But how did and does Orientalism work? How can one describe it all together as a historical phenomenon, a way of thought, a contemporary problem, and a material reality? Consider Cromer again, an accomplished technician empire but also a beneficiary of Orientalism. He can furnish us with a rudimentary answer. In"The Government of Subject Races"he wrestles with the problem of how Britain, a nation of individuals, is to administer a wide-flung empire according to a number of central principles. He contrasts the local agent, who has both a specialist 's knowledge of the native and an anglo-saxon individuality, with the central authority at home in London. The former may treat subjects of local interest in a manner calculated to damage, or even to jeopardize, Imperial interests. The central authority is in a position to obviate any danger arising from this cause. Why? Because this authority can ensure the harmonious working of the different parts of the machine and"should endeavour, so far as is possible. to realise the circumstances attendant on the government of the dependency. The language is vague and unattractive, but the point is not hard to grasp Cromer envisions a seat of power in the west, and radiating out from it towards the East a great embracing machine, sustaining the central authority yet commanded by it. What the machine's branches feed into it in the East-human material, material wealth, knowledge what have you-is processed by the machine, then converted into more power. The specialist does the immediate translation of mere Oriental matter into useful sub-stance: the Oriental becomes, for example, a subject race, an example of ai Oriental"mentality, all for the enhancement of the authority"at home Local interests"are Orientalist special in- terests, the central authority"is the general interest of the imperial society as a whole What Cromer quite accurately sees is the man agement of knowledge by society, the fact that knowledge---no matter how special--is regulated first by the local concerns of a specialist, later by the general concems of a social system of authority. The interplay between local and central interests is intricate, but by no means indiscriminate. In Cromer's own case as an imperial administrator the "proper study is also man, he says. When Pope proclaimed the proper study of mankind to be man, he meant all men, including"the poor Indian", whereas Cromer,s also"reminds us that certain men, such as Orientals, can be singled out as the subject for proper study. The proper study---in this sense--of Orientals is Orientalism, properly separate from other forms of knowledge, but finally useful (because finite) for the material and social reality enclosing all knowledge at any time, supporting knowledge, providing it with uses. An order of sovereignty is set up from East to West, a mock chain of being whose clearest form was given once by Kipling Mule, horse, elephant, or bullock, he obeys his driver, and the driver his sergeant, and the sergeant his lieutenant, and the lieu-tenant his captain, and the captain his major, and the major his colonel, and the colonel his brigadier commanding three regiments, and the brigadier his general, who obeys the viceroy, who is the servant of the As deeply forged as is this monstrous chain of command, as strongly managed as is Cromer's"harmonious working Orientalism can also express the strength of the West and the Orient's weakness-as seen by the West. Such strength and such weakness are as intrinsic to Orientalism as they are to any view that divides the world into large general divisions, For that is the main intellectual issue raised by Orientalism. Can one divide human reality, as indeed human reality seems be genuinely divided, into clearly different cultures, histories, traditions, societies, even races, and survive the consequences humanly? By surviving the consequences humanly, I mean to ask whether there is any way of avoiding the hostility expressed by the division, say, of men into"us"(Westerners) and"they"(Orientals). For such divisions are generalities whose use historically and actually has been to press the importance of the distinction between some men and some other men, usually towards not especially admirable ends. When one uses categories like Oriental and Western as both he starting and the end points of analysis, research, public policy (as the categories were used by Balfour and Cromer), the result is usually to polarize the distinction-the Oriental becomes
But how did and does Orientalism work? How can one describe it all together as a historical phenomenon, a way of thought, a contemporary problem, and a material reality? Consider Cromer again, an accomplished technician of empire but also a beneficiary of Orientalism. He can furnish us with a rudimentary answer. In "The Government of Subject Races" he wrestles with the problem of how Britain, a nation of individuals, is to administer a wide-flung empire according to a number of central principles. He contrasts the "local agent," who has both a specialist's knowledge of the native and an Anglo-Saxon individuality, with the central authority at home in London. The former may "treat subjects of local interest in a manner calculated to damage, or even to jeopardize, Imperial interests. The central authority is in a position to obviate any danger arising from this cause." Why? Because this authority can "ensure the harmonious working of the different parts of the machine" and "should endeavour, so far as is possible, to realise the circumstances attendant on the government of the dependency."" The language is vague and unattractive, but the point is not hard to grasp. Cromer envisions a seat of power in the West, and radiating out from it towards the East a great embracing machine, sustaining the central authority yet commanded by it. What the machine's branches feed into it in the East— human material, material wealth, knowledge, what have you— is processed by the machine, then converted into