Wall Street Journal into your concept of
what a Moslem must believe.
************************************************
The Ayatollah Wolfowitz
Sayyid Hussein Khomeini is the grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini, leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. Earlier this
year, the liberal 46-year-old cleric left Iran for the Shiite
spiritual centers of Karbala and Najaf, where he has been exploiting
Iraq's newfound freedom of speech and thought to advocate democratic
change at home. Mr. Khomeini visited our offices last week as he
wrapped up a U.S. tour that included stops on Capitol Hill. He painted
a far different picture of Middle East developments than President
Bush's critics in Congress and the media.
"We consider [the U.S. invasion] as the arrival of goodness, and I
hope the American people understand this," Mr. Khomeini emphasized
from the start. It is important for Americans to keep their eyes on
the big picture, and "to make the [democratizing] mission possible" by
not getting discouraged by the day-to-day difficulties.
Mr. Khomeini offered no assurances that the path ahead would be
easy. "All of our neighbors are dictatorships. . . . They do not like
a democracy in the heart of the Mideast." He said Iran and Saudi
Arabia, in particular, were working to undermine the U.S. mission. Nor
does he consider the Europeans helpful: "Europe is now calling for
democracy, but it is helping 100% the dictatorships in the area."
But Mr. Khomeini, who advocates separation of mosque and state, said
Americans shouldn't worry that Iraqis themselves want to trade
dictatorship for Islamic theocracy. As long as security and basic
services can be provided, he said, "Iraqis want the Americans to
stay."
What's more, Mr. Khomeini says an aggressive U.S. posture is the best
chance of bringing change to Iran, where the hopes of freedom that
animated the 1979 revolution were "diverted," in part because of the
"personality of Khomeini," his grandfather. "Iranians -- and I know
this culture -- want American military intervention in Iran," he
says. Absent that, it is important for America to support Iranian
dissidents: "The Iranian government must be under pressure at all
times."
It was in part to free the voices of Islamic reformers that the
President deposed Saddam Hussein. If America can foster a space in the
Middle East where such things can continue to be thought and said,
that fact alone will have been worth the fight.
Updated October 10, 2003
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
John McCarthy
Anyone who actually likes books should remember asking Eagleton
whether the liked a book is like asking an entomologist whether he
liked the bug through which he has just stuck a pin.
Thought for today.
A taste for Ingmar Bergman films is the modern subsitute for attending
hangings.
- jmc 1994
Lacenaire
"John McCarthy" <j...@Steam.Stanford.EDU> a écrit dans le message news:
x4hsmm1...@steam.Stanford.EDU...
> Lewis Mammel <l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>
> > francis muir wrote:
> >
> > > Terry Eagleton is your man, and if he's too heavy then just
> > > go back to square one and re-read *Alice in Wonderland*.
> >
> > Tuesday October 7. 2003, NYT crossword puzzle: 47 Across
> > Where a stumped puzzle solver goes? - answer:
> >
> > BACKTOSQUAREONE
> >
> > What are the chances ?
> >
> > Lew Mammel, Jr.
>
> Anyone who actually likes books should remember asking Eagleton
> whether the liked a book is like asking an entomologist whether he
> liked the bug through which he has just stuck a pin.
>
Come on! He _loves_ Milton, Blake and Shelley passionately. More than
Northrop Frye loved Shakespear. He _loves_ literature and believes it has
the power to be revolutionary.
Lacenaire
David E. Latane
On Fri, 10 Oct 2003, Lacenaire wrote:
>
> "John McCarthy" <j...@Steam.Stanford.EDU> a écrit dans le message news:
> x4hsmm1...@steam.Stanford.EDU...
> > Lewis Mammel <l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
> >
> > > francis muir wrote:
> > >
> > > > Terry Eagleton is your man, and if he's too heavy then just
> > > > go back to square one and re-read *Alice in Wonderland*.
> > >
> > > Tuesday October 7. 2003, NYT crossword puzzle: 47 Across
> > > Where a stumped puzzle solver goes? - answer:
> > >
> > > BACKTOSQUAREONE
> > >
> > > What are the chances ?
> > >
> > > Lew Mammel, Jr.
> >
> > Anyone who actually likes books should remember asking Eagleton
> > whether the liked a book is like asking an entomologist whether he
> > liked the bug through which he has just stuck a pin.
> >
>
> Come on! He _loves_ Milton, Blake and Shelley passionately. More than
> Northrop Frye loved Shakespear. He _loves_ literature and believes it has
> the power to be revolutionary.
Uh, all the entomologists I know are unhealthily fond of bugs. Perhaps a
better analogy would be, "is like asking my sister-in-law if she likes
roaches before she reaches for the Raid." Now there's somebody who doesn't
like bugs.
