Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

ORIENTALISM

Edward W. Said

Routledge & Kegan Paul

London and Henley

First published in 1978

by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.

39 Store Street,

London WCIE 7DD, and

Broadway House,

Newton Road,

Henley-on-Thames,

Oxon RG9 1EN

Reprinted and first published as a paperback in 1980

Set in Times Roman and printed in Great Britain by Redwood Burn Limited Trowbridge & Esher

© Edward W. Said 1978

No Part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except for the quotation of brief passage in criticism.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Said, Edward W.

Orientalism,

1. East – Study and teaching

I. Title

950’.07       DS32.8                        78-40534

ISBN 0 7100 0040 5

ISBN 0 7100 0555 5 Pbk

Grateful acknowledgements is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

George Allen & Unwin Ltd.: Excerpts from Subject of the Day: Being a Selection of Speeches and Writings by George Nathaniel Curzon.

George Allen & Unwin Ltd.: Excerpts from Revolution in the Middle East and Other Case Studies, proceedings of a seminar, edited by P. J. Vatikiotis.

American Jewish Committee: Excerpts from “The Return of Islam” by Bernard Lewis, in Commentary, vol. 61, no. 1 (January 1976).Reprinted from Commentary by permission.Copyright © 1976  by the American Jewish Committee.

Basic Books, Inc.: Excerpts from “Renan’s Philological Laboratory” by Edward W. Said, in Art, Politics, and Will: Essarys in Honor of Lionel Trilling, edited by Quentin Anderson et al. Copyright © 1977 by Basic Books, Inc.

The Bodley Head and McIntosh & Otis, Inc.: Excerpts from Flaubert in Egypt, translated and edited by Franscis Steegmuller.Reprinted by permission of Francis Steegmuller and The Bodley Head.

Jonathan Cape, Ltd., and The Letters of T.E. Lawrence Trust: Excerpt from the Letters of T.E. Lawrence, edited by David Garnett.

Jonathan Cape, Ltd., The Seven Pillars Trust, and Doubleday & Co., Inc.: Excerpt from The Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A triumph by T.E. Lawrence.Copyright 1962, 1935 by Doubleday & Co., Inc.

Doubleday & Co., Inc., amd A.P. Watt & Sons, LTd: Excerpt from Verse by Rudyyard Kipling.

The Georgia Review: Excerpts from “Orientalism,” which originally appeared in the Georgia Review (Sprint 1977), Copyright © 1977 by the Unuiversity of Georgia.

Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.: Excerpt from a poem by Borniers (1862), Quoted in De Lesseps of Suez by Charles Beatty.

Macmillar & Co., London and Basingstoke: Excerpts from Modern Egypt, vol, 2, by Evelyn Baring, Lord Cromer.

Macmillian Publishing Co., Inc.: Excerpt from “Propaganda” by Harold Lasswell,in The Encyclopedia of the Social Siences,edited by Edwin R.A.Seligman,vol.12(1934).

Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., and A.P. Watt & sons, LTd.: Excerpt from “Byzantium” by William Butler Yeats, in The Collected Poems. Copyright 1933 by Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., renewed 1961 by Bertha Georgie Yeats.

The New York Times company: Excerpts from “Arabs, Islam, and the Dogmas of the West” by Edward W. Said, in The New York Times Book Review, October 31, 1976.Copyright©1976 by the New York Times Compnay.Reprinted by permission.

Northwestern University Press: Excerpt from “The Arab Portrayed” by Edward W. Said, in The Arab-Israeli Confrontation of June 1967: An Arab Perspective, edited by Ibrahim Abu-Lughod. Copyright © 1970 by Northwestern University Press.

Prentice-Hall Inc.: Excerpt from The Persians by Aeschylus, translated by Anthony J. Podleck.Copyright © 1970 by Prentice-Hall, Inc.

The Royal Asiatic Society, Great Britain and Ireland: Excerpt from “Louis Massignon (1882-1962),” in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1962)

University of California Press: Excerpts from Modern Islam: The Search for Cultural Identity by Gustave von Grunebaum.Copyright ©1962 by the Regents of the University of California.

University of Chicago Press: Excerpts from Modern Trends in Islam by H.A.R. Gibb.

FOR JANET AND IBRAHIM

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 7

Introduction. 9

Chapter 1: The Scope of Orientalism. 30

I- Knowing the Oriental 31

II- Imaginative Geography and Its Representations: Orientalizing the Oriental 46

III- Projects 64

IV- Crisis 79

Chapter 2: Orientalist Structures and Restructures 93

I- Redrawn Frontiers, Redefined Issues, Secularized Religion. 94

II- Silvestre de Sacy and Ernest Renan: Rational Anthropology and Philological Laboratory  102

III- Oriental Residence and Scholarship: The Requirements of Lexicography and Imagination  122

IV- Pilgrims and Pilgrimages, British and French. 136

Chapter 3: Orientalism Now. 160

I- Latent and Manifest Orientalism. 161

II- Style, Expertise, Vision: Orientalism's Worldliness 180

III- Modern Anglo-French Orientalism in Fullest Flower 202

IV- The Latest Phase 225

Notes 259

Introduction. 259

Chapter 1: The Scope of Orientalism. 260

Chapter 2: Orientalist Structures and Restructures 265

Chapter 3: Orientalism Now. 271

About the Author 278

Acknowledgements

I have been reading about Orientalism for a number of years, but most of this book was written during 1975-1976, which I spent as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences, Stanfort, California. In this unique and generous institution, it was my good fortune not only to have benefited agreeably froms several colleagues, but also from the help of Joan Warmbrunn, Chris Hoth, Jane Kielsmeier, Preston Cutler, and the center’s director, Gardner Lindzey. The list of friends, colleagues, and students who read, or listened to, parts or the whole of this manuscript is so long as to embarrass me, and now that it has finally appeared as a book, perhaps even them, Nevertheless I should mention with gratitude the always helpful encouragement of Janet and Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Noam Chomsky, and Roger Owen, who followed this project from its beginning to its conclusion. Likewise I must gratefully acknowledge the helpful and critical interest of the colleagues, friends, and students in various places whose questions and discussion sharpened the text considerably. Andre Schiffrin and Jeanne Morton of Pantheon Books were ideal publisher and copy editor, respectively, and made the ordeal (for the author, at least) of preparing the manuscript an instructive and genuinely intelligent process. Marian Said helped me a great deal with her research on the early modern history of Orientalist institutions. Apart from that, though, her loving support really made much of the work on this book not only enjoyable but possible.

E.W.S.

New York

Septemer-October 1977

They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented.

-Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire

   of Louis Bonaparte

The East is a career.

Benjamin Disraeli, Tancred