more power. The specialist does the immediate translation of mere Oriental matter into useful sub-stance: the Oriental becomes, for example, a subject race, an example of an "Oriental" mentality, all for the enhancement of the "authority" at home. "Local interests" are Orientalist special interests, the "central authority" is the general interest of the imperial society as a whole. What Cromer quite accurately sees is the man- ((45)) agement of knowledge by society, the fact that knowledge— no matter how special— is regulated first by the local concerns of a specialist, later by the general concerns of a social system of authority. The interplay between local and central interests is intricate, but by no means indiscriminate. In Cromer's own case as an imperial administrator the "proper study is also man," he says. When Pope proclaimed the proper study of mankind to be man, he meant all men, including "the poor Indian"; whereas Cromer's "also" reminds us that certain men, such as Orientals, can be singled out as the subject for proper study. The proper study— in this sense— of Orientals is Orientalism, properly separate from other forms of knowledge, but finally useful (because finite) for the material and social reality enclosing all knowledge at any time, supporting knowledge, providing it with uses. An order of sovereignty is set up from East to West, a mock chain of being whose clearest form was given once by Kipling: Mule, horse, elephant, or bullock, he obeys his driver, and the driver his sergeant, and the sergeant his lieutenant, and the lieu-tenant his captain, and the captain his major, and the major his colonel, and the colonel his brigadier commanding three regiments, and the brigadier his general, who obeys the Viceroy, who is the servant of the Empress.15 As deeply forged as is this monstrous chain of command, as strongly managed as is Cromer's "harmonious working," Orientalism can also express the strength of the West and the Orient's weakness— as seen by the West. Such strength and such weakness are as intrinsic to Orientalism as they are to any view that divides the world into large general divisions, entities that coexist in a state of tension produced by what is believed to be radical difference. For that is the main intellectual issue raised by Orientalism. Can one divide human reality, as indeed human reality seems to be genuinely divided, into clearly different cultures, histories, traditions, societies, even races, and survive the consequences humanly? By surviving the consequences humanly, I mean to ask whether there is any way of avoiding the hostility expressed by the division, say, of men into "us" (Westerners) and "they" (Orientals). For such divisions are generalities whose use historically and actually has been to press the importance of the distinction between some men and some other men, usually towards not especially admirable ends. When one uses categories like Oriental and Western as both the starting and the end points of analysis, research, public policy ((46)) (as the categories were used by Balfour and Cromer), the result is usually to polarize the distinction— the Oriental becomes
as lasr has typically shown the altogether regrettable tendency of any knowledge based on such hard-and-fast distinctions and"West": to channel thought into a West or an East compartment. Because this tendency is right at the center of Orientalist theory, practice, and values found in the West, the sense of Western power over the Orient is taken for granted as having the status of scientific truth A contemporary illustration or two should clarify this observation perfectly. It is natural for men in power to survey from time to time the world with which they must deal. Balfour did it frequently. Our contemporary Henry Kissinger does it also rarely with more express frankness than in his essay Domestic Structure and Foreign Policy. " The drama he depicts is a real one, in which the United States must manage its behavior in the world under the pressures of domestic forces on the one hand and of foreign realities on the other. Kissinger's discourse must for that reason alone establish a polarity between the United States and the world; in addition, of course, he speaks consciously as an authoritative voice for the major Western Kissinger feels that the United Staty have placed it before a world that does not easily accept d West than i can with the developing world. Again, the contemporary actuality of relations between the United States and the so-called Third World(which includes China, Indochina, the Near East, Africa, and Latin America) is manifestly a thomy set of problems, which even Kissinger cannot hide Kissinger's method in the essay proceeds according to what linguists call binary opposition: that is, he shows that there he end of the historical part of his argument he is brought face to face with the contemporary world, he divides it accordingly into two halves, the developed and the developing countries. The first half, which is the West, "is deeply committed to the notion that the real world is external to the observer that knowledge consists of recording and (47) classifying datathe more accurately the better. Kissingers proof for this is the Newtonian revolution, which has not taken place in the developing world: "Cultures which escaped the early impact of Newtonian thinking have retained the essentially pre- Newtonian view that the real world is almost completely internal to the observer. "Consequently, he adds, " empirical reality has a much different significance for many of the new countries than for the West because in a certain sense they never went through the process of discovering it Unlike Cromer, Kissinger does not need to quote Sir Alfred Lyall on the Orientals inability to be accurate, the point he makes is sufficiently unarguable to require no special validation. We had our Newtonian revolution; they didn't. As thinkers we are better off than they are Good the lines are drawn in much the