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The debate on Orientalism began some fifty years ago in the wake of decolonization. While initially considered a turning point, Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) was in fact part of a larger academic endeavor – the political critique of “colonial science” – that had already significantly impacted the humanities and social sciences. In a recent attempt to broaden the debate, the papers collected in this volume, offered at various seminars and an international symposium held in Paris in 2010-2011, critically examine whether Orientalism, as knowledge and as creative expression, was in fact fundamentally subservient to Western domination.
By raising new issues, the papers shift the focus from the center to the peripheries, thus analyzing the impact on local societies of a major intellectual and institutional movement that necessarily changed not only their world, but the ways in which they represented their world. World history, which assumes a plurality of perspectives, leads us to observe that the Saidian critique applies to powers other than Western European ones — three case studies are considered here: the Ottoman, Russian (and Soviet), and Chinese empires.
Other essays in this volume proceed to analyze how post-independence states have made use of the tremendous accumulation of knowledge and representations inherited from previous colonial regimes for the sake of national identity, as well as how scholars change and adapt what was once a hegemonic discourse for their own purposes. What emerges is a new landscape in which to situate research on non-Western cultures and societies, and a road-map leading readers beyond the restrictive dichotomy of a confrontation between West and East.
With contributions by: Elisabeth Allès; Léon Buskens; Stéphane A. Dudoignon; Baudouin Dupret; Edhem Eldem; Olivier Herrenschmidt; Nicholas S. Hopkins; Robert Irwin; Mouldi Lahmar; Sylvette Larzul; Jean-Gabriel Leturcq; Jessica Marglin; Claire Nicholas; Emmanuelle Perrin; Alain de Pommereau; François Pouillon; Zakaria Rhani; Emmanuel Szurek; Jean-Claude Vatin; Mercedes Volait
By raising new issues, the papers shift the focus from the center to the peripheries, thus analyzing the impact on local societies of a major intellectual and institutional movement that necessarily changed not only their world, but the ways in which they represented their world. World history, which assumes a plurality of perspectives, leads us to observe that the Saidian critique applies to powers other than Western European ones — three case studies are considered here: the Ottoman, Russian (and Soviet), and Chinese empires.
Other essays in this volume proceed to analyze how post-independence states have made use of the tremendous accumulation of knowledge and representations inherited from previous colonial regimes for the sake of national identity, as well as how scholars change and adapt what was once a hegemonic discourse for their own purposes. What emerges is a new landscape in which to situate research on non-Western cultures and societies, and a road-map leading readers beyond the restrictive dichotomy of a confrontation between West and East.
With contributions by: Elisabeth Allès; Léon Buskens; Stéphane A. Dudoignon; Baudouin Dupret; Edhem Eldem; Olivier Herrenschmidt; Nicholas S. Hopkins; Robert Irwin; Mouldi Lahmar; Sylvette Larzul; Jean-Gabriel Leturcq; Jessica Marglin; Claire Nicholas; Emmanuelle Perrin; Alain de Pommereau; François Pouillon; Zakaria Rhani; Emmanuel Szurek; Jean-Claude Vatin; Mercedes Volait
Price: $87.00
Pages: 290
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: Leiden Studies in Islam and Society
Publication Date:
28 November 2014
ISBN: 9789004282520
Format: Paperback
“The editors and contributors, many of whom are associated with Le Centre d’Étude Turques, Ottomanes, Balkaniques et Centrasiatiques, Paris, and Centre d’Histoire Sociale de l’Islam Méditerranéen, Paris, should be complimented for having explored Orientalism from a fresh and fascinating vantage point. In doing so, they have steered clear of falling into the trap of either endorsing or refuting Said’s thesis. What they have achieved remarkably is their identification of the ‘surprising twists and turns as well as paradoxical relationships between intellectual metropoles of the colonial period and new peripheries’."
Abdur Rahim Kidwai in The Muslim World Book Review, 36:3 (2016).
Abdur Rahim Kidwai in The Muslim World Book Review, 36:3 (2016).
François Pouillon is an anthropologist at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris), specializing in the Arab World. He has published widely on orientalist painting and the history of travels in the Middle East, and is editor of a Dictionnaire des orientalistes de langue française (2008).
Jean-Claude Vatin, is a political scientist at the CNRS, Paris, working on the Islamic World. He has published several books on the Maghreb and on politics in the Middle-East and was among the first scholars in France to look critically at the Western knowledge of the Orient.
Jean-Claude Vatin, is a political scientist at the CNRS, Paris, working on the Islamic World. He has published several books on the Maghreb and on politics in the Middle-East and was among the first scholars in France to look critically at the Western knowledge of the Orient.