On Orientalism

I find myself on the verge of doing, essentially, the last thing I ever wanted to do in my academic career, the thing I most sought to avoid – taking a course, particularly a seminar, on Orientalism.

I am to some extent put at ease by the fact that the professor has already expressed his view that that classic of anti-imperialist and anti-Western thought, Edward Said’s “Orientalism,” is quite flawed. He seems a rather laid-back fellow, and the course seems to be fairly balanced. Still, I am put on edge by the prospect of falling into the trap of becoming entranced by this extremely trendy and popular view.

I am thus putting to digital paper, so to speak, my thoughts on the matter as they are today, shaped by countless experiences and readings, not least of which was my experience at SOAS, that bastion of anti-American, anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, anti-Western thought run rampant. I do this before my opinions are altered or influenced by the readings and discussions for this course.

A note: This is just one of countless possible drafts of my thoughts on this matter. It has not been reviewed and refined. It is far from perfect. There may be points where I misrepresent myself and my views, and aspects I fail to address. Have some understanding, and stop and think for a bit, allow me some leeway, before tearing into me.

Terminology
Let us start with terminology. There is a backlash against use of the word Orient, or its derivative Oriental (as in Oriental Studies), as it is seen to have imperialistic overtones. Well, outside of the fact that the word derives etymologically from the meaning of “east”, thus raising the question of “east from where?”, A: from the West (thus this is a Eurocentric construct, and thus an imperialistic and inappropriate one), I see no evil undertones to it. I’m sorry, I just don’t. Terms like Jap, Chink, Yellow Peril, White Man’s Burden, Greater East Asia, Co-Prosperity Sphere, these are terms that have imperialistic overtones, but as far as I am aware, “Oriental” was never used in any major way to directly refer to anyone or anything as inferior or deserving or needing of conquest. Quite to the contrary, when speaking of Orientalism as it pertains to China and Japan, Oriental was a word that contained positive connotations of beautiful arts, exotic places, ancient secret knowledges, magics, skills and technologies, etc.

Now, in a much more apolitical sense, yes, there is a problem with the word Orient in that it refers to different places to different people at different times in different contexts. Is the Orient synonymous with the Near or Middle East, with that area from Turkey through Iraq or Afghanistan/Pakistan which has a certain set of cultures, religions, languages, and aesthetics as different from those of the Far East as they are from those of Europe, Africa, or the Pacific? Or does the Orient refer to the Far East, i.e. China, Korea, Japan, and perhaps Vietnam, Laos, Burma, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia? This is a problem, and so, yeah, maybe the term should be thrown out.

But, before I go on for too long, let me say something more generally. Terminology exists for a reason. There is a certain degree to which we can all agree on what a term means, what it refers to, even if we disagree that it’s an appropriate term. Jargon, terminology, just like language more widely, exists to provide a medium for communication, for understanding. Once we start questioning and pulling apart these terms, declaring them inappropriate, and rendering them meaningless, we are left with a situation of far greater difficulty in communication. I could think of a gazillion examples to back this up, but to take just one, there is a reason we continue to use terms like “Chinese history” and “Japanese art” even while understanding that neither of these countries were fully unified throughout their histories, lacked a sense of nationhood or national identity until recent centuries, etc.

It’s a shorthand, and people understand what is meant, and it allows us to move on. Dissecting and rethinking our understandings of what different terms – like Orient, like Near East and Far East – mean is the exact opposite of moving on, which is what makes me nervous about this course.

To quickly address the issue of Near East, Middle East, Far East – yes, all of these terms are unforgivably inappropriate in a post-colonialist anti-imperialist vocabulary, because they stem from a Eurocentric point of view (again, east of what?). But, while these terms tend to be somewhat fuzzy on their borders, and leave out many regions/countries, I think these terms are great. Firstly, they are already, in everyday usage, significantly abstracted from this problematic meaning. Think about how many times, or for how long, you used these terms or at least heard them, before you thought about them as problematically Eurocentric and motivated by colonialist, imperialist overtones. You probably didn’t even know words like Eurocentric and overtones for a long time when you were already gaining an idea of what the Middle East was. Stop the average person on the street, and they’ll have the same attitude towards it.

We all know where the Middle East is. It’s basically the Arab World (Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, and some other tiny countries) plus Turkey, Iran, and Israel which are not demographically predominantly Arab, plus perhaps North Africa (from Egypt all the way west along the Mediterranean coast to Morocco) and Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Near East is basically a subset of the Middle East. While this seems confusing or even absurd on the surface of the thing (near should be nearer than middle), it’s also a relatively well-defined area based on historical significance and cultural similarities, covering essentially Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, and Egypt, i.e. the Levant, i.e. the easternmost parts of the Mediterranean coast, i.e. those nations having the most direct connection to the Orient as viewed by the Greeks – Troy, other Anatolian (Turkish) societies, the Phoenecians, the Hebrews, the Egyptians.