same way, finally, as balfour and Cromer drew them et sixty or more years have intervened between Kissinger and the British imperialists. Numerous wars and revolutions have countries and with Europe before the Congress of Vienna, is not entirely without its successes. Again unlike Balfour and Cromer, Kissinger therefore feels obliged to respect this pre-Newtonian perspective, since "it offers great flexibility with respect to the contemporary revolutionary turmoil. "Thus the duty of men in the post-Newtonian(real) world is to"construct an international order before a crisis imposes it as a necessity in other words, we must still find a way by which the developing world can be contained Is this not similar to Cromer's vision of a harmoniously working machine designed ultimately to benefit some central authority, which opposes the developing world? Kissinger may not have known on what fund of pedigreed knowledge he was drawing when he cut the world up into pre- Newtonian and post-Newtonian conceptions of reality. But his distinction is identical with the orthodox one made by Orientalists, who separate Orientals from Westerners. And like Orientalisms distinction Kissinger's is not value-free, despite the apparent neutrality of his tone. Thus such words as"prophetic, "accuracy, ""internal, ""empirical reality, "and"order are scattered throughout his description, and they characterize either attractive, familiar, desirable virtues or menacing, peculiar, disorderly defects. Both the traditional Orientalist, as we shall see, and Kissinger conceive of the difference between cultures, first, as creating a battlefront that separates them, and second, as inviting the West to control, contain, and otherwise govern( through superior knowledge and accommodating power)the Other. With what effect and at what considerable expense such militant divisions have been
more Oriental, the Westerner more Western— and limit the human en-counter between different cultures, traditions, and societies. In short, from its earliest modern history to the present, Orientalism as a form of thought for dealing with the foreign has typically shown the altogether regrettable tendency of any knowledge based on such hard-and-fast distinctions as "East" and "West": to channel thought into a West or an East compartment. Because this tendency is right at the center of Orientalist theory, practice, and values found in the West, the sense of Western power over the Orient is taken for granted as having the status of scientific truth. A contemporary illustration or two should clarify this observation perfectly. It is natural for men in power to survey from time to time the world with which they must deal. Balfour did it frequently. Our contemporary Henry Kissinger does it also, rarely with more express frankness than in his essay "Domestic Structure and Foreign Policy." The drama he depicts is a real one, in which the United States must manage its behavior in the world under the pressures of domestic forces on the one hand and of foreign realities on the other. Kissinger's discourse must for that reason alone establish a polarity between the United States and the world; in addition, of course, he speaks consciously as an authoritative voice for the major Western power, whose recent history and present reality have placed it before a world that does not easily accept its power and dominance. Kissinger feels that the United States can deal less problematically with the industrial, developed West than it can with the developing world. Again, the contemporary actuality of relations between the United States and the so-called Third World (which includes China, Indochina, the Near East, Africa, and Latin America) is manifestly a thorny set of problems, which even Kissinger cannot hide. Kissinger's method in the essay proceeds according to what linguists call binary opposition: that is, he shows that there are two styles in foreign policy (the prophetic and the political), two types of technique, two periods, and so forth. When at the end of the historical part of his argument he is brought face to face with the contemporary world, he divides it accordingly into two halves, the developed and the developing countries. The first half, which is the West, "is deeply committed to the notion that the real world is external to the observer, that knowledge consists of recording and ((47)) classifying data— the more accurately the better." Kissinger's proof for this is the Newtonian revolution, which has not taken place in the developing world: "Cultures which escaped the early impact of Newtonian thinking have retained the essentially pre-Newtonian view that the real world is almost completely internal to the observer." Consequently, he adds, "empirical reality has a much different significance for many of the new countries than for the West because in a certain sense they never went through the process of discovering it.""' Unlike Cromer, Kissinger does not need to quote Sir Alfred Lyall on the Oriental's inability to be accurate; the point he makes is sufficiently unarguable to require no special validation. We had our Newtonian revolution; they didn't. As thinkers we are better off than they are. Good: the lines are drawn in much the same way, finally, as Balfour and Cromer drew them. Yet sixty or more years have intervened between Kissinger and the British imperialists. Numerous wars and revolutions have proved conclusively that the pre-Newtonian prophetic style, which Kissinger associates both with "inaccurate" developing countries and with Europe before the Congress of Vienna, is not entirely without its successes. Again unlike Balfour and Cromer, Kissinger therefore feels obliged to respect this pre-Newtonian perspective, since "it offers great flexibility with respect to the contemporary revolutionary turmoil." Thus the duty of men in the post-Newtonian (real) world is to "construct an international order before a crisis imposes it as a necessity": in other words, we must still