Foundation of post-colonial studies; methodology is post-structuralist.
Discussion Questions:
Let’s start where we left off last week — would you say that what Said has written is a cultural history?
What sorts of sources does he use to get at the culture of Orientalism, and how does he link the culture to the psychological, ideological, and tangible effects he’s arguing it resulted in?
Science (geographical surveys, linguistic treatises), politics (Napoleon’s correspondence), popular culture (literature [travel, novels], art [paintings],
There’s one aspect of this book that I find particularly important for historians of science to pay attention to, and it’s something Aparna asked us to look out for this week. Said raises a very pertinent question about how we should be writing history; in this case, he’s talking in particular about histories of “the Other.”
Have you seen the kind of discourse Said describes in the primary or secondary sources you consult when your actors or authors are writing about “the Other?”
How can one study other cultures and people from a libertarian, or a nonrepressive and nonmanipulative, perspective? (24)
“Academic mindfulness”
Interdisciplinarianism
How would you answer this question in the context of the history of science, or even more importantly, within the context of your own research?
It seems incredibly important who is assigned the role of “actor” and who is viewed in terms of their “reactions.” Who is changing and who is changed.
Another issue, and one that we’ve discussed at length in other courses but something I think Said deals with well, is the pitfalls of specialized disciplinarity. As historians, in our training, we are expected to read all the “great works” our forebears have composed in order to understand the acceptable methodologies and limits of our field. In a way, this distances us from the reality of the history we’re trying to comment upon, like it did for many intellectuals within the Orientalist community. Instead of looking at the Orient as it was, letting it speak for itself, these actors read what other men in their discipline had written about the Orient and took this as truth. (67)
As historians, should we be trained with such an emphasis on secondary source material? We’re joining a conversation, but we also are responsible for representing people of the past. How can we do so with so very little of their voices being heard? Where is the line between being a part of an intellectual community and making sure the subject of study for which the community has been founded is the centerpiece of the conversation?
What is science’s role in the construction of cultural domination of the West over the East? In the formation of the “Orient”?
What is the relationship between knowledge and power in Said’s narrative?
Does knowledge have to be based in reality for it to be powerful?
Is essentialist knowledge, taking something specific and applying it in a general manner, especially prone to produce problems of difference and inequality?
Criticism:
Why not focus on more European-dominated colonial examples, like the British in India or the Russians in Asia?
DON’T LEAVE OUT THE GERMANS
This is anti-western
Made “Orientalism” into a bad word, condemning all those who would have proudly identified as such before the book was written.
“Said had constructed a binary-opposite representation, a fictional European stereotype that would counter-weigh the Oriental stereotype. Being European is the only common trait among such a temporally and stylistically disparate group of literary Orientalists.” Ibn Warraq, O.P. Kejariwal
Notes from Class:
Reproducing Empire, Laura Briggs
Early 20th century history of eugenics in Puerto Rico
Decolonizing Methodologies
The scholarship that we read is so heavily inundated with empire we don’t even see it.
You need to read Marx to understand this stuff (especially the violence aspects).
Oklahoma as a postcolonial space
Learning how to inhabit the space of the people we study
Any action in a colonized space is viewed as a reaction to the colonizers (by the colonized and the colonizers).
It’s not taking away colonial agency, it’s taking away their individuality.
Colonized cannot go back.
Culture must change to accommodate colonizers. It must change again to unify against colonizers. And it changes again after the colonizers are gone.
Quillets and Quackery 