Debating Said’s Orientalism degenerated into motive-attribution rather than argument.
Evidence
Said, in response, was not particularly civil. He argued that knowledge is never abstract, but always reflects power. … Lewis in his concluding response said that ‘it is hardly honest or fair to try to refute someone else’s point of view not in terms of what he says, but of motives which you choose to attribute to him in order to make your refutation easier. It is hardly an example of truth or fairness to use the smear tactics that became well known in this country at an earlier stage, by lumping together writers, scholars and journalists of very disparate characters and origins, thereby conveying rather than asserting that they are all the same, that they constitute one homogenous, centrally directed, conspiratorial whole.’ — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 546
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to Said’s core power-knowledge argument that resurfaces throughout Irwin’s book and to the McCarthy-era ‘smear tactics’ Lewis invokes.
- SHARE: The Lewis response — ‘lumping together writers… thereby conveying rather than asserting that they are all the same’ — is a sharp articulation of guilt-by-association ripe to send to someone studying rhetoric or the culture wars.