The Ironies of 'Orientalism'

They used to say, in the not so olden days, that nothing is as powerful as an 'Idea' whose time has come. Thinking of the various twists and turns taken by the 'Idea' called Orientalism, I can only say that nothing is as dangerous as one which has served its time. Although there are many writers who write on Orientalism, the definition given by Edward Said remains one of the most succinct ones : Orientalism is a system of theory and practice through which oriental cultures were reified, particularised, divided into smaller components, and thereby dominated. Historically speaking, of course, Said stands on terra firma : many of the West's encounters with the East have been characterised by the former's ethnocentrist, imperialistic and racist attitudes towards the colonised 'natives'. At the same time, however, many writers who follow Said on these matters move along one-dimensional tracks, and ignore (a) how these 'natives' themselves have assimilated certain aspects of Occidental culture, often by extricating them rather arbitrarily from their wider contexts, and used these aspects for their own specific purposes, and (b) how these 'natives' have often paid their Orientalist masters the reverse-compliment of constructing their own fantastic images of what (they think) the Occident is like.

I shall give two examples here, one of (a) and the other of (b). It is quite ironic that Edward Said, a member of the 'third world' can use the philosophical ideas of Michel Foucault, a member of the 'first world', and thereby perpetuate a new kind of (disguised) 'Orientalism', the Orientalism of using the texts of a French philosopher to understand an 'Eastern' phenomenon. In order to truly cast off the skin of a 'quasi-Orientalist', Said should also have used notions derived from, say, Islamic, Hindu, Japanese, or Chinese thought to criticise Western imperialism. Instead, by choosing to view a complex multi-levelled process through the perspectives provided by a French philosopher, Said unwittingly confirms the Western prejudice that 'Orientals' have no indigenous philosophical resources to construct critiques of Western practices. Secondly, much of what Said writes is based on the assumption, derived from Foucault, that all human knowledge is a tool for seeking political power. Once again, this is a superimposition of Western notions onto the Orient, for classical Indian thought has many interesting arguments against this very assumption, and by not bringing these arguments into the discussion on 'knowledge and power', writers on Orientalism who follow Foucault in this respect are repeating the Orientalist mistake of denying the Orient its distinctive voice.

There is a second more crucial, and ultimately epistemological, problem with writers who follow Said : they seem to assume that it is possible for Westerners to study the Orient without using any spectacles whatsoever. I have shown in the above that this is patently false, for those who follow Said often use Foucauldian perspectives (or other perspectives that ultimately stem from European thought). The reverse question is equally interesting : is it possible for Orientals to understand the Occident without using any standpoints? Once again, the answer is no : Orientals will always start from their own horizons that are given to them by their cultural specificities, and it is from within these horizons that they shall try to reach out to the Occident. This is not to say that their representations of the Occident will always be accepted by Occidentals themselves; indeed, often such representations, such as the Occident being 'materialistic', 'morally bankrupt', 'individualistic', and so on, can be shown to be distortions of reality.

It is for these reasons that we should suspect that it may be the case that writers on Orientalism themselves (especially, those who use Foucault and ignore indigenous Islamic, Hindu, and Chinese perspectives) have not completely got themselves rid of the 'Orientalism' that they are trying to criticise. Moreover, we must equally beware of the reverse tendency of 'Occidentalism', which is the claim that the 'essentials of Occidental culture' have been isolated, purified, distilled, and pinned-down to a drawing board for the gaze of all Orientals.