The Anti-Islam Narrative in Diderot's Entry

McNair Scholars Journal Volume 21 | Issue 1 Article 15 2017 The Anti-Islam Narrative in Diderot’s Entry “Sarrasins” for the Encyclopédie (1751-1772) Amber Sackett Grand Valley State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/mcnair Recommended Citation Sackett, Amber (2017) "The Anti-Islam Narrative in Diderot’s Entry “Sarrasins” for the Encyclopédie (1751-1772)," McNair Scholars Journal: Vol. 21 : Iss. 1 , Article 15. Available at: https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/mcnair/vol21/iss1/15 Copyright © 2017 by the authors. McNair Scholars Journal is reproduced electronically by ScholarWorks@GVSU. https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/ mcnair?utm_source=scholarworks.gvsu.edu%2Fmcnair%2Fvol21%2Fiss1%2F15&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages The Anti-Islam Narrative in Diderot’s Entry “Sarrasins” for the Encyclopédie (1751-1772) Philosopher Denis Diderot’s monumental against Islam in “Sarrasins” are really Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des aimed at Catholicism. sciences, des arts et des métiers continues to interest scholars and students long It is equally well known that, with regard after its publication during the French to his source material for the Encyclopédie, Enlightenment. The Encyclopédie boasted Diderot, like many of his fellow over 74,000 articles, seventeen volumes Encyclopédists, borrowed liberally but of text and eleven volumes of illustrated cited haphazardly. In “Sarrasins” Diderot plates, all overseen by Diderot and his co- lifts entire passages from Jacob Brucker’s editor Jean le Rond d’Alembert. Topics Historia critica philosophiae. Thus, one ranged from newly discovered plants, could plausibly argue that it is his source, foreign nations, ancient civilizations, not Diderot himself, who is anti-Islam; architectural manuals, and all aspects of Diderot is merely guilty of careless science. It was a best-seller in its day, with plagiarism. an original print run of 4,200 copies. This said, I would argue that Diderot’s However, not everyone was enthusiastic criticism of Islam in “Sarrasins” is more about the Encyclopédie; King Louis XV pointed, more vitriolic, even, than that Amber Sackett and the Catholic Church repressed it of his entries on Buddhism, Hinduism McNair Scholar severely, and threatened its authors with and even Catholicism. To account for this death sentences for sedition and irreligion. phenomenon, I wish to examine critical Yet rather than abandon the project, theory employed by Michael Foucault and Diderot persisted. The completion of Edward Said and recent applications of it by the Encyclopédie in 1772 has been called John Lyons and Jonathan Tolan. Then we “a victory for the written word and 1 will be in an informed position from which triumph of the human spirit.” Indeed, to approach Diderot’s entry “Sarrasins.” the Encyclopédie is unquestionably a progressive document. It promotes First, I wish to discuss Foucault’s notions of Enlightenment values such as equality, episteme and discourse. Foucault’s concept tolerance of religious difference, freedom of episteme is notoriously elusive in The in all its guises, representative government, Order of Things; I will attempt to define it and human rights. Nevertheless, the thusly: hierarchical ‘unconscious’ structures Encyclopédie did have its blind spots.2 Non- ordering, limiting and dictating knowledge Europeans, especially Arabs and Muslims, and perception, and structures which are are defined in a pejorative manner. ultimately difficult to escape. Gary Gutting Ironically, though the Encyclopédists were helpfully conceives of episteme as the contemptuous of the medieval period, in “rules, beyond those of grammar and logic, his entry “Sarrasins,” Diderot appropriated that operate beneath the consciousness of David Eick and perpetuated a decidedly medieval anti- individual subjects and define a system of Faculty Mentor Islam discourse.3 conceptual possibilities that determines the boundaries of thought in a given domain Before we examine Diderot’s article, I and period” (Gutting). If episteme is the would like briefly to discuss a few ways source of the structure, discourse is the in which one might account for this product emanating from its confines. intolerance on the part of the progressive Foucault is more forthcoming with regard philosophe. First, it is well known that to his concept of discourse, which he often when Diderot criticized another explicitly defines in The Archaeology of religion in the Encyclopédie, his real Knowledge as “the general domain of all aim was the Catholic Church; in Old statements, … an individualizable group Regime France, it was safer to criticize a of statements, and … a regulated practice Japanese Buddhist bonze for duping the that accounts