find a way by which the developing world can be contained. Is this not similar to Cromer's vision of a harmoniously working machine designed ultimately to benefit some central authority, which opposes the developing world? Kissinger may not have known on what fund of pedigreed knowledge he was drawing when he cut the world up into preNewtonian and post-Newtonian conceptions of reality. But his distinction is identical with the orthodox one made by Orientalists, who separate Orientals from Westerners. And like Orientalism's distinction Kissinger's is not value-free, despite the apparent neutrality of his tone. Thus such words as "prophetic," "accuracy," "internal," "empirical reality," and "order" are scattered throughout his description, and they characterize either attractive, familiar, desirable virtues or menacing, peculiar, disorderly defects. Both the traditional Orientalist, as we shall see, and Kissinger conceive of the difference between cultures, first, as creating a battlefront that ((48)) separates them, and second, as inviting the West to control, contain, and otherwise govern (through superior knowledge and accommodating power) the Other. With what effect and at what considerable expense such militant divisions have been
maintained, no one at present needs to be reminded. Another illustration dovetails neatly--perhaps too neatly-with Kissingers analysis. In its February 1972 issue, the American Journal of Psychiatry printed an essay by Harold w. Glidden, who is identified as a retired member of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, United States Department of State, the essays title("The Arab World"), its tone, and its content argue a highly characteristic Oriental ist bent of mind. Thus for his four-page, double-columned psychological trait of over 100 million people, considered for a period of 1, 300 years, Glidden cites exactly four sources for his views a recent book on Tripoli, one issue of the Egyptian news-paper Al-Ahram, the periodical Oriente Moderno, and a book Majid Khadduri, a well-known Orientalist. The article itself pur-ports to uncover "the inner workings of Arab behavior which from our point of view is"aberrant"but for Arabs is"normal. After this auspicious start, we are told that Arabs stress conformity; that Arabs inhabit a shame culture whose "prestige system"involves the ability to attract followers and clients(as an aside we are told that"Arab society is and al ways has been based on a system of client-patron relationships") that Arabs can function only in conflict situations; that prestige is based solely on the ability to dominate others; that a shame culture-and therefore Islam itself--makes a virtue of revenge(here Glidden triumphantly cites the June 29, 197 Ahram to show that"in 1969 [in Egypt] in 1070 cases of murder where the perpetrators were apprehended, it was found that 20 percent of the murders were based on a desire to wipe out shame, 30 percent on a desire to satisfy real or imaginary es, and 31 percent on a desire for blood revenge"); that if from a Western point of view"the only rational thing for the Arabs to do is to make peace ... for the Arabs the situation is not governed by this kind of logic, for objectivity is not a Glidden continues, now more enthusiastically: it is a notable fact that while the Arab value system demands absolute solidarity within the group, it at the same time encourages among its members a kind of rivalry that is destructive of that very solidarity", in Arab society only"success counts"and"the end justifies the means", (49) rabs live"naturally"in a world"characterized by anxiety ex-pressed in generalized suspicion and distrust, which has been belled free-floating hostility", "the art of subterfuge is highly developed in Arab life, as well as in Islam itself; the Arab eed for vengeance overrides everything, otherwise the Arab would feel"ego-destroying"shame. Therefore, if"Westerners is not true of Arabs. "In fact, we are told, " in Arab tribal society(where Arab values originated), strife, not peace, was the normal state of affairs because raiding was one of the two main supports of the economy. The purpose of this learned disquisition is merely to show how on the Westen and Oriental scale of values"the relative position of the elements is quite different. " QED This is the apogee of Orientalist confidence. No merely a generality is denied the dignity of truth, no theoretical list of Oriental attributes is without application to the behav Orientals in the real world. on the one hand there are Westerners, and on the other there are Arab-Orientals, th are (in no particular order) rational, peaceful, liberal gical, capable of holding real values, without natural suspicion, the latter are none of these things. Out of what collective Cromer,Balfour, and our contemporary statesmen? broduce such cge? What specialized skills, what imaginative pressures, and yet particularized view of the Orient do these statements what institutions and traditions what cultural forces h similarity in the descriptions of the Orient to be found in I imaginative Geography and its Representations Orientalizing the oriental Strictly speaking, Orientalism is a field of learned study. In the Christian West, Orientalism is considered to have commenced its formal existence with the decision of the Church Council of (50) Vienne in 1312 to establish a series of chairs in"Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac at Paris, Oxford, Bologna, Avignon, and
