1
Ústav
religionistiky
Stuart Schaar. Orientalism at the Service of Imperialism, in: A. L.
MacFie. Orientalism. A Reader, Edinburgh University Press:
Edinburgh 2000, s. 181 – 194
FRVŠ
1890/2005
Téma: Náboženství jako sociální konstrukt
Inthis brilliant and bold book, Edward Said criticises cultural imperialism and
contributes in a major way to the process of decolonisation. Its appearance provides an
appropriate occasion to discuss the nature of western scholarship on the Orient,
especially the Muslim East, since the eighteenth century, and to analyse the interaction
between American hegemony and western scholarship on the Third World. Finally, it
offers a timely chance to survey, however briefly, contributions of western liberal
scholarship to our understanding of contemporary Iran.
Adopting, and refining, Antonio Gramsci's idea of hegemonic culture and
Michel Foucault's notion of discourse, Said argues that Orientalism is more than a field
of study in the western world. In his view it is a 'corporate institution' (p. 13)
encompassing a set of generalisations, structures, relationships, texts, the whole forming
a 'discourse', which defines the Orient and Orientals for the West. The function of
Orientalism is' ... to understand, in some cases to control, manipulate, even incorporate,
what is a manifestly different world'. (p. 12)
THE ORIENTALIST DISCOURSE
By the nineteenth century, Orienta list discourse had become set, and its
stereotypes disseminated throughout western culture: Orientalists had developed a
consensus. Since this consensus was congruent with the interests of those in power,
Orientalist ideas freely permeated aesthetic, economic, historical and political texts.
Orientalism became an integral part of western culture.
Already, by the eighteenth century, certain Orientalists like Abraham Hyacinthe
Anquetil-Duperron and Sir William Jones had captured contemporary imagination by
introducing an exotic new world - the Orient - to the West. The eccentric Anquetil
translated into French Avesta texts (the sacred books of Persian Zoroastrianism) and the
Upanishads (Hindu Vedic treatises on the nature of man and the universe). His
translations jolted old beliefs and revealed to Europe the existence of ancient
cosmogonical traditions beyond the Mediterranean basin. Their existence forced the
questioning of the Bible's uniqueness and set in motion modern biblical criticism
culminating in secular interpretations of religious texts. Jones, on the other hand, was a
legal scholar. He founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784, and also worked as an
official of the British East India Company; he felt absolutely no conflict of interest in
serving imperialism and set the pattern which later Orientalists and area studies experts
emulated. 'Whereas Anquetil opened large vistas,' Said writes, 'Jones closed them down,
codifying, tabulating, comparing.' (p. 77)
The British in India and Napoleon in Egypt, recognising the potential in
employing Orientalists like Jones for their empire-building, linked the Orientalist
intellectual tradition with outright political domination. Napoleon, after gaining his
knowledge of the Orient from careful reading of Orientalist texts, set out to conquer the
East in 1798. He took with him a score of scholars whose product, 23 fat volumes of
Egyptology, was meant to restore a region from its present barbarism to its former
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classical greatness; to instruct (for its own benefit) the Orient in the ways of the modern
West; to subordinate or underplay military power in order to aggrandize the project of
glorious knowledge acquired in the process of political domination of the Orient; to
formulate the Orient, to give it shape, identity, definition with full recognition of its
place in memory, its importance to imperial strategy, and its 'natural' role as an
appendage to Europe; to dignify all the knowledge collected during colonial occupation
with the title 'contribution to modern learning' when the natives had neither been
consulted nor treatecl as anything except as pretexts for a text whose usefulness was not
to the natives; to feel oneself as a European in command, almost at will, of Oriental
history, time, and geography; to institute new areas of specialization; to establish new
disciplines; to divide, deploy, schematize, tabulate, index, and record everything in
sight (and out of sight); to make out of every observable detail a generalization and out
of every generalization an immutable law about the Oriental nature, temperament,
mentality, custom, or type; and, above all, to transmute living reality into the stuff of
texts, to possess (or think one possesses) actuality mainly because nothing in the Orient
seems to resist one's powers ... (p.86)
Following the model set by Jones and Napoleon's academicians, nineteenth
century Orienta lists translated and anthologised texts; compiled dictionaries and
encyclopaedias, and developed the field of philology. They compartmentalised
knowledge in order to dominate it. They also modernised their fields by secularising
their studies, revising their methodology in keeping with new scientific rigour, and
restructuring their thought on a new rational basis (p. 122). Silvestre de Sacy and Ernest
Renan from France and Edward William Lane of Britain were the most influential of
the nineteenth-century Orientalists. Said reviews and assesses their contributions.
