Said’s Orientalism denies colonized agency while criticizing the West for silencing it.
Evidence
A notable feature of Orienta/ism is that it examines the his tory of Western textualities about the non-West quite in isolation from how these textualities might have been received, accepted, modified, challenged, overthrown or reproduced by the intelligentsias of the colonized countries: not as an undifferentiated mass but as situated social agents impelled by our own conflicts, contradictions, distinct soci-al and political locations, of class, gender, region, religious affiliation, and so onhence a peculiar disjuncture in the architecture of the book. One of its major complaints is that from Aeschylus onwards the West has never permitted the Orient to represent itself; it has represented the Orient. I shall discuss that peculiar vision of human history below. Bur what is remarkable is that with the exception of Said’s own voice, the only voices we encounter in the book are precisely those of the very Western canonicity which, Said complains, has always silenced the Orient. Who is silencing whom, who is refusing to permit a historicized encounter between the voice of the so-called ‘Orientalist’ and the many voices that ‘Orientalism’ is said so utterly to suppress, is a question that is very hard to determine as we read this book. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 703
Categorization
- XREF: Central to the reader’s thesis: this internal contradiction in Orientalism is what strategic essentialism and later discourse-determinist postcolonial theory inherit — the colonized subject vanishes into pure objecthood. — connects to: Said contradicts Orientalism by treating Western literatures as autonomous. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 915; Said’s critique essentializes the West as much as it claims Orientalists essentialize the East — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 335; Said’s critique mirrored Orientalism by fixating on Western metropolitan culture — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 104 (+2 more)
- QUESTION: The self-undermining structure — arraigning Western canon while only its voices appear — looks structurally parallel to the bind of strategic essentialism, worth chasing.
Broader Connections
- Said did not intend Orientalism to endorse resurgent nationalism
#qualifies(0.85) - Said contradicts Orientalism by treating Western literatures as autonomous.
#qualifies(0.80) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 915 - Said’s critique essentializes the West as much as it claims Orientalists essentialize the East
#complicates(0.80) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 335 - Said’s critique mirrored Orientalism by fixating on Western metropolitan culture
#complicates(0.72) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 104 - Said’s critique of Orientalism mirrors the procedures of his adversaries.
#complicates(0.70) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 714