Edward Said’s thesis is just plain wrong. His linking European Orientalist scholarship to European imperial expansion in the Islamic world is an absurdity. The beginning of “Orientalism”—the study of Arabic and Islam in Europe—occurred at a time not, as he maintains, of European imperial expansion among the Muslims, but of Muslim imperial expansion in Europe. Arab expansion began in the eighth century and extended into Spain, Sicily, Portugal and even southern France. The last Muslim foothold in Spain (Granada) fell in 1492 and thus ended the first Muslim expansion. In the meantime, the second Islamic advance had already begun with the Turkish advance and their capture of the Christian city of Constantinople in 1453, followed by the conquest of southeastern Europe and even part of central Europe and Corsair raids as far as the British Isles and Iceland. It was during this period, in the early sixteenth century, that the first chair of Arabic was established in France, and in the seventeenth century, the chairs of Arabic at Oxford and Cambridge were created.
The first thing that struck me when I read Said’s book was his ignorance, not only of the history of the Middle East but also of Europe. Some of his misstatements serve no polemical purpose and must be ascribed to straightforward honest ignorance. One egregious example is his statement that the Muslim armies conquered Turkey before they conquered North Africa. In fact, the conquest of North Africa preceded the conquest of Turkey by four centuries. Such errors do not inspire confidence in the writer’s knowledge of the subject on which he writes. Said’s ignorance extends from history to philology. For example he criticizes the German philosopher Friedrich Schlegel because even after “He had practically renounced his Orientalism, he still held that Sanskrit and Persian on the one hand and Greek and German on the other had more affinities with each other than with the Semitic, Chinese, American or African languages.” Schlegel’s statement is a simple truth, well known to anyone with even a minimal knowledge of philology. In another passage, Said mentions that Egypt was “annexed” by Britain, a statement which reveals ignorance of either Egyptian history or English lexicography. Egypt was indeed occupied by British forces for a long time, but it was never, in any sense, “annexed.”
The gap between facts and their interpretation is so wide that I often found myself wondering where ignorance ended and deceit began. Robert Irwin, a self-described Orientalist and the Middle East editor of the Times Literary Supplement, called Said’s book “A work of malignant charlatanry in which it is difficult to distinguish honest mistakes from willful misinterpretations.”
Despite the historical absurdity and bewildering inaccuracy of most of his statements about Orientalism and its role in Western history, his thesis has received not just wide acceptance but has become the enforced orthodoxy in most departments devoted to colonial studies and literature of “the other” in American universities. In spite of, or perhaps because of, Said’s popularity, there are, increasingly, books and articles criticizing his ideas, his scholarship and his veracity.
In a piece perfectly entitled “Enough Said,” published in The New Criterion in January 2008, David Pryce-Jones describes at some length the context in which Orientalism was published and thrives.
Edward Said was an outstanding example of an intellectual who condemned the West root and branch while taking every advantage of the privileges and rewards it has to offer. In its dishonesty and exercise of double standards, his was truly a cautionary tale of our times . . .
The thesis was that every Westerner who had ever studied or written about the Middle East had done so in bad faith. From ancient Greece through the medieval era to the present, the work of historians, grammarians, linguists, and even epigraphists had been “a rationalization of colonial rule.” There was no colonial rule in the lifetimes of the majority of these scholars, so they must have been “projecting” what was to come. For Said, these highly eclectic individuals were all engaged in a long-drawn conspiracy, international but invisible, to establish the supremacy of the West by depicting an East not only inferior but static and incapable of change. At bottom, here was the vulgar Marxist concept that knowledge serves only the interest of the ruling class. Said had also latched on to Michel Foucault, with his proposition—modishly avant-garde at the time—that there is no such thing as truth, but only “narratives” whose inventor is putting across his point of view. This reduces facts to whatever anyone wishes to make of them.
Omitting whatever did not fit, misrepresenting evidence, and making unwarranted generalizations, Said committed the very sin for which he was accusing Westerners—concocting a “narrative” to serve his purposes. As he summed up: “Every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist.” . . . Orientalist, the portmanteau term for every Westerner with a scholarly, literary, or artistic interest in the East, is now firmly in the almanac of curse-words . . . .
The interest of Westerners in the East from classical antiquity onwards was motivated by intellectual curiosity. . . . To seek knowledge for its own sake is the special and wholly beneficial contribution the West has made to mankind. . . . Rationalism, universalism, and self-inspection are Western traits which expand civilization. Said’s cultural relativism leads only to a dead end.
What motivated Said? I think I have found the explanation.
We all tend to judge others by ourselves. Said grew up in Egypt. As an Arab professor of English, he must have assumed that an English professor of Arabic studies would have the same attitude to his subject as Said had to his. (It may be recalled that Said was able to find imperialism even in the novels of Jane Austen.)
