Guénon critiqued Orientalism from within yet sustained a lasting intellectual legacy

Evidence

Enter our Orientalist. Raised as a Roman Catholic, and educated by the Jesuits, and later at the Sorbonne, René Guénon was a Frenchman whose formative years were spent in a country that promoted one of the most virile forms of European nationalism (this fact is relevant in light of Said’s conception of an absolutely hegemonic national “ambience”). Belonging to the last generation of European Orientalists who mastered various Asian languages and knew more than one tradition (unlike their successors after World War II), Guénon produced some two dozen books on Hinduism, Taoism, and Islam, and his works were translated into some twenty tongues. … What makes him an interesting case for my inquiry is not that he was an Orientalist who went against his own discipline—as significant as that may be for my overall argument—but that with all the esotericism and unusually unconventional thrust of his critique, he went against Orientalism and all that which produced it, and still managed to leave a legacy. This phenomenon has profound implications for a theory of the author. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 281

Categorization

• XREF: Guénon’s traditionalist school Philosophia Perennis parallels the earlier general discussion of subversive authorship; also connects to any prior treatment of subaltern or counter-hegemonic thinkers.