Their work made Orientalism effective and congruent with the interests and
political concerns of imperialist-oriented rulers. Old stereotypes were retained, but the
updating and systematisation of data and analysis enhanced the authority of Orienta list
analysis which posited eastern inferiority, western superiority, eastern decadence,
western vibrance, ete. In such ways, Oriental ism revived, restructured and made more
timely, helped prepare the way for further imperial control of the East. Simultaneously
Orientalist discourse permeated western culture, providing themes, stereotypes and
even texts for figures such as Flaubert, de Nerval, Lamartine, T. E. Lawrence, Burton
and Chateaubriand.
US IMPERIALISM AND THE NEW SCHOOLS OF ORIENTALISM
By 1918 cracks had begun to appear in the structures which supported Oriental
ism: after the war the victorious English and French faced major crises at home and
abroad. The legacy of war, the Bolshevik revolution and the rise of fascism, began to
shake confidence in capitalism and bourgeois democracy. Cultural and economic crises
further reduced European smugness concerning their received traditions, institutions,
values and mores. Oriental ism, as part of the hegemonic culture, was on trial.
Widespread colonial revolts, from Tunisia to India, added significantly to the
indictment. And though England and France took control of the 'fertile crescent', their
new mandates provoked immediate resistance. North of the crescent, the Turks ejected
their would-be conquerors. Mass demonstrations in Persia in favour of
constitutionalism had prevented the British from establishing a protectorate there, so
they turned instead to Reza Khan and helped him consolidate his power and do their
bidding. But even the pawn could not be controlled, since British power looked weak
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from the Persian plateau. Consequently Reza Khan tried to ally Persia with fascist
Germany whose ideology closely resembled his own. By 1941 the British sent him
packing, but it was already clear that nationalism could threaten imperialism.
These triple strains (expansion of the imperial system, widespread colonial
revolts and internal crisis) deeply marked Orientalism in the inter-war period. In the
1920s England and France needed added trained Orientalists to serve in their new
Middle East mandates: two of the best of such scholars were the Frenchman Louis
Massignon (d. 1962) and the Englishman Sir Hamilton A. R. Gibb (d. 1971) whose
careers were rooted in ambivalence and doubts about their own culture. This produced a
degree of humility in them which their predecessors lacked, and made it possible for
them to approach the 'Islamicate' humanely, with openness. Yet the inherited weight of
Orientalism, which shaped them fundamentally, twisted their perceptions. Although the
interwar years produced startling cultural transformations in other fields of knowledge,
Orientalism, feeling the simultaneous strains of expansion and decline, remained
wedded to its stodginess and insularity.
Said chose well in singling out Massignon and Gibb to illustrate transformations
in Orientalism before and after the Second World War. Their lives reflected two major
poles of change - decolonisation and the rise of the American empire3 - that marked the
period. After 1945 European Orientalism declined since, without formal empire, the
Orientalist had little except the scholarly function. The shift was therefore to the new
US imperium. Massignon and Gibb responded differently to colonialism and
decolonisation, but both contributed to shaping the new directions of change. Gibb
moved to the United States and helped organise the institutional basis of US cultural
imperialism, while Massignon, the maverick, joined the struggle for decolonisation and
set the stage for the development of revisionism4 in French Islamic studies.
Said is one of the rare critics to appreciate fully Massignon's genius and great
literary talents. He also admits Massignon's crucial role in Orientalism and
acknowledges his seminal connection to the 'French Islamology' revisionist schools
represented in the work of Jacques Berque, Maxime Rodinson, Yves Lacoste and Roger
Arnaldez (pp. 265-66). But Said stops there, without assessing the long-term
significance of Massignon's impact on revisionism.
Massignon, as a convert from atheism to mystical Catholicism, and as a talented poet,
brought to his studies and activism the zeal of a convert and the romantic idealism of a
poetical mystic. They totally coloured his perceptions of the Islamicate and especially
his views of his hero, Mansur al-Hallaj (d. AD 922), the sufi (mystic) martyr on whom
he reflected all of his life.