Although I personally was not affected in my career by these insults, many younger people in the earlier stages of their careers have suffered serious damage. They find themselves in a position where they have either to conform or get out. The Saidians now control appointments, promotions, publications and even book reviews with a degree of enforcement unknown in the Western universities since the eighteenth century. The situation in Near East studies is a great detriment to the state of scholarship in the field. This is a part of a general change, a political correctness, in which Islam now enjoys a level of immunity from comment or criticism in the Western world that Christianity has lost and Judaism has never had.
Every civilization, in every era, has had its orthodoxies, a Greek term meaning right ideas. At least some outward conformity to these has usually been necessary, in the more open societies, to succeed; in the more repressive, to survive. Reciting the magic words could open doors and lead to treasures. After all, even magic will sometimes lead to science, to some practical benefits.
A Crisis in Middle Eastern Studies
There are two well-established traditions of studying the Middle East. One is what one might call the classical tradition, which is primarily philological and to some extent theological. It is a tradition of European scholarship developed originally mostly by Christian monks to study Christian holy texts and then applied by extension to other scriptures in other languages. The classical Orientalist literature is mostly of that school. A good many of the scholars were churchmen, not by any means all, but they followed broadly the same methods. And that method, and that kind of scholarship, is still very much in existence and in some places, flourishing. It has, of course, its value; it also has its limitations.
The other approach is what, for want of a better term, I would call the disciplinary approach—people using one or another discipline, historians, sociologists, political scientists, etc. This is more recent, but has already been going for quite a long time. It was once remarked that the history of the Arabs in the Western world was written either by historians who knew no Arabic or by Arabists who understood no history. That is, perhaps, slightly overstated, but not entirely wrong. History was regarded as of marginal importance by classical Orientalists. Its only use was to help in identifying texts, identifying authors, choosing versions and so on. The history of the Arabs as such received very little attention.
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sp; Over the years this has changed but a gulf has opened up in the field. We now have historians and Arabists, of whom I won’t say that they don’t meet but they pass each other with averted eyes. This is a genuine difficulty. History departments tend to mistrust people who have a philological training in an exotic language. Some Middle Eastern language departments brush aside history as of secondary importance. It’s a real difficulty, but there are some signs of hope. There are actually some writers of history who are historians by training and know something of the languages. In this particular area I think people coming out of the region can make the best contribution. Indeed some of them have already done so. Middle Eastern studies at the present time are beset by difficulties; on the one hand, the clash of disciplines and lack of mutual recognition between them; and on the other, the deadly hand of political correctness.
Unfortunately, the merits of a scholar are measured by publications, and the merits of these publications are measured by their bulk. This is perhaps inevitable when decisions are made by committees of experts who do not read, or if they read, do not understand, the works of those who come before them for judgment. This development has coincided—I think coincided is the right word—with the neocolonial expansion of the social sciences into whole areas, indeed continents, which were once peacefully cultivated by philologists and historians, and with the increasing use of techniques of research and exposition which are at once extravagant and arcane. This has often meant that works are unread because they are unreadable, uncomprehended because they are incomprehensible. Both qualities are believed to conceal vast learning and great profundity.
There are doctrines that are alleged to hold the key to understanding historical processes. Marxism is one such. I had my phase of Marxist influence years ago. If one looks at what I was writing in the forties and early fifties one will see that while I never became a full-fledged Marxist, I was very much aware of Marxist thought and categories. My book The Arabs in History was somewhat influenced by Marxist ways of thought and Marxist approaches to history. Rather more so was my doctoral thesis, The Origins of Isma‘ilism. Quasi-Marxism was my measles or chicken pox, which I got over at the age when one recovers from these ailments. Some younger people presumably find it necessary to go through the same phase now but I don’t think one should make an intellectual virtue of childhood infections.
One of the main reasons I abandoned it was finding in the course of the decades that it was simply inadequate. The Marxist method evolved from the study of European history and it has a certain limited relevance for European history. But if you try to apply it to non-European societies, it breaks down. Marx himself, in a rare moment of intellectual humility, showed awareness that it doesn’t apply to non-Europeans societies, and that’s why he and Engels mentioned, without actually developing, the notion of the “Asiatic Mode of Production.” This was really no more than an idea off the top of the head which they batted back and forth in their correspondence and used occasionally in their writings. But, they didn’t develop it. It was left as an issue for debate and sometimes even conflict and repression among later Marxists.
If you try to apply the Marxist sequence to non-European societies you’re likely to go badly wrong. In the Middle East, for example, at least since Islam and probably a lot longer than that, the effect of political power, the importance of political power, the way in which economic and every other kind of power flows from political power, makes nonsense of the idea that the state is the executive instrument of this or that class. Obvious examples are the extreme insecurity of property and the difficulty of identifying classes in terms of relationship to means of production. If you really know anything about Middle Eastern history, Marxist analysis just doesn’t work.
It’s not all nonsense and useless. The Marxists have alerted us to the importance of certain aspects of history which might previously have been overlooked, just as the liberal nationalists of the nineteenth century alerted us to the importance of aspects of history which had previously been underrated. Each of these vogues adds something. But the serious historian doesn’t go by vogues. He will be open to any kind of intellectual approach from wherever it comes and use it as far as it is useful—and no further.
