Arab scholarship treated writing’s authorial absence as an essential problem to overcome

Evidence

In both of his later works his individuality has disappeared entirely as a creative presence, as of course has the very idea of a narrative work. Lane the man appears only in the official persona of annotator and retranslator (the Nights) and impersonal lexicographer. From being an author contemporary with his subject matter, Lane became—as Orientalist scholar of classical Arabic and classical Islam—its survivor. But it is the form of that survival which is of interest. For Lane’s legacy as a scholar mattered not to the Orient, of course, but to the institutions and agencies of his European society. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 416 (#complicates, via linked claim)

These closing lines send us back to Chateaubriand’s interest in getting his name inscribed on the Pyramids. We will have understood that his egoistic Oriental memoirs supply us with a constantly demonstrated, an indefatigably performed experience of self. Writing was an act of life for Chateaubriand, for whom nothing, not even a distant piece of stone, must remain scriptively untouched by him if he was to stay alive. If the order of Lane’s narrative was to be violated by scientific authority and enormous detail, then Chateaubriand’s was to be transformed into the asserted will of an egoistic, highly volatile individual. Whereas Lane would sacrifice his ego to the Orientalist canon, Chateaubriand would make everything he said about the Orient wholly dependent on his ego. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 446 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Al-Azhar scholars rejected printing because writing was never a separate realm of representation; Orientalist scholarly authority requires the disappearance of the scholar’s individuality — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 416; Orientalist writing can serve as ego-prolongation rather than impersonal scholarship — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 446 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Orientalist scholarly authority requires the disappearance of the scholar’s individuality #complicates (0.78) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 416
• Orientalist writing can serve as ego-prolongation rather than impersonal scholarship #complicates (0.75) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 446