April 20, 2012
Where the Twain Should Have Met
The worldly Edward Said was ideally placed to explain East to West as well as West to East. What went wrong?
by Christopher Hitchens
I initial met Edward Said in the summer of 1976, in the collateral city of Cyprus. We had come to Nicosia to take partial in the discussion upon the rights of small nations. The pornographic civil fight in Lebanon was usually beginning to devour the whole multitude as well as to fall short the cosmopolitanism of Beirut; it was still usually possible in those days to suppose which the right "side" could be discerned by the smoke of confessional conflagration.
Palestinian insurgency to Israeli function was in the decline (as was the messianic "settler" movement in in in in between Jews), as well as the function itself was reduction than the decade old. Egypt was still the Egypt of Anwar Sadata man who had placed many of his credit upon the peril of "Westernization," however commercially conceived, as well as who was usually dual years widely separated from the Camp David accords. It was apropos dimly apprehended in the West which the aged narrative of "Israel" versus "the Arabs" was many as well crude. The image of the spare kibbutz state surrounded by the heaving ocean of ravenous mullahs as well as demagogues was slowly yielding to the story! of dual peoples contesting the right to the same twice-promised land.
For all these "conjunctures," as you right away lend towards to tenure them, Said was almost ideally configured. He had come from an Anglican Palestinian family which widely separated the time as well as the skill in in in in between Jerusalem as well as Cairo. He had outlayed years in the internationalist atmosphere of Beirut, as well as was as many during home in French as well as English as in Arabic.
A the a single preferred of Lionel Trilling's, he had won tall eminence during Columbia University as well as was additionally up to concert customary as the pianist. Those Americans who subliminally associated the word "Palestinian" with swarthiness, weird headgear, as well as strange irredentist rhetoric were in for the shock which was prolonged overdue. And this is to contend small sufficient about his wit, his curiosity, his caring for the opinions of others.
Within dual years he had published Orientalism: the book which has exerted the galvanizing influence throughout the quarter century separating the initial from the many new edition. In these pages Said characterized Western scholarship about the East as the conscious handmaiden of energy as well as subordination. Explorers, missionaries, archaeologists, linguistsall had been partial of the colonial enterprise.
To the border which American academics right away verbalise about the "appropriation" of alternative cultures, as well as occasionally fail to put ordinary words such as "the Other" in in in in between predicting selection marks, as well as contest the unequivocally thought of pattern inquiry, they have been paying what they suppose is the debt to Edward Said's work. It isn't astray to the book, you hope, to contend which it additionally received the extensive charge from the nearby simultaneous series in Iran as well as the after assassination of Anwar Sadat.
The purported "Westernization" or "modernization" of dual ancient civilizat! ions, Pe rsia as well as Egypt, had proved to be founded upon, well sand. The word of the normal routine intellectuals as well as Middle East "experts" incited out to be value reduction than naught. Although this book said small upon the theme of either Iran or Sadat, it burst upon the knowledge-seeking ubiquitous reader even as it threw down the challenge to the consider armoured column as well as professional institutes.
To be appraised properly, Orientalism ought to be review alongside 3 alternative books by Said: 
Covering Islam (1981), Culture as well as Imperialism (1993), as well as Out of Place (1999). The last of these is the memoir, which was the target of the number of scurrilous attacks radically directed during denying Said (right) the right to call himself the Palestinian during all. The initial is an attack upon the in all lazy press coverage of the Iranian series as well as of all matters endangered with Islam.
Culture as well as Imperialism is the pick up of essays display which Said has the low understanding, amounting during times to sympathy, for the work of writers such as Austen as well as Kipling as well as George Eliot, whooutward appearances notwithstandingnever did take "the Orient" for granted.
In scrutinizing instances of translation as well as interpretation, the inescapable subject remains the same: Who is interpreting what as well as to whom? It is easy sufficient to contend which Westerners had prolonged been supposing with an e! xotic, s umptuous, though mostly dubious account of the Orient, either granted by Benjamin Disraeli's Suez Canal share purchases, the celluloid phantasms of Rudolph Valentino, or the vehement episodes in T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom. But it is additionally loyal which Arab, Indian, Malay, as well as Iranian societies can work upon the false if not indeed deluded perspective of "the West." This many became vividly clear unequivocally recently, with the dissemination of weird libels about (say) the Jewish tract to fall short the World Trade Center.