for a number of statements” superstitious people. In this way, Diderot (Lyons 29). In this way, Foucault’s and his fellow Encyclopédists artfully concepts of episteme and discourse exist wove criticism of the church and the synergistically. state into subjects that were acceptable to criticize, namely non-western civilizations. Appropriating Foucault’s notion of In so doing he could at once fool the discourse to understand the Western censor and wink at readers in the know. account of “the Orient,” Said’s seminal Doubtless many of Diderot’s strictures Orientalism remains influential. Said 54 GVSU McNair Scholars Journal defines Orientalism as the Western Through Western Eyes: From the Crusades Mohammed as a sexually motivated justification for dominating the Orient, to the War on Terrorism. Lyons charts the master manipulator, a bloodthirsty through exaggerating differences between development of medieval Orientalism to pagan who perverted Judeo-Christian Western and Eastern peoples, emphasizing what he calls the adolescent Orientalism doctrine. Gullible followers of his pseudo- exoticism and the distinctively inferior of the eighteenth century. Borrowing from doctrine, the fatuous Muslims threaten “Oriental” mind: what he dubs “Foucault’s toolbox,” Lyons Western civilization itself. In Tolan’s argues that discourse is what shepherds words, “[Europe’s] deep-seated hostility Orientalism can be discussed and medieval Orientalism into its adolescent and ignorance combined in the Middle analyzed as the corporate institution form and ultimately the eighteenth Ages to bring forth the most negative and for dealing with the Orient — century’s mature orientalism, a precursor pejorative image of Islam and of the person dealing with it by making statements for modern Islamophobia. According to of its Prophet” (163). He adds, “The same about it, authorizing views about it, Lyons, considerable power derives from aversion and the same prejudices (against describing it, by teaching it, settling the emotional nature of the anti-Islam Islam) predominated in Christian minds it, ruling over it; in short, Orientalism discourse, allowing it to remain pervasive. during the modern age [i.e. the eighteenth as a Western Style for dominating, The discourse changes little despite what century] as well. Theologians themselves restructuring, and having authority seems to be societal progress, because it were not generally better informed, or over the Orient. (Jary 4) “oversees the production and reproduction more nuanced in their criticisms, or more Said cites Foucault’s notion of discourse of statements as constitutive of knowledge sophisticated in their arguments than their as essential for understanding the as well as their subsequent transformation medieval predecessors. In fact, they did phenomenon of Orientalism: “My into a discipline” (Lyons 29). Lyons traces not refrain from printing old polemical contention is that without examining the formation of anti-Islam discourse back treatises.” Tolan is speaking of eighteenth- Orientalism as a discourse one cannot to the eleventh century; in his account, century Christians, but the same medieval possibly understand the enormously it persisted, omnipresent throughout Orientalism even surfaces in the work systematic discipline by which European centuries, dictating what can be explained, of the atheist philosophe Diderot. My culture was able to manage — and observed, experienced and defined with reading scrutinizes the anti-Islam discourse even produce — the Orient politically, regard to Islam (Lyons 5). Importantly, in “Sarrasins ou Arabes,” thus identifying sociologically, militarily, ideologically, Lyons points out that the authors how Europe’s existing narrative influenced scientifically, and imaginatively” responsible for fashioning the initial motifs Diderot’s portrayal of Arabs and Muslims. (4). Said contends that Western experienced little to no contact with actual Arabs and made a miniscule effort “Sarrasins ou Arabes, philosophie des,” scholarship, including that of the French appeared in the fourteenth volume of Enlightenment, is riddled with, and to formulate a genuine understanding of 6 the Encyclopédie in December 1765 as vitiated by, Orientalist discourse. Islam. Medieval manuscripts interwove “learned” information with popular an installment of what he conceived as Said pinpoints Orientalism’s cementing folklore and conflated disparate groups the “Histoire de la philosophie” series in the eighteenth century, but recently (Arabs and Muslims), labeling them interspersed throughout the work. historian John Tolan and sociologist interchangeably and incorrectly. While Spearheaded by Diderot, who contributed Jonathan Lyons have both argued instead Lyons, like Tolan, identifies various themes eighteen out

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