Centerfield

There's alot of intellectual paranoia about anti-Orientalism, because controversy over the theory's originator, Edward Said, goes far beyond the scholarly literary community that debates Orientalism regularly. Said seems to me to have later lost the deep insight that led to his discovery, becoming arrogant and paranoid, even serving on the PLO's board. There was a science fiction Usenet newsgroup that used to refer to a mind-eater that would get so many of the best authors. Well, I think Said's mind was eaten. I think he grew arrogant in success.

In the book, Said seemed indecisive as to whether the US is currently an imperialist power. He lost that indecisiveness later, and I think he was wrong to characterize globalization as imperialism. In fact, I see less and less popular Orientalist literature with any audience, which seems to to me to support both his claims about anti-Orientalism and mine about globalization not being Imperialism.

Let me cite two examples I grew up with: H.P. Lovecraft and Frank Herbert's Dune Trilogy, both widely read and highly popular in their eras. Lovecraft wrote horror and Frank Herbert science fiction. These books immediately came my mind when The Profesora explained Orientalism to me, because several Orientalist elements had always been hard for me to swallow.

Lovecraft wrote during the early twentieth century, during the height of imperialism. Herbert wrote rather later, in the 70s, in the US, well after Imperialism was out. but it's still there, in runway lights 100 feet long, which makes for interesting questions about the exact conditions under which Orientalism proliferates.

And not every imperialist author was guilty of Orientalism in their writings about the Middle East. Churchill was an imperialist and racist through and through, approving the killings by air bomb of numerous Iraqis who dared to oppose Britain's wishes in Iraq. But I haven't seen any Orientalism in his writings, though he did go somewhat into Middle Eastern British Imperial actions.

As I wrote earlier, Lovecraft was an early 20C famous horror writer. He was famously reclusive, cat-loving, racist, and anti-semitic. Many of his horrors are oriented around the magic of ancient countries conquered by Europeans returning to decidedly ill effect upon the conquerors (see Fear, above). They feature decidedly fantastic Oriental courts secretly running things or pulling off evil in secret or running Dreamland. There are two sides of this in Lovecraft's work - the fun side of an unknown playland, seen in his Dreamland bits, which still compel today - and the scary side, where those Oriental courts suddenly are seen to secretly rule the world, except that that's not so scary today, since Europe doesn't hold down the world under its thumb in the same way atall anymore.

Herbert was an interesting example, since his Dune Trilogy postdates imperialism per se, at least in the US, where it was popular - it came out in the late 70s. But it's set in a far future utterly and hopelessly dominated by a deeply fantastic Middle-Eastern court. The soldiery that dominates the empire passes from one set to another in the book - both sets empire-dominating, ?why?, because both've been living in deserts and had tough lives. Oh, and, of course, the resource produced just on one, hmm, desert planet, with featuring a rather stagey Middle Eastern - style society. Interesting, huh? Though I found the characters and certain of the background interesting, I never could suspend my disbelief on most of the world setting.

It's an interesting question how Orientalism came to show up in Herbert. Were the oil worries big enough back then for it to have a similar dynamic in audiences of the time as was seen in imperial Europe? Or it could've reflected racism. In fact, it amounted to quite a bit of stereotyping, the stereotypical Arab Street the media always talked about come to rule the universe to the farthest degree imaginable.

To the theory's strength (but, ironically, contrary to his belief that the US was imperialist when he wrote the book), I'm finding it harder and harder to find Orientalism in contemporary American fiction. Indeed, as time goes on, fiction I've read set in the Middle East, for example, seems to me to get, on balance, more and more gritty and seemingly realistic. Especially the stuff that actually sells. Though it'd be interesting to know if sales trends of Dune changed after 9/11.

What's brought Orientalism back to the public view is the release of an anti-anti-Orientalist book, Orientalism and Its Discontents, by Robert Irwin. Here's a Washington Post review. I'm never going to read that book, but the Post review contains a quote from that book with a wrong basic assumption:

Said libelled generations of scholars who were for the most part good and honourable men and he was not prepared to acknowledge that some of them at least might have written in good faith.

To be sure, many scholars caught on the wrong side of that change of ethical climate have made wild accusations and been intellectually dishonest. And, as I suggested above, Said eventually came to join the dishonesty, and no doubt he had some company on the anti-imperialist side as well. So, between that and Said's later extremism, the theory is probably more controversial than it deserves.