I, for one, do not verbalise or review Arabic, as well as have made usually five, comparatively short, visits to Iraq. But you am willing to bet which you know some-more about Mesopotamia than Saddam Hussein ever knew about England, France, or the United States. you additionally consider which such believe as you have comes from some-more disinterested sources And you would add which Saddam Hussein was improved able to force himself upon my attention than you ever was to force myself upon his. As Adonis, the great Syrian-Lebanese poet, has warned us, there exists the risk in as well clever the counterposition in in in in between "East" as well as "West." The "West" has the intellectual as well as amicable troughs, usually as the "East" has the pinnacles. Not usually is this loyal right away (Silicon Valley could frequency run though the work of rarely learned Indians, for example), though it was loyal when Arab scholars in Baghdad as well as Crdoba recovered the mislaid work of Aristotle for Gothic "Christendom."
Cultural-political interaction,! then, c ontingency be construed as dialectical. Edward Said was in the prime in front of to be the "negotiator" here. In retrospect, however, it can be argued which he chose the one-sided approach as well as in make use of rsther than the broad brush: "Without examining Orientalism as the sermon the single cannot presumably understand the enormously the single after an additional fortify by which European culture was able to manageand even producethe Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, as well as imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment period." ("Produce," as in "cultural production," has become the single of the key words of the post-Foucault academy.) In this research each instance of European oddity about the East, from Flaubert to Marx, was partial of the grand pattern to exploit as well as remake what Westerners saw as the passive, rich, though ultimately contemptible "Oriental" sphere.
That there is definite truth to this it would be resting to dispute. Lord Macaulay, for example, was the nearby perfect illustration of the judgment (which occurs in Disraeli's novel Tancred) "The East is the career." He noticed the region both as the execrable source of potential cache as well as as the outrageous tract in pressing need of civilization. But in which latter respect he rsther than echoed the feeling of his associate Victorian Karl Marx, who thought which the British had brought modernity to India in the form of copy presses, railways, the telegraph, as well as liner contact with alternative cultures.
Marx didn't believe which they had done this out of the kindness of their hearts. "England, it is true, in causing the amicable series in Hindustan was actuated usually by the vilest interests," he wrote, " though which is not the question. The subject is, can mankind perform the destiny though the elemental series in the amicable state of Asia?" To the border which sovereignty licensed this, Marx reasoned, the single was entitled to exclaim, w! ith Goet he,
Should this torture then torture us
Since it brings us greater pleasure?
Were not by the sequence of Timur
Souls devoured though measure?
Said outlayed the lot of time "puzzling" (his word) over Marx's ironies here: how could the man of professed tellurian feeling justify defeat as well as exploitation? The clear answerthat defeat furnished an alternative to the terrifying serfdom as well as stagnation of antiquity, as well as which origination can take the destructive formneed have zero to do with what Said calls "the aged inequality in in in in between East as well as West." (The Roman invasion of Britain was additionally "progress," if the word has any meaning.)
Moreover, Marxism in India has mostly been the clever force for secular supervision as well as "nation building," since Marxism in China has led by the full of blood as well as contradictory track to the rarely energetic capitalist revolution. To bonus all this, as Said did, as the "Romantic Orientalist vision" (and to simply replace the copy press, the railways, as well as the rest of it) is to miss the indicate in the nearby heroic way.
The lines from Goethe have been taken from his Weststlicher Diwan, the single of the many meticulous as well as deferential considerations of the Orient you have. And Said's critics from the conservative side, notably his archenemy Bernard Lewis, have reproached him for withdrawal German Orientalism out of his account.
This is the revelation omission, they charge, since Oriental scholarship in Germany, although of an unexampled breadth as well as splendor, was not put to the make use of of sovereignty as well as defeat as well as annexation. That being so, they argue, what remains of Said's ubiquitous theory? His reply deals usually with the academic aspect of the question: Goethe as well as Schlegel, he responds, relied upon books as well as collections already made available by British as well as French majestic expeditions! . It com petence be some-more expect to indicate out, as opposite both Lewis as well as Said, which Germany did have an majestic project.