D. Latane
francis muir
Pine.SGI.4.33.031010...@neptune.vcu.edu, "David E. Latane"
<dla...@mail1.vcu.edu> wrote:
But does she hear cabbage-leaves scream
when they are torn out of the ground?
J. Del Col
> "John McCarthy" <j...@Steam.Stanford.EDU> a écrit dans le message news:
> x4hsmm1...@steam.Stanford.EDU...
> > Lewis Mammel <l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
> >
> > > francis muir wrote:
> > >
> > > > Terry Eagleton is your man, and if he's too heavy then just
> > > > go back to square one and re-read *Alice in Wonderland*.
> > >
> > > Tuesday October 7. 2003, NYT crossword puzzle: 47 Across
> > > Where a stumped puzzle solver goes? - answer:
> > >
> > > BACKTOSQUAREONE
> > >
> > > What are the chances ?
> > >
> > > Lew Mammel, Jr.
> >
> > Anyone who actually likes books should remember asking Eagleton
> > whether the liked a book is like asking an entomologist whether he
> > liked the bug through which he has just stuck a pin.
> >
>
> Come on! He _loves_ Milton, Blake and Shelley passionately. More than
> Northrop Frye loved Shakespear. He _loves_ literature and believes it has
> the power to be revolutionary.
Wow, literature as propaganda. Calling Comrade Zhdanov!
J. Del Col
Lacenaire
"David E. Latane" <dla...@mail1.vcu.edu> a écrit dans le message news:
Pine.SGI.4.33.031010...@neptune.vcu.edu...
On Fri, 10 Oct 2003, Lacenaire wrote:
>
> "John McCarthy" <j...@Steam.Stanford.EDU> a écrit dans le message news:
> x4hsmm1...@steam.Stanford.EDU...
> > Lewis Mammel <l.ma...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
> >
> > > francis muir wrote:
> > >
> > > > Terry Eagleton is your man, and if he's too heavy then just
> > > > go back to square one and re-read *Alice in Wonderland*.
> > >
> > > Tuesday October 7. 2003, NYT crossword puzzle: 47 Across
> > > Where a stumped puzzle solver goes? - answer:
> > >
> > > BACKTOSQUAREONE
> > >
> > > What are the chances ?
> > >
> > > Lew Mammel, Jr.
> >
> > Anyone who actually likes books should remember asking Eagleton
> > whether the liked a book is like asking an entomologist whether he
> > liked the bug through which he has just stuck a pin.
> >
>
> Come on! He _loves_ Milton, Blake and Shelley passionately. More than
> Northrop Frye loved Shakespear. He _loves_ literature and believes it has
> the power to be revolutionary.
David Latane:
Uh, all the entomologists I know are unhealthily fond of bugs. Perhaps a
better analogy would be, "is like asking my sister-in-law if she likes
roaches before she reaches for the Raid." Now there's somebody who doesn't
like bugs.
D. Latane
Me:
So, I'm really curious why you think this (about Eagleton, not your sister
in law).
What does he do to hurt books, or to convince you his - very evident, to
me - pleasure in literature is a fraud?
Lacenaire
David E. Latane
That second person singular pronoun ain't me! I was just pointing out that
entomologists love bugs (even as they pin them)--so assuming that TE hated
literature from the analogy doesn't quite work. Perhaps that was John's
point too -- that theorists like TE love literature even as they skewer
the texts.
I have trouble believing that anybody who really loved literature would
spend so much time reading Marx, but then that's probably just me.
D. Latane
David E. Latane
On Fri, 10 Oct 2003, francis muir wrote:
> > Uh, all the entomologists I know are unhealthily fond of bugs. Perhaps a
> > better analogy would be, "is like asking my sister-in-law if she likes
> > roaches before she reaches for the Raid." Now there's somebody who doesn't
> > like bugs.
>
> But does she hear cabbage-leaves scream
> when they are torn out of the ground?
You know, I never thought to ask....
D. Latane
smw
David E. Latane wrote:
...
> I have trouble believing that anybody who really loved literature would
> spend so much time reading Marx, but then that's probably just me.
I think the idea that you need to read lots of Marx to be a Marxist went
out with Althusser.
Lewis Mammel
Lacenaire wrote:
> Come on! He _loves_ Milton, Blake and Shelley passionately. More than
> Northrop Frye loved Shakespear. He _loves_ literature and believes it has
> the power to be revolutionary.
She loves Blake and Shelley, but she doesn't like Milton.
She likes books, but she doesn't like literature.
She likes coffee, but she doesn't like tea.