Jag var bara tvungen att lägga ut en rescension som jag läst, av en bok som jag inte läst, som sågar en bok som jag läst, och irriterat mig något så vansinnigt på… Hängde du med nu? Nå, i vart fall, håll till godo, här kommer den, klippt rakt ur amazons websida:
”This book is fun to read. It discusses the history of Orientalism and tells about some of the leading Orientalists. It also defends Orientalism as a legitimate scholarly field. And one may want to know why this topic of study needs any defense.
The reason becomes clear right from the start. Ed Said wrote a crazy rant against the whole enterprise. That ought to have had little effect on academia. But it did: plenty of people praised that book! And by now, to say that one is an Orientalist is to risk being branded as a servant of Imperialism, and maybe as a Zionistlover as well. I can see that Irwin is not too happy about the decline of Orientalism as a scholarly field.
Nor can Irwin be too happy with the discrediting of Middle Eastern Studies that has resulted from the acceptance of Said’s nonsense by quite a few supposed intellectuals. That has resulted in Middle Eastern scholars being dismissed by some as a bunch of anti-scholarly racists and bigots who use their positions not to further knowledge but to propagandize against human rights and truth. Irwin is clearly embarrassed by the fact that his field is now associated with Said’s polemical work. Yes, those who study the Middle East are under attack from both sides due to the politicization of the field.
I have to admit that I’m not the proper person to deliver an attack on Said’s book ”Orientalism.” For one thing, the book is such garbage that I wouldn’t know where to start. For another, what I say would count for very little. Not only am I not a scholar in that field, I also am an opponent of Said’s entire war on human rights. I see Said as one of the biggest liars of the past century, and I feel that he was a truly evil creature. It would be difficult for me to convince most of those who like Said’s works that I could write a genuinely unbiased and fair appraisal of the trash that he wrote.
That is one reason why it is good to have a view from an Orientalist who attacks Said on scholarly, rather than political grounds. Irwin certainly does not defend Israel or Zionism, and he defends Said from accusations of supporting terrorism (cleverly claiming that he merely praises terrorism ”with faint damns”). I think Irwin is wrong here, but that’s not the issue. The question is whether there is any merit in what Said wrote, and how much damage his stuff has done to the field of Orientalism.
Irwin says that ”it is a scandal and a damning comment on the quality of intellectual life in Britain in recent decades that Said’s arguments could ever have been taken seriously.” And he notes that in some cases, folks sided with Said just to be anti-Zionist and anti-American. It sure must be fun for some people to taunt those who support human rights for Jews. But I think that the cost is severe if the whole field of Middle Eastern history and Orientalist studies is thus mangled. As for Said himself, I wonder why he did such a thing in the first place. Why, instead of attacking the Israelis or the Jews, or the Blacks, or the Americans, or the Christians, or whatever group he wanted to slander did he pick on those who simply studied the Middle East? After all, many of those scholars were anything but Zionists! I don’t know the answer to that question. Maybe Said felt that to truly smash the rights of Levantine Jews to life, liberty, and property, he’d have to smash truth. And I guess he figured that the best way to attack truth would be to outlaw the right to study it. That would leave Middle Eastern studies in the hands of lying and taunting propagandists and give some chance to get ”scholarly” approval for the abolition of human rights in the Levant. That’s just my wild guess. Irwin merely says that he can’t believe that Said’s work was written in good faith.
I would like to see Middle Eastern studies be a scholarly field once again. If I were a few decades younger, I might even want to work in that subject to help that happen. But I now think the first task here has to be to expose and repudiate the barrage of anti-Zionist lies that have become part of the canon offered to many students. And that can’t be done by partisans alone. It needs works such as this one, written by those who value truth and want the field to be rescued from those who merely want to use words to fight a tribal war.
Oh yes, the title. In ”The Golden Road to Samarkand” by James Elroy Flecker (1884-1915), Ishak says:
”We travel not for trafficking alone;
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We take the Golden Road to Samarkand.”
Obviously, Irwin’s point is that the Orientalists were not in their fields primarily to serve as agents of Imperialism, but, almost always, out of genuine love of knowledge.
I recommend this book.”