Some people think that if you want to study Ottoman history, it’s enough to know this or that and you don’t need to be able to read an Ottoman text. This is nonsense. There are people now who write Ottoman history who literally do not know the alphabet, who cannot read an Ottoman text. They think that their Marxist or other ideologically defined method gives them an intellectual sword and buckler with which they can confront every danger.
Acknowledgments
In the course of an academic career one is often asked for help or advice by students and colleagues in one’s own or other universities, as well as by others engaged in projects of research and writing. In my profession, if you take your job seriously, you try to help people. Your students are your students in a very personal sense, particularly those who do graduate work. It’s not just a case of their attending a course and getting a mark—you try to help them with their work and encourage them in various ways. It often sets up a relationship which continues and some of my students have been extremely grateful and have made a point of thanking me profusely in their prefaces. Others prefer not to acknowledge me because I am not a popular figure among the ruling establishment in my field and the Middle Eastern studies industry has been for long dominated by followers of Edward Said.
Two examples may illustrate the extreme limits. One of them occurred when I was young and inexperienced. A student in another university came to seek help and advice. I helped the student choose and define a subject; I read some drafts, and later, advised on publication. I was, I must confess, somewhat peeved at receiving no mention in the preface or even a complimentary copy.
A much worse case was that of a gentleman from outside the university who came to see me just once about some work in progress, and asked for my help and advice on various points. In due course he sent me a copy of his book, in which he thanked me profusely in his preface for reading his draft and making many valuable suggestions. I had indeed read his draft, and had made many suggestions, which may or may not have been valuable. Since he had not followed a single one of these suggestions, I was not entirely pleased with his acknowledgment of my help. An even worse example is when, as has happened on occasion, one is used in this way to promote some dubious political agenda.
Between these two extremes of ingratitude and name-dropping, there is a wide spectrum of forms of acknowledgment, in which the writer expresses appreciation for services rendered. Among the more meticulous scholars of the old school, this may even include footnotes to the effect that “My thanks are due to Professor So-and-So for drawing my attention to this document.” The more usual form is the blanket acknowledgment in the preface of doctoral dissertations. In these, the candidate thanks his supervisor and his other teachers. Sometimes the list is extended to include almost the whole academic community with whom the candidate had contact.
Some acknowledgments, by accident or design, implicate the person thanked in the writer’s work. Others meticulously exonerate him, with a formula along the lines that “any faults or errors that remain are entirely my own” or something to that effect. This has become increasingly necessary at a time when much writing and criticism on Middle Eastern matters is affected or even dominated by political and ideological differences. Some reviewers for example proceed on the assumption that anyone thanked in the preface of a book may be held accountable for its opinions and perhaps even for its publication. If this becomes the general view, we shall have a choice between only two options: either to refuse help or advice to anyone but graduate students preparing dissertations under our direction or, alternatively, to imitate civil service procedures and require all persons consulting us to submit a final text for approval before publication. This would be a sad end to the already endangered freedom of our republic of letters
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Tenure
The academic tenure system, in one form or another, exists in most if not all of the universities of the free world. Its purpose is to protect the freedom of university teachers. It is to enable them in their writings and more importantly in their teaching, to express their opinions freely, and more specifically, to protect them from pressure by academic, religious, political or other forces, notably—and in some places most dangerously—by donors. It is often used to ensure that university teachers enjoy a level of job security shared by no other profession except perhaps the civil service and the priesthood. This system has from time to time been questioned, notably by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who saw no reason why university faculty should enjoy such a unique privilege. She changed it.
In many respects the tenure system has worked very well and has enabled university faculty, in their teaching and in their publications, to express their opinions with a degree of freedom and immunity that is rare even in the modern democratic world. But it also has its drawbacks. A not uncommon figure is the university teacher who, having reached the level of publication required to achieve tenure, stops working once he has achieved it, and devotes the rest of his life to idleness or other activities, with only the normal minimum teaching requirement. Tenure can thus be used to protect laziness or incompetence. This is not common, but it happens from time to time and represents a real danger.
A truly disastrous innovation was the abolition of compulsory retirement at the age of seventy. There were of course good reasons for enabling professors still competent and in full possession of their faculties to continue their work beyond that age, but some better way could have been found of achieving this, based on individual achievement and assessment. The blanket abolition of mandatory retirement enabled professors to continue indefinitely, irrespective of their competence either in teaching or in research. This had two harmful consequences; one was that it could leave university departments burdened with professors who were at best useless and sometimes harmful; the second was that it blocked the path of advancement of rising talents in the next generation. A whole practice has developed of finding some way to bribe professors to retire by offering financial or other inducement. This has in many respects had a devastating effect. The desired result could have been achieved more easily by allowing an extension beyond the age of retirement in individual cases based on individual merit for a specified period of time. This would have enabled the universities to retain those worth retaining without obliging them to retain those who are not.
Notes on a Century: Reflections of A Middle East Historian Page 28