Orientalism

Through his case studies of Sacy and Renan, Said argues that part of the way modern Orientalism entrenched itself was by giving oversimplified cultural generalizations—which were often quite racist—the aura of scientific truth. Whether the racism or the oversimplification came first is impossible to judge, but these become mutually reinforcing impulses in Orientalist discourse. Oversimplification also makes it easy for the consumers of Orientalism to swing between desire and revulsion. The Orient begins by offering a welcome and salutary shakeup of European thought. On further study, however, the Orientalist finds that the Orient is, in fact, “underhumanized” or “barbaric.” More than one academic Orientalist found himself ultimately horrified by the contemporary (that is, actual and complex) Orient. And then this necessitates further explanation.

Even less overtly racists studies, like Causin de Perceval’s study of pre- and early Islamic Arab culture or Thomas Carlyle’s character study of the Prophet Mohammed (both composed in the 1840s) fall prey to oversimplification. By focusing on the political and ignoring the religious implications of Islam, de Perceval sanitizes Mohammed of the religious threat he once posed to European Christianity. Carlyle also proposes to historicize and humanize Mohammed which, in Said’s opinion, he mostly does. But he also can’t resist comparing—and thus devaluing—the Prophet’s contributions to history according to European standards of literary and theological excellence. This oversimplification serves to assure a European audience of the comparative “subordination” of the Orient, thereby rendering it both safe and exploitable.

Even studies that are far more sensitive to colonial exploitation, such as Karl Marx’s analyses of the British Raj in India (written in the 1850s) cannot escape the idea that the subordinate Orient needs contact with the superior West to achieve anything. While Marx is moved by the plight of oppressed Indian subjects, he still concludes that, insofar as their exploitation moves them closer to socialist revolution, colonial occupation might be a good thing for India. And he takes it as an article of faith that the development of a “Western society” in India is beneficial.

Like other thinkers of his era, Marx tends to conceive of people in groups, a tendency that necessarily simplifies and reduces the humanity of individuals. Yet, his sensitivity to the suffering of oppressed Indian subjects suggests that he can nevertheless maintain an innate sense of common humanity between himself and distant others—at least until the powerful discourse of Orientalism reasserts itself in his thought. The question of how Orientalism became so powerful and so hegemonic occupies the rest of this section.

Said identifies three kinds of people who wrote about their Oriental travels: those who were consciously collecting scientific material to contribute to academic Orientalism; those who were intent on observing the Orient but were less academic and more personal in their records; and those for whom the trip represents the fulfillment of an “urgent” and personal project. These categories shared many salient Orientalist ideas: the “sheer egoistic powers” of the European observer; the sense that the Orient is a thing to be possessed by the observer;  the Orient as a place of pilgrimage for the Westerner and stasis for the native; and an overall motif of interpreting the Orient for itself and others. 

The exemplar of the first category (collecting observations for academic Orientalism) is Edward William Lane’s An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, which was published in 1836. Lane presents his work as an “immediate […] unadorned and neutral” description, even though it is obviously a constructed and imposes an orderly (almost mathematical) arrangement on its material. It differs, Said says, from the Description de l’Égypte commissioned by Napoleon, primarily because it is the result of direct, first-person, embedded observation rather than scholarly distance.

Lane organizes his book chronologically, according to the phases of human life, but, unlike the “modern Egyptians” who are his subjects, his narrative voice isn’t bound by time. It is authoritative and ageless. Each section begins with a general observation followed by extensive evidence that confirms it. Lane presents his evidence in such sheer and “untidy” volume that it interrupts the narrative logic of his work, thus constantly reminding readers of the typically chaotic Orient that Lane must subdue and make it intelligible for his readers.

The distance Lane must hold from his subject to maintain his authority can be seen in his discussion of marriage; when his Egyptian friends became anxious about his own bachelor status, they offered to find him a wife. Lane tells the story of his refusal, but only up to a point, dropping it before it’s complete as if to suggest the erasure of Lane the human being in favor of Lane the disembodied authority, forever free of real ties within the group.

Said reads Lane’s work not just as an entry in the annals of Orientalism, but as a model for the authoritative stance academic Orientalism sought to maintain. Lane writes for one of the many academic Orientalist societies of the 19th century, societies which sought to categorize and itemize the Orient as well as to collect, reproduce, and disseminate its material and intellectual culture to the masses—after they had been properly prepared for Western audiences by Orientalist experts.