maintained, no one at present needs to be reminded. Another illustration dovetails neatly— perhaps too neatly— with Kissinger's analysis. In its February 1972 issue, the American Journal of Psychiatry printed an essay by Harold W. Glidden, who is identified as a retired member of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, United States Department of State; the essay's title ("The Arab World"), its tone, and its content argue a highly characteristic Orientalist bent of mind. Thus for his four-page, double-columned psychological portrait of over 100 million people, considered for a period of 1,300 years, Glidden cites exactly four sources for his views: a recent book on Tripoli, one issue of the Egyptian news-paper Al-Ahram, the periodical Oriente Moderno, and a book by Majid Khadduri, a well-known Orientalist. The article itself pur-ports to uncover "the inner workings of Arab behavior," which from our point of view is "aberrant" but for Arabs is "normal." After this auspicious start, we are told that Arabs stress conformity; that Arabs inhabit a shame culture whose "prestige system" involves the ability to attract followers and clients (as an aside we are told that "Arab society is and always has been based on a system of client-patron relationships"); that Arabs can function only in conflict situations; that prestige is based solely on the ability to dominate others; that a shame culture— and therefore Islam itself — makes a virtue of revenge (here Glidden triumphantly cites the June 29, 1970 Ahram to show that "in 1969 [in Egypt] in 1070 cases of murder where the perpetrators were apprehended, it was found that 20 percent of the murders were based on a desire to wipe out shame, 30 percent on a desire to satisfy real or imaginary wrongs, and 31 percent on a desire for blood revenge"); that if from a Western point of view "the only rational thing for the Arabs to do is to make peace . . . for the Arabs the situation is not governed by this kind of logic, for objectivity is not a value in the Arab system." Glidden continues, now more enthusiastically: "it is a notable fact that while the Arab value system demands absolute solidarity within the group, it at the same time encourages among its members a kind of rivalry that is destructive of that very solidarity"; in Arab society only "success counts" and "the end justifies the means"; ((49)) Arabs live "naturally" in a world "characterized by anxiety ex-pressed in generalized suspicion and distrust, which has been labelled free-floating hostility"; "the art of subterfuge is highly developed in Arab life, as well as in Islam itself'; the Arab need for vengeance overrides everything, otherwise the Arab would feel "ego-destroying" shame. Therefore, if "Westerners consider peace to be high on the scale of values" and if "we have a highly developed consciousness of the value of time," this is not true of Arabs. "In fact," we are told, "in Arab tribal society (where Arab values originated), strife, not peace, was the normal state of affairs because raiding was one of the two main supports of the economy." The purpose of this learned disquisition is merely to show how on the Western and Oriental scale of values "the relative position of the elements is quite different." QED." This is the apogee of Orientalist confidence. No merely asserted generality is denied the dignity of truth; no theoretical list of Oriental attributes is without application to the behavior .of Orientals in the real world. On the one hand there are Westerners, and on the other there are Arab-Orientals; the former are (in no particular order) rational, peaceful, liberal, logical, capable of holding real values, without natural suspicion; the latter are none of these things. Out of what collective and yet particularized view of the Orient do these statements emerge? What specialized skills, what imaginative pressures, what institutions and traditions, what cultural forces produce such similarity in the descriptions of the Orient to be found in Cromer, Balfour, and our contemporary statesmen? II Imaginative Geography and Its Representations: Orientalizing the Oriental Strictly speaking, Orientalism is a field of learned study. In the Christian West, Orientalism is considered to have commenced its formal existence with the decision of the Church Council of ((50)) Vienne in 1312 to establish a series of chairs in "Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac at Paris, Oxford, Bologna, Avignon, and
Salamanca. Yet any account of Orientalism would have to con-sider not only the professional Orientalist and his work but also the very notion of a field of study based on a geographical, cultural, linguistic, and ethnic unit called the Orient. Fields, of course, are made. They acquire coherence and integrity in time because scholars devote themselves in different ways to what seems to be a commonly agreed-upon subject matter. Yet it goes without saying that a field of study is rarely as simply defined as even its most committed partisans--usually scholars, professors, experts, and the like -claim it is. Besides, a field can change so entirely, in even the most traditional disciplines like philology, history, or theology, as to make an all purpose definition of subject matter almost im-possible. This is certainly true of Orientalism, for some interesting reasons To speak of scholarly specialization as a geographical"field"is, in the case of Orientalism, fairly revealing since no one is likely to imagine a field symmetrical to it called Occidentalism. Already the special, perhaps even eccentric attitude of Orientalism becomes apparent. For although many learned disciplines imply a position taken towards, say, human material (a historian deals with the human past from a special vantage point in the present), there is no real analogy for taking a fixed, more or less total geographical position towards a wide variety of social, linguistic, political, and historical realities. A classicist, a Romance specialist, even an Americanist focuses on a relatively modest portion of the world, not on a full half of it. But Orientalism is a field with considerable geographical ambition. And since Orientalists have traditionally occupied hemselves with things Oriental (a specialist in Islamic law, no less than an expert in Chinese dialects or in Indian religions, is considered an Orientalist by people who call themselves Orientalists), we must learn to accept enormous, indiscriminate size plus an almost infinite capacity for