A Critique of a Critique

In 1982, Bernard Lewis, a prominent English writer and historian born in the 1916, wrote an article for the New York Review of Books, in which he scrutinized Edward Said's work and the very concept of Orientalism itself. The article had valid criticisms in the context of Said's writing and overlooking of certain key events and details in his chronicling of the Middle East's development. However, Lewis' arguments against the concept of Orientalism and its presence in the European and American view of certain regions of the world was a wholly misguided approach, and serves here as an example to get rid of premature criticisms and counter arguments to Said's work.

My biggest problem with Lewis' review came in the very first sentence of the article, and the subsequent example which followed it for another page and a half. Here, Lewis tries to explain the concept of Orientalism, but changing the group in focus to the Greeks in order to somehow reveal the absurdity of the concept. However, his dramatic interpretation of Said's writing is the basis for his entire argument, and fails to analyze the complexity of the issue in any regard.

For example, in Lewis' Greek retelling, he mocks the critics of Orientalism in saying that those who teach Greek history or language (in this metaphor) but are not actually Greek "strive to keep the Greek people in a state of permanent subordination." This line, obviously heavily doused in sarcasm, rests on the assumption that people like Said believe that those who study cultures in the so-called 'Orient' are purposefully perpetuating a system which represses those they study. On the contrary, I believe that Said was writing about the sub-conscious manner in which Orientalism is carried out. Western study of areas like Persia, or China, or India aren't designed to entrap their populations in positions of "less-than," they just do that themselves. The distance between the teacher and subject matter is too great for that teacher to convey the fullness or humanity of the people being studied.

Another line in Lewis' whiny introduction pokes fun at what he thinks to be Lewis' exclusion of Western scholars from his view of the positive Middle Eastern and Asian study to come. I don't think Said would ever argue that Western scholars should be completely rebuked and banished from historical study in those areas. His argument is clearly that those Western scholars should really just back off of the domination aspect of that study, and refocus its lens on time periods and areas untouched or unconcerned with Western infiltration.

You can read Lewis' review here: The Question of Orientalism