The Far East is essentially China, Korea, and Japan, three nations with very close cultural and historical ties which set them apart from the more Indianized nations of Southeast Asia (Laos, Thailand, Burma, Cambodia) and from the more Islamicized ones (Malaysia, Indonesia). Vietnam, I would argue, belongs in “the Far East”, but is often overlooked and ignored just as Korea often is, overshadowed by the two giants in the region.

This leaves a number of regions – mainly India and much of SE Asia, and the Himalayan regions, not to mention Mongolia and “Central Asia”, i.e. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, etc – absent from Near and Middle and Far East. This could be seen as a problem from the point of view of nationalistic sympathies, but from the more cold, objective point of view of the categorizer, labeler, or name-setter, i.e. the objective historian without a nationalistic, post-colonial or anti-imperialist agenda, I don’t think it’s a problem at all.

I have seen the term “West Asia” thrown around a lot lately. At first, this seems a natural addition to a naming/categorization scheme which includes East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Central Asia, and which is centered on an objective, removed, geographer’s perspective on Asia. It suits just as well as Western Europe and Eastern Europe do. Except for one problem – “West Asia”, that is, the Middle East, i.e. the Arab World, has a very very distinct set of cultures, aesthetics, climate, atmosphere, and history to it which sets it apart very much from anything Asian. Consider the fact that when we talk about “Africa”, we are most often talking about sub-Saharan Africa – that portion of the continent which has far more in common within itself (from Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire on the northwest coast to Kenya in the east to South Africa in the south) than with the Arabs and/or Muslims on the north, Mediterranean, coast of the continent. In short, there needs to be an understanding of cultural and historical geographical spheres, not just pure geographical happenstance. Indeed, the division between Europe and Asia is an accident of semantics and terminology, not a hard-and-fast scientific or geographical fact. So why can we not just have the Middle East – as we all already call it and know it – remain its own distinct part of the world, apart from Asia?

*Edward Said
Let us move on. I have dawdled for far too long.

Edward Said wrote a text entitled “Orientalism” in 1978 or so, a text which I have not read, and never intended to read. It is a book founded on an anti-Western, anti-imperialist, political agenda and spawned from the political and cultural views of someone who is not only Arab, but Palestinian, and who has a serious axe to grind.

I cannot discount Said purely on the basis of his being Arab or Palestinian. To do so would be horribly hypocritical, and would lend credence to those assholes pushing for an academic boycott of Israeli scholars. However, the fact remains that his cultural and ethnic background colors this work irrevocably, and its fundamental argument – like all based on a political agenda rather than objective scholarly attitudes or intents – makes the entire book quite precariously unbalanced indeed.

Furthermore, I presume (and I shall discover upon reading it), Said expounds upon his Middle Eastern -centered argument, applying it to all of Asia and perhaps even beyond, to the whole non-Western world. As a Japanologist or Japanist, as a specialist in East Asian Studies, I cannot abide the idea that anyone should think they understand China or Japan because they understand Palestine. That’s a complete absurdity. And yet, countless supporters of Said’s views continue to do the same.

The fundamental flaw in Said’s argument, and indeed in all anti-imperialist arguments, is as follows – in deriding the West for treating the East as a single, exotic Other to be colonized or civilized or whatever, the argument makes the folly of discussing “the East” or “the non-West” as a single entity, and treating “the West” as a single entity as well. The Arab world is not the same as China or Japan, which are quite different from one another, as any Chinese or Japanese would be quick to tell you. And more importantly, something that the raving mobs of anti-imperialists which inhabit the halls of SOAS, and so many other places, fail to recognize is that there is no single West. The US is not guilty of the so-called sins of British Imperialism, nor were French, Portuguese, and German attitudes towards colonization, empire, etc the same as one another.

I oppose revisionism as reactionary and unnecessary, as trendy and subjective, as politically charged and as truly disrespectful to scholars of the past, indeed to all peoples of the past, and as damaging to our ability to communicate effectively, with simple direct terms that we can all agree upon and that are not overwhelmingly bogged down with problematizations, hidden connotations, and analysis.

One can spend an entire course, or an entire lifetime, debating what “the East” or “Japan” or “fascism” mean… or one can accept the term, move on, and focus on discussing the history and culture of the so-called East.

…

Yet, as much as I would like to do just that, I will be taking this course and delving into precisely that which I sought to avoid. I intend to resist using this blog (or my personal one) as a venting place, but we shall see how developments develop.