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Home , Edward Said, Orientalism, Orientalism (book)

THE AUTHOR IN EDWARD , to “actions” which are the main unit of study in Bourdieu’s sociology. SAID’S : THE

QUESTION OF Introduction

1 Phrae Chittiphalangsri The mechanism which Edward W. Said deploys in order to set his concept of Abstract Orientalism in motion relies on Foucault’s concept of discourse or discursive representation, which allows Said to talk Edward W. Said’s Orientalism has long about Orientalism as a body of texts that been celebrated for its ground-breaking operates through a network of textual analysis of the encounters between referentiality. Said also relies on Antonio Western Orientalists and the as a Gramsci’s concept of , to form of ‘othering’ representation. The explain power-differentials between the success, undeniably, owes much to the use East and the West. Orientalism gains of Foucauldian discourse as a core power through the superiority of the methodology in Said’s theorisation of hegemonic culture. The subjugation of the Orientalism which allows Said to refer to East is achieved not only by direct the massive corpus of Orientalist writings coercion but also by partial representation as a form of Orientalist discourse and a through a collection of texts—ranging representation of the East. However, the from travel writings, novels, , roles of Orientalist authors tend to be religious tracts and historical documents to reduced to mere textual labels in a greater laws and codes—whose coherent density Orientalist discourse, in spite of the fact is able to claim the power to represent the that Said attempts to give more attention East and, to a certain extent, becomes to the Orientalists’ biographical sufficient to speak on behalf of the East backgrounds. In this article, I argue that without the East speaking for itself. there is a need to review the question of agency that comes with Foucauldian However, Orientalism has faced a number discourse. By probing Said’s methodology, of criticisms in recent decades. Some of I investigate the problems raised by the major attacks have come from David concepts such as “strategic formation,” Kopf (1980, reprinted 2000), who sees “strategic location,” and the writers’ Orientalism as lacking historical reality; imprint. Borrowing ’s Michael Richardson (1990, reprinted sociology, I Said’s notion of 2000), who attacks Orientalism for the ‘author’ by applying the question of absence of a reciprocal relationship /subjectivity raised by between the East and the West; and Sadik Bourdieu’s concepts such as “habitus” Jalal al-‘Azm (1981, reprinted 2000), who and “strategy,” and assess the possibility argues that Orientalism tends to of shifting the emphasis on “texts” essentialise