Kaiser Wilhelm II visited Damascus as well as paid for the replacement of the burial belligerent of Saladin. A Drang nach Osten ("drive to the East") was proposed, involving the miraculous scheme of the Berlin-to-Baghdad railway. German majestic explorers as well as agents were to be found all over the region in the late nineteenth century as well as up to 1914 as well as beyond. But of course they were you do all this work in the make use of of another, allied empirea Turkish as well as Islamic one. And which same sovereignty was to issue the call for jihad, opposite Britain as well as upon the side of Germany, in 1914. (The best well review evocation of this extraordinary moment is still Greenmantle, written by which veteran empire-builder John Buchan.) However, the inclusion of this critical part would tell opposite both Said, who doesn't unequivocally concede for Muslim or Turkish imperialism, as well as Lewis, who has regularly been rsther than an apologist for the Turks.
Osama bin Laden, as you contingency regularly remember, began his jihad as an pithy try to restore the vanished caliphate which once ran the world of Islam from the shores of the Bosporus. As you mostly forget, Prussian militarism was his co-sufferer in this pang of loss.
Among Edward Said's considerable advantages have been which he knows unequivocally well who John Buchan was as well as which he, Said, was prepared during St. George's, an Anglican investiture in Jerusalem, as well as additionally during the colonial mock-English in isolation school, Victoria College, in Cairo. (One of the head boys was Omar Sharif.) There were the little undoubtedly penitential aspects to this, recounted with dry amusement in his memoir, though they have helped him to be an "outsider" as well as an exile in several different countries as well as cultures,! togethe r with the Palestine of his birth. When he addresses the ubiquitous Arab audience, he makes admirable make use of of this duality or multiplicity.
In his columns in the Egyptian paper Al-Ahram he is scornful as well as antacid about the failures as well as disgraces of Arab as well as Muslim society, as well as was being so prior to the distinguished new United Nations Development Programme inform upon self-imposed barriers to Arab development, which was written by, in in in in between others, his friend Clovis Maksoud.
Every year some-more books have been translated as well as published in Athens than in all the Arab capitals combined. Where is there the decent Arab university? Where is there the "transparent" Arab election? Why does Arab promotion resort to such ugliness as well as hysteria?
Much of secular Arab patriotism was led as well as developed by Europeanized Christians, mostly Greek Orthodox, since many of atavistic Islamic jihadism relies upon anti-Jewish fabrications produced in the reduce reaches of the tsarist Russian Orthodox troops state. Said has the fairly expect thought of the traffic in in in in between the dual worlds, as well as of what is as well as is not of value. He is the source of unrelenting admonition to the uncritical, insulated Arab elites as well as intelligentsia. But for the little reasonconceivably connected to his standing as an exilehe cannot concede which approach Western engagement in the region is legitimate.
This competence be the narrowly confirmed in front of if approach Islamist division in Western hold up as well as multitude had not become such the factor. When Orientalism was initial published, the Shah was still the heat for American collateral in Iran, as well as his sequence was so exorbitantly cruel as well as hurtful which millions of secularists were willing to make what they hoped was the temporary fondness with Khomeini in sequence to get rid of it.
Today Iranian mullahs have been enrich! ing uran ium as well as harboring fugitive bin Ladenists (the slaughterers of their Shia co-religionists in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan) while students in Tehran risk their lives to denote with pro-American slogans.
How does Said, in his key to the new book of Orientalism, deal with this altered as well as still variable reality? He begins by revelation the self-evident, which is which "neither the tenure Orient nor the judgment of the West has any ontological stability; each is made up of tellurian effort, partly affirmation, partly identification of the Other." Fair enough.
He adds, "That these supreme fictions lend themselves simply to manipulation as well as the classification of common passion has never been some-more clear than in our time, when the mobilizations of fear, hatred, offend as well as resurgent self-pride as well as arrogancemuch of it carrying to do with Islam as well as the Arabs upon the single side, 'we' Westerners upon the otherare unequivocally large-scale enterprises."
This is stoical with the certain obliqueness, which may be accidental, though you can't find which it unequivocally means to contend which there have been delusions upon "both" these ontologically nonexistent sides. A couple of sentences serve upon you review of "the events of Sep 11 as well as their aftermath in the wars opposite Afghanistan as well as Iraq." Again, if critique of both sides is dictated (and you creed which it is), it comes served in rarely unbecoming portions.
There's no argue with the perspective which "events" occurred upon Sep 11, 2001; though which the troops interventions in Afghanistan as well as Iraq were wars "against" either nation is theme to debate. A highbrow of English appreciates the distinction, does he not? Or does he, like the little young new "activists" (and the little reduction childish essayists, together with Gore Vidal), consider which the United States could not wait for for the chance to invade Afghanistan in sequence to build the tube acr! oss it? American Orientalism doesn't seem which restless from where you sit; it asks usually which Afghans leave it alone.