subdivision as one of the chief characteristics of Orientalism--one that is evidenced in its con-fusing amalgam of imperial vagueness and precise detai All of this describes Orientalism as an academic discipline The "ism"in Orientalism serves to insist on the distinction of cope, not Its greater selectiveness. Renaissance Orientalists like Erpenius and an academic discipline has been its increasing (51) Guillaume Postel were primarily specialists in the languages of the Biblical provinces, although Postel boasted that he could et across Asia as far as China without needing an interpreter. By and large, until the mid-eighteenth century Orientalists were Biblical scholars, students of the Semitic languages, Islamic specialists, or, because the Jesuits had opened up the new Ludy of China, Sinologists. The whole middle expanse of Asia was not academically conquered for Orientalism until, during the later eighteenth century, Anquetil-Dul nd Sir William Jones were able intelligibly to reveal the extraordinary riches of Avestan and Sanskrit. By the middle of the nineteenth century Orientalism was as one could imagine. There are two excellent indices of this new, triumphant eclecticism. One is the encyclopedic descrip tion of Orientalism roughly from 1765 to 1850 given by his la renaissance orientale 19 from the scientific discoveries of things Oriental made by learned professionals during this period in Europe, there was the virtual epidemic of Orientalia affecting every major poet, essayist, and philosopher of the period. Schwab's notion is that Oriental"identifies an amateur or professional enthusiasm for everything Asiatic, which was wonderfully synonymous with he exotic, the mysterious, the profound, the seminal; this is a later transposition eastwards of a similar enthusiasm in Europe for Greek and Latin antiquity during the High Renaissance. In 1829 Victor Hugo put this change in directions as follows Au siecle de louis XIv on etait hellenist, maintenant on est orientaliste. "0 A nineteenth-century Orientalist was therefore either a scholar(a Sinologist, an Islamicist, an Indo-Europeanist)or a gifted enthusiast( Hugo in Les Orientales, Goethe in The second en dex of ow inc usive ar ienutatisn, haw becane sine the Couege of vienne is to be found in nineteenth century chronicles of the field itself. The most thorough of its kind is Jules MohI's Vingl-sept Ans histoire des etudes orientales, a nwo-polume logbook ofeverything of note that took place in Orientalism between 1840 and 1867? Mohl was the secretary of the Societe asiatique in Paris, and for something more than the first halfof the nineteenth century Paris was the could not have been more central to the field of Orientalism. There is scarcely anything doe Mowl,'s position in the Societe capital of the Orientalist world (and, according to Waller Benjamin, of the nineteenth centu (52) European scholar touching Asia during those twenty n years that Mohl does not enter under "etudes orientales. His entries of course concern publications, but the range of published material of interest to Orientalist scholars is awesome Arabic, innumerable Indian dialects, Hebrew, Pehlevi, Assyrian, Babylonian, Mongolian, Chinese, Burmese, Mesopotamian, Javanese: the list of philological works considered Orientalist is almost uncountable. Moreover, Orientalist studies apparentl
Salamanca.'" Yet any account of Orientalism would have to con-sider not only the professional Orientalist and his work but also the very notion of a field of study based on a geographical, cultural, linguistic, and ethnic unit called the Orient. Fields, of course, are made. They acquire coherence and integrity in time because scholars devote themselves in different ways to what seems to be a commonly agreed-upon subject matter. Yet it goes without saying that a field of study is rarely as simply defined as even its most committed partisans— usually scholars, professors, experts, and the like — claim it is. Besides, a field can change so entirely, in even the most traditional disciplines like philology, history, or theology, as to make an allpurpose definition of subject matter almost im-possible. This is certainly true of Orientalism, for some interesting reasons. To speak of scholarly specialization as a geographical "field" is, in the case of Orientalism, fairly revealing since no one is likely to imagine a field symmetrical to it called Occidentalism. Already the special, perhaps even eccentric attitude of Orientalism becomes apparent. For although many learned disciplines imply a position taken towards, say, human material (a historian deals with the human past from a special vantage point in the present), there is no real analogy for taking a fixed, more or less total geographical position towards a wide variety of social, linguistic, political, and historical realities. A classicist, a Romance specialist, even an Americanist focuses on a relatively modest portion of the world, not on a full half of it. But Orientalism is a field with considerable geographical ambition. And since Orientalists have traditionally occupied themselves with things Oriental (a specialist in Islamic law, no less than an expert in Chinese dialects or in Indian religions, is considered an Orientalist by people who call themselves Orientalists), we must learn to accept enormous, indiscriminate size plus an almost infinite capacity for subdivision as one of the chief characteristics of Orientalism— one that is evidenced in its con-fusing amalgam of imperial vagueness and precise detail. All of this describes Orientalism as an academic discipline. The "ism" in Orientalism serves to insist on the distinction of this discipline from every other kind. The rule in its historical develop-ment as an academic discipline has been its increasing scope, not its greater selectiveness. Renaissance Orientalists like Erpenius and ((51)) Guillaume Postel were primarily specialists in the languages of the Biblical provinces, although Postel boasted that he could