Scholarship is never neutral, so honesty requires declaring one’s standpoint
Evidence
As I have characterized it in this study, Orientalism calls in question not only the possibility of nonpolitical scholarship but also the advisability of too close a relationship between the scholar and the state. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 825 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
The interesting point about this entire essay, nevertheless, is how it calls for science and scientific procedures in name only. When it comes to what the truth of nonpolitical Middle East studies is, or could be, the author simply says nothing. In other words, the attitudes, the postures, the rhetoric — in fine, the ideology — of scholarship is what counts. Its content is simply not spelled out, and what is worse, there is a deliberate attempt to conceal the connections between scholarship and what we might call worldliness, for the sake of maintaining the fiction of nonpartisan and unpolitical scholarly truth. — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 309 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
If we assume, as we should, that knowledge is never innocent of the social, conceptual, material, political, and power networks within which it is cultivated, then engaging in knowledge production—inter alia the mission and, indeed, raison d’être of the scholar—comes with a grave ethical and moral responsibility, but one that can no longer be formed through the liberal tradition or exclusively within the central domains’ discursive formations. As an instrument of power and one that in modernity stands in dialectical relationship with it, knowledge is a weapon that can inflict cruel violence, including, as we have seen, genocide and much else. To cultivate it within an ethical framework is to engage, first and foremost, in a series of self-interrogations about the justifiability of the very concept of scholarship in the first place: Why, that is, choose to enter into this domain of production? What forms of scholarship are ethically justifiable and what forms are not? How can a scholar, through a specific and precisely formulated research project, partake in ethical self-formation? — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 518 (
#expands, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Scholarship comes with grave ethical responsibility because knowledge is never innocent of power — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 518; Scholarship cannot be politically neutral — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 825; Neutral scholarship rhetoric often conceals worldly power connections — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the…, 309 (+6 more)
Broader Connections
- Scholarship cannot be politically neutral
#corroborates(0.92) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 825 - Neutral scholarship rhetoric often conceals worldly power connections
#corroborates(0.88) — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 309 - Scholarship comes with grave ethical responsibility because knowledge is never innocent of power
#expands(0.85) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 518 - Scholarly work is never neutral but can still stay open to contrary evidence
#qualifies(0.85) - Discourse is not reducible to class interest yet is never neutral
#corroborates(0.80) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 581 - Purportedly objective scholarship can function as propaganda against its subject
#exemplifies(0.78) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 801 - Skeptical critical consciousness is the ethical norm for scholarship on the Other
#expands(0.75) - Institutional honesty is often compromised to preserve the status quo.
#complicates(0.72) — Nicholson Baker, Baseless- My Search for Secrets in the…, 1134 - Impossible perfect objectivity does not justify abandoning scholarly standards.
#qualifies(0.72)