There was also another side to Massignon which Said recognises, but does not
fully explore. In his later years, Massignon became an outspoken critic of French
colonialism. His gradual political awakening began when he established close contacts
with Algerian migrant workers whom he taught in special courses, beginning in the late
1920s and 1930s. These contacts and his intense asceticism raised his social
consciousness. Increasingly, he supported anti-colonial causes (such as the rights of
Palestinian, Madagasc;1n and North African nationalism, etc.) and militated for social
justice. Christian nonviolence led him to stage recurrent fasts in order to protest French
colonial policy and violence. He wrote polemics in the popular press; on a few
occasions, when he spoke in favour of Algerian independence or participated in demonstrations,
the police or pied noir pummeled him.
Said questions his motives (p. 270); they were deeply religious, archaic, pro-Semitic,
anti-Aryan and moral, rather than political. Therefore his understanding of events rarely
coincided with the analysis of those on whose behalf he militated. But, unquestionably,
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he hated injustice, could not be corrupted and disdained politicians, imperial
administrators and scholars who treated people as objects and pawns.
In negative sense, he perpetuated Orientalism and its prejudices through the
quality of his scholarship. He was so good at what he did that, even if one disagreed
with his premises, the arguments and the discourse were original. His insights and the
wide range of his concerns and knowledge, combined with his personal example of
activism in a society where professors were supposed to stay ensconced in their ivory
towers or else serve the state, contributed to revisionism in French scholarship about the
Orient. And, by standing outside of the Orientalist institutional structures and
condemning official apologists who ran them, Massignon demonstrated that they and
their institutions could be bypassed or rendered irrelevant by those wishing to gain
knowledge of the Orient.
Jacques Berque, one of the leaders of the French cultural decolonisation
movement, whom Said praises, acknowledged his debt to Massignon in the 'Foreword'
to his ground-breaking book, The Arabs (New York, 1964) in the following way
I could never have achieved this interpretation had I not enjoyed the benefit of
that of the late Louis Massignon. That admirable sheikh would have recognised where I
have followed him, or contradicted him, or both at once. In all these cases, I am
completely in his debt. (p. 18)6
Said has not recognised the full significance of this revisionism. If he had drawn
out of Gramsci's notion of hegemonic culture the rich consequences inherent in the
concept, he might have left us with some hope for change. For Gramsci there was a
dynamic relationship between culture, politics and mass organisation, and he believed
that to overcome bourgeois cultural hegemony, the left had to create mass political
institutions which would generate their own ideas and analysis.
In the French school of revisionism, people like Berque, Vincent Monteil, Samir
Amin and Abdallah Laroui, a combination of non-marxists, marxists, and marxisant,
have developed their analysis within the framework of French and Third World
educational and research institutions which have legitimised and encouraged their
scholarship. As Gramsci might have predicted, the transformation in French educational
institutions since at least May 1968, and the development of new research centres in
Africa and the Middle East, coupled with the marked increase in the left's influence and
base of support in France and some ex-French colonies has provided a fertile
environment in which new schools of thought concerning the Middle East and North
Africa have been able to develop and converge with innovating scholarship in subSaharan
African, Latin American and Asian studies. The French government's quest for
bilateral alliances with radical Muslim oil-producing states and their desire to
demonstrate their independence of US analysis and policies, has probably made the
French ruling classes amenable to the new trends. In such a setting, new ideas and
analysis are emerging as alternatives to classical Orientalism.
Decolonisation and the growth of the left in western Europe is changing the
nature of discourse about the Third World. Anglo-Saxon research and writing on the
Middle East and North Africa has begun to reflect this new shift. In the US some
Middle East scholars have recently formed regional study groups organised as the
American Middle East Studies Seminar (AMESS). They are concerned with (1) the
involvement of professors in policy 'formulation and implementation'; (2) the sources of
funding for Middle East Studies; (3) 'the structure, membership and ideological
orientations of' the mainstream professional organisation, the Middle East Studies
Association of North America (MESA); and (4) the narrow ideological and
methodological limits of the field. In addition, MERIP Reports, Review of Iranian
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political economy and history, Review of Middle East Studies and the British journal
Khamsill present alternative analysis of the culture and political economy of the Middle
East and North Africa. Nevertheless, the mainstream of the American scholarly
establishment has largely remained untouched by these developments.