Misgivings upon this indicate spin in to serious doubts when the single gets to the subsequent paragraph: "In the US, the hardening of attitudes, the tightening of the hold of demeaning generalization as well as triumphalist clich, the prevalence of wanton energy allied with uncomplicated contempt for dissenters as well as 'others,' has found the wise correlative in the looting, pillaging as well as destruction of Iraq's libraries as well as museums."
Here, for the little reason, "other" is represented reduce case. But there can't be many doubt as to meaning. The American forces in Baghdad set themselves to annihilate Iraq's informative patrimony. Can Said mean to contend this? Well, he says it again the couple of lines serve on, when he asserts which stream Western routine amounts to "power behaving by an judicious form of believe to claim which this is the Orient's nature, as well as you contingency deal with it accordingly."
In the routine the uncountable sediments of history, which embody countless histories as well as the dizzying variety of peoples, languages, experiences, as well as cultures, all these have been swept in reserve or ignored, relegated to the sand heap along with the treasures belligerent in to incomprehensible fragments which were taken out of Baghdad's libraries as well as museums. My evidence is which story is made by men as well as women, usually as it can additionally be unmade as well as re-written, regularly with assorted silences as well as elisions, regularly with shapes imposed as well as disfigurements tolerated, so which "our" East, "our" Orient, becomes "ours" to possess as well as direct.
This passage is rescued from sheer vulgarity usually by the incoherence. The solitary testable tender (or non-tautology) is the illusory allegation which American forces powdered the artifacts of the Iraq museum in sequ! ence to show who was boss. And the necessary void of putting the "our" in selection marks, with the related insistence upon receive as well as appropriation, is nakedly suggested thereby.
We can be empirically certain of 4 things: which by pattern the museums as well as libraries of Baghdad survived the earlier pointing bombardment though the scratch or the splinter; which many of the looting as well as offence occurred prior to bloc forces had complete control of the city; which no looting was committed by U.S. soldiers; as well as which the substantial reconstitution of the museum's pick up has been undertaken by the function authorities, as well as their allies in in in in between Iraqi dissidents, with considerable caring as well as scruple.
This leaves usually dual arguable questions: How many some-more swiftly competence the bloc troops have moved to strengthen the galleries as well as shelves? And how have been you to order the shortcoming for offence as well as burglary in in in in between Iraqi officials as well as Iraqi mobs? The evil of both is, to be sure, partly to be blamed upon the Saddam regime; would it be as well "Orientalist" to go any further?
I said earlier which you wondered either Said was affected, in this direly excessive rhetoric, by his role as an exile. you am moved to ask again by his repeated as well as vicious attacks upon Ahmed Chalabi as well as Kanan Makiya, Iraqi oppositionists laid open by him, in effect, for living in the West as well as being expatriates.
Never thoughts which this is the tactical trope of which Said should obviously beware. The existence of such men suggests to me, in contrast, which there is each goal of informative as well as political cross-pollination in in in in between the Levant, the Orient, the Near East, the Middle East, Western Middle East (whatever name you may choose to give it), as well as the adults of the Occident, the North, the metropole. In new arguments in Washington about democracy as well as self-determination! as well as pluralism, it seemed to me which the on vacation Iraqi as well as Kurdish activists had the lot some-more to sense than to learn.
At which same far-off as well as long-ago discussion in Cyprus, so nearby to the aged Crusader fortresses of Famagusta, Kantara, as well as St. Hilarion, you additionally had the great fortune to encounter Sir Steven Runciman, whose story of the Crusades is an unchangeable work, since it demonstrates which Gothic Christian fundamentalism not usually constituted the menace to Islamic civilization though additionally without delay resulted in the pouch of Byzantium, the slow-down of Europe, as well as the electrocute of the Jews. It is fascinating which the opponents of today's fanaticisms be as cool as well as pattern in their approval of the common enemy, as well as it is calamitous which the single who had which opportunity should have chosen to miss it.
Christopher Hitchens was the contributing editor of The Atlantic, as well as additionally the columnist for Vanity Fair.
Copyright 2003 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved. The Atlantic Monthly; Sep 2003; Where the Twain Should Have Met; Volume 292, No. 2; 153-159.
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