Review: Two new books responding to Edward Said's Orientalism

Times Online (Robert Irwin)

I've included this because anyone interested in the modern history of the Middle East, including Egypt, will probably have come across Said's Orientalism.

So many academics want the arguments presented in Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) to be true. It encourages the reading of novels at an oblique angle in order to discover hidden colonialist subtexts. It promotes a hypercritical version of British and, more generally, of Western achievements. It discourages any kind of critical approach to Islam in Middle Eastern studies. Above all, Orientalism licenses those academics who are so minded to think of their research and teaching as political activities. The drudgery of teaching is thus transformed into something much more exciting, namely “speaking truth to power”.

It is unlikely that the two books under review, both of which present damning criticisms of Said’s book at length and in detail, will change anything.

See the above page for the entire review, which includes the full details of the two books under discussion.