get across Asia as far as China without needing an interpreter. By and large, until the mid-eighteenth century Orientalists were Biblical scholars, students of the Semitic languages, Islamic specialists, or, because the Jesuits had opened up the new study of China, Sinologists. The whole middle expanse of Asia was not academically conquered for Orientalism until, during the later eighteenth century, Anquetil-Duperron and Sir William Jones were able intelligibly to reveal the extraordinary riches of Avestan and Sanskrit. By the middle of the nineteenth century Orientalism was as vast a treasure-house of learning as one could imagine. There are two excellent indices of this new, triumphant eclecticism. One is the encyclopedic description of Orientalism roughly from 1765 to 1850 given by Raymond Schwab in his La Renaissance orientale.19 Quite aside from the scientific discoveries of things Oriental made by learned professionals during this period in Europe, there was the virtual epidemic of Orientalia affecting every major poet, essayist, and philosopher of the period. Schwab's notion is that "Oriental" identifies an amateur or professional enthusiasm for everything Asiatic, which was wonderfully synonymous with the exotic, the mysterious, the profound, the seminal; this is a later transposition eastwards of a similar enthusiasm in Europe for Greek and Latin antiquity during the High Renaissance. In 1829 Victor Hugo put this change in directions as follows: "Au siecle de Louis XIV on etait helleniste, maintenant on est orientaliste."'0 A nineteenth-century Orientalist was therefore either a scholar (a Sinologist, an Islamicist, an Indo-Europeanist) or a gifted enthusiast (Hugo in Les Orientales, Goethe in the Westostlicher Diwan), or both (Richard Burton, Edward Lane, Friedrich Schlegel). The second index of how inclusive Orientalism had become since the Council of Vienne is to be found in nineteenthcentury chronicles of the field itself. The most thorough of its kind is Jules Mohl's Vingt-sept Ans d'histoire des etudes orientales, a two-volume logbook of everything of note that took place in Orientalism between 1840 and 1867?' Mohl was the secretary of the Societe asiatique in Paris, and for something more than the first half of the nineteenth century Paris was the capital of the Orientalist world (and, according to Walter Benjamin, of the nineteenth century). Mohl's position in the Societe could not have been more central to the field of Orientalism. There is scarcely anything done by a ((52)) European scholar touching Asia during those twenty-seven years that Mohl does not enter under "etudes orientales." His entries of course concern publications, but the range of published material of interest to Orientalist scholars is awesome. Arabic, innumerable Indian dialects, Hebrew, Pehlevi, Assyrian, Babylonian, Mongolian, Chinese, Burmese, Mesopotamian, Javanese: the list of philological works considered Orientalist is almost uncountable. Moreover, Orientalist studies apparently
Gustave Dugat s Histoire des orientalistes de I'Europe du XIl au XIX' siecle(1868-1870)<is a selective history of major figures, but the range represented is no less immense than Mohl's Such eclecticism as this had its blind spots, nevertheless. Academic Orientalists for the most part were interested in the major exception of Napoleon's Institut d'Egypte, was much attention given to the academic study of the modern, or actual Orient. Moreover, the Orient studied was a textual universe by and large, the impact of the Orient was made through books and manuscripts, not, as in the impress of Greece on the Renaissance, through mimetic artifacts like sculpture and pottery Even the rapport between an Orientalist and the Orient was textual, so much so that it is reported of some of the early nineteenth-century German Orientalists that their first view of an eight-armed Indian statue cured them completely of their Orientalist taste. When a learned Orientalist traveled in the country of his specialization, it was always with unshakable abstract maxims about the"civilization"he had studied; rarely were Orientalists interested in anything except prov-ing the validity of these musty " truths"by applying them, without great success, to uncomprehending, hence degenerate, natives Finally, the very power and scope of Orientalism produced not only a fair amount of exact positive knowledge about the Orient but also a kind of second-order knowledge--lurking in such places as the"Oriental"tale, the mythology of the mysterious East, notions of Asian inscrutability-with a life of its own, what V.G. Kiernan has aptly called"Europes collective day-dream of the Orient. 24 One happy result of this is that an estimable number of important writers during the nineteenth century were Oriental enthusiasts: It is perfectly correct, I think, to speak of a as exemplified in the works of Hugo, Goethe Flaubert, Fitzgerald, and the like. What 二二 ork, how-ever, is a kind of free-floating mytholog Orient, an Orient that derives not only fr and popular prejudices but also from what Vico noelle the conceit of nations and of scholars. i h to the political uses of such material as it has turned up in the o Today an Orientalist is less likely to call himself an Orientalist than he was almost any time up to World War IL.Yet the esignation is still useful, as when universities maintain programs or departments in Oriental languages or Oriental civilizations. There is an Orie. -"faculty"at Oxford, and a department of Oriental studies at Princeton. As recently as 1959, the British government em-powered a commission"to review developments in the Universities in the fields of Oriental, Slavonic, East European and African studies.., and to consider, and advise on, proposals for future velopment. " The Hayter Report, as it was called when it appeared in 1961, seemed untroubled by the broad designat of the word Oriental, which it found serviceably employed in American universities as well. For even the greatest