MIDDLE EAST SOCIAL STUDIES
As the major post-war imperial power and the major source of neo-colonial control, the
US had embarked on a crash programme to train area experts. These were supposed to
service and rationalise the new empire and enable the US to compete favourably with
the Soviet Union in the cold war. Funds for establishing area studies came from
government agencies, foundations, universities, corporations and neo-colonial rulers
who benefited from their connections with the US. America's needs were immediate,
and the tradition was almost non-existent. But by importing European Orientalists, US
Middle East social studies was stamped with the dogmas of Orientalism which Said has
summarised as follows
1 (There is an) ... absolute and systematic difference between the West, which is
rational, developed, humane, superior, and the Orient, which is aberrant,
underdeveloped, inferior ...
2 abstractions about the Orient ... are always preferable to direct evidence drawn from
modern Oriental realities ...
3 the Orient is eternal, uniform, and incapable of defining itself; therefore it is assumed
that a highly generalized and systematic vocabulary for describing the Orient from a
Western standpoint is inevitable and even scientifically 'objective.'
4 ... the Orient is at bottom something either to be feared ... or to be controlled ... (pp.
300-301)
The 'old world' scholars moved to the new centre of Orientalism. Gibb came to
Harvard to head the Center for Middle East Studies. Gustave Von Grunebaum helped
establish the equivalent in Los Angeles. More recently, Bernard Lewis joined
Princeton's Oriental Studies Program. Much of the US empire was informal, neocolonial,
in flux and therefore did not provide a stable base on which to build
programmes; the new scholars were trained to deny the existence of the very empire
that they served. Training proved to be superficial and most of the experts turned out to
be only reflections of the shadows of the great Orientalists of the past. US Middle East
area studies have had all the faults of classical Orientalisl11 without any of its strengths,
i.e. depth, stability and language ability. Lacking the long traditions which developed
under the French and British imperial systems, the methods, opinions and sources of
funding of the new area specialists are unstable. As arrivistes, they lack consistency and
clarity of purpose. Their lack of competency, which Binder, a past-president of MESA,
himself underlines 11 adds to their personal insecurity, which in turn reinforces their
opportunism.
Many of them are rationalisers and justifiers of US government policies in the
Middle East; 12 others cater to the neo-colonial clients of the US in Middle Eastern and
North African states; in both cases they reap material rewards, and compete to sell
themselves to the highest bidders.
US POLITICAL ANALYSIS ON IRAN
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Iranian studies illustrates my point. Two of the best known experts who have
written the basic works on contemporary Iran, Marvin Zonis of the University of
Chicago and James A. Bill of the University of Texas, typify post-war Iranian studies in
the US. Their work also reflects the broader trends in US Middle East Social studies.
Despite their recognising, as trained students of Iranian politics, the regime's corruption
and tyranny, they can still write of royalty in glowing terms. Zonis (1971):
... none of these interviews would have been carried out in the absence of official cooperation
and royal assent. His Imperial Majesty, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, Shahnshah, made that
available with speed and kingly grace. His willingness to welcome foreign scholars is both
courageous and laudable. (1951-3) holds no significance for Binder. As troublesome is his antiArab
bias when he argues that the early Arab conquerors were 'tormentors' of the Persians. We
know that in the complex relations between Persians and Arabs after the Muslim conquest of
Iran (Khurasan), their interests often coincided and produced harmony. Binder, however, has
injected this anti-Arab bias into the distant past.
Another scholar of Iran is R. M. Savory, Professor at the University of Toronto.
In recent years he has authored an Encyclopaedia o( Islam article on Iranian history
(1973) as well as a 1972 assessment of Iran in the 1960s for MESA's International
Journal o( Middle East Studies (I]MES). A critical examination of his scholarship will
show, however, how he has misled readers by omitting crucial data. For example, the
CIA's involvement in the events surrounding Mohammed Mossadegh's ousting as Prime
Minister of Iran in 1953 is well known - witness the assessment made by E. A. Bayne, a
former US official in Iran:
The Central Intelligence, well equipped with funds, entered the picture in
earnest and a plot began to form with General Zahedi as its executive focus ... By midsummer
... the Shah issued a (irman dismissing Mossadegh, and appointed Zahedi as
Premier. Mossadegh refused to accept the order, and Iran was momentarily without
effective government authority. As much to dramatize the constitutional issue as to
preserve the person of the monarch - there being no heir - the Shah was advised to leave
the country, which he did.