name in modern Anglo-American Islamic studies, H. A. R Gibb, preferred to call himself an Orientalist rather than an Arabist. Gibb himself, classicist that he was, could use the ugly neologism "area study"for Orientalism as a way of showing that area studies and Orientalism after all were interchangeable geographical titles. But this, I think, ingenuously belies a much more Despite the distraction of a great many vague desires, impulses, and images, the mind seems persistently to formulate what Claude Levi-Strauss has called a science of the concrete. A primitive tribe, for example, assigns a definite place, function, and significance to every leafy species in its immediate environment. Many of these grasses and flowers have no practical use; but the point Levi-Strauss makes is that mind requires order, and order is achieved by discriminating and taking note of everything, placing everything of which the mind is aware in a secure, refundable place, therefore giving things some role gto to i but t e cnes o the leic a w a estn fema in one soeiety s asymbol of grace and inentath r is sonc ation (54)
cover everything from the editing and translation of texts to numismatic, anthropological, archaeological, sociological, economic, historical, literary, and cultural studies in every known Asiatic and North African civilization, ancient and modern. Gustave Dugat' s Histoire des orientalistes de !'Europe du XII` au XIX` siecle (1868— 1870) 22 is a selective history of major figures, but the range represented is no less immense than Mohl's. Such eclecticism as this had its blind spots, nevertheless. Academic Orientalists for the most part were interested in the classical period of whatever language or society it was that they studied. Not until quite late in the century, with the single major exception of Napoleon's Institut d'Egypte, was much attention given to the academic study of the modern, or actual, Orient. Moreover, the Orient studied was a textual universe by and large; the impact of the Orient was made through books and manuscripts, not, as in the impress of Greece on the Renaissance, through mimetic artifacts like sculpture and pottery. Even the rapport between an Orientalist and the Orient was textual, so much so that it is reported of some of the earlynineteenth-century German Orientalists that their first view of an eight-armed Indian statue cured them completely of their Orientalist taste.'" When a learned Orientalist traveled in the country of his specialization, it was always with unshakable abstract maxims about the "civilization" he had studied; rarely were Orientalists interested in anything except prov-ing the validity of these musty "truths" by applying them, without great success, to uncomprehending, hence degenerate, natives. Finally, the very power and scope of Orientalism produced not only a fair amount of exact positive knowledge about the Orient but also a kind of second-order knowledge— lurking in such places as the "Oriental" tale, the mythology of the mysterious East, notions of Asian inscrutability— with a life of its own, what V. G. Kiernan has aptly called "Europe's collective day-dream of the Orient."24 One happy result of this is that an estimable number of important writers during the nineteenth century were Oriental enthusiasts: It is ((53)) perfectly correct, I think, to speak of a genre of Orientalist writing as exemplified in the works of Hugo, Goethe, Nerval, Flaubert, Fitzgerald, and the like. What inevitably goes with such work, how-ever, is a kind of free-floating mythology of the Orient, an Orient that derives not only from contemporary attitudes and popular prejudices but also from what Vico called the conceit of nations and of scholars. I have already alluded to the political uses of such material as it has turned up in the twentieth century. Today an Orientalist is less likely to call himself an Orientalist than he was almost any time up to World War II. Yet the designation is still useful, as when universities maintain programs or departments in Oriental languages or Oriental civilizations. There is an Orie.-tta1 "faculty" at Oxford, and a department of Oriental studies at Princeton. As recently as 1959, the British government em-powered a commission "to review developments in the Universities in the fields of Oriental, Slavonic, East European and African studies . . . and to consider, and advise on, proposals for future development."=' The Hayter Report, as it was called when it appeared in 1961, seemed untroubled by the broad designation of the word Oriental, which it found serviceably employed in American universities as well. For even the greatest name in modern Anglo-American Islamic studies, H. A. R. Gibb, preferred to call himself an Orientalist rather than an Arabist. Gibb himself, classicist that he was, could use the ugly neologism "area study" for Orientalism as a way of showing that area studies and Orientalism after all were interchangeable geographical titles.'" But this, I think, ingenuously belies a much more interesting relationship between knowledge and geography. I should like to consider that relationship briefly. Despite the distraction of a great many vague desires, impulses, and images, the mind seems persistently to formulate what Claude Levi-Strauss has called a science of the concrete.=' A primitive tribe, for example, assigns a definite place, function, and significance to every leafy species in its immediate environment. Many of these grasses and flowers have no practical use; but the point Levi-Strauss makes is that mind requires order, and order is achieved by discriminating and taking note of everything, placing everything of which the mind is aware in a secure, refindable place, therefore giving things some role to play in the economy of objects and identities that make up an environment. This kind of rudimentary classification has a logic to it, but the rules of the logic by which a green fern in one society is a symbol of grace and in another is con- ((54))