Yet, unbelievably, Savory has completely omitted any mention in his encyclopaedia
article of the CIA's by then well-publicised and authenticated involvement in the
planning for Mossadegh's overthrow and instead blamed the Tudeh (Iranian
Communist) Party for provoking a general's coup. He wrote:
On 13 August the shah issued a (arman dismissing Musaddik and appointing General
Zahidi Prime Minister. Musaddik refused to take cognisance of the (arman, and the
shah temporarily left the country. On ... 19 August 1953 Zahidi suppressed the Tudeh
mobs over which Musaddik no longer had any control, and succeeded in establishing
himself in Tehran.
And the editors of this, the leading Orientalist encyclopaedia (Van Donzal,
Lewis, Pellat) are, in approving this article, implicated in such a major omission - if
only by default.
In his 1972 TIMES article, after condemning Mossadegh for being a 'dictator'
and a tool of the Tudeh Party, Savory wrote:
The Persian monarchy ... in 1953 successfully resisted a far more dangerous threat subversion
by totalitarian forces. The warmth and spontaneity of the Shah's welcome by
the people when he returned to Iran on 22 August 1953 seems to have astonished many
foreign observers and commentators, but should not have occasioned any surprise to the
student of Persian history.
And the editor of TIMES, Stanford Shaw, Professor of Ottoman history at the
University of California (Los Angeles), not only published Savory's article, but also
repeated its biases and claims. Shaw wrote:
7
Dr Savory describes how the opposition to the Shah today, led by a segment of
the Persian intelligentsia, particularly Persian students outside the country, is based
largely on the same romantic views of contemporary Iran which led Mohammed
Mossadiq and others in the Iranian national movement to disrupt reform and so join the
opposition led by the great landowners, the ulama, and others who successfully
frustrated reform until the Shah himself took the lead in the famous 'white revolution'.
Dr Savory points out how the Shah has gained the support of the mass of the people
benefiting from his reforms, particularly the peasants, and also the army and the
younger civil servants.26
Neither of them admitted to the heroic struggle of the ulama against the Shah's
tyranny; instead they denigrated religious figures in the same way that Binder did in the
quotation above. They also failed to mention the participation of the bazaaris in the long
struggle that preceded the revolution. Neither did they mention in a positive way the
abnegation of the Iranian left in leading an armed struggle against one of the world's
most repressive regimes. Rather, Savory viewed their struggle as treason against the
'best of all possible rulers', the Shah of Iran.
OLD ORIENTALISM AND NEW DIRECTIONS
This necessarily brief review of American political analysis on Iran typifies the
state of Middle Eastern area studies. In comparison to the old Orientalists like
Massignon and Gibb, today's area experts have little substance and vision. There are
exceptions, but they only prove the general rule. The old timers were products of a
clearly-defined imperial age, replete with carefully-drawn structures, lines of authority
and institutions. The new products of Third World area studies in North America live in
an equally intense imperial age, but one with informal structures and insecure
foundations, facing challenges and revolutionary pressures. Their insecurity,
opportunism and shallowness reflects the condition of contemporary imperialism.
Edward Said has clarified how Orientalists and Middle East area experts have
served the empire. It now remains for others working in Middle East studies who agree
with his analysis and are distressed by the condition of the field, the 'discourse', the
'hegemonic culture', to pick up the challenge and do something about it. Said tells us
that we need new ways of looking at the Middle East and he calls for the application of
class analysis, comparative research and global perspectives to all people living in
differentiated states of change. He condemns the tendency to compartmentalize the
Middle East as a world apart, in need of different categories of analysis than any other
part of the world. One can only agree. There are buried treasures there for the
progressive scholar, both north and south. For example, in one of his passing remarks
(p. 279) Said suggests 'that the history of Islam might be more intelligible for its
resistance, political and non-political, to colonialism'. Using that as an organizing theme
one would like to see in future issues of Race & Class some discussion on the insurrectionary
tradition in modern Islam. The aim would be to examine dynamics with ill the
Islamicate that once gave it strength, and may act as the basis for transformation in the
future. Historical studies become increasingly important because progressive
transformations, if they are to succeed, need to be congruent with inherited traditions.
The progressive forces within Islam have always been there. The problem is to flush
them out from behind the veil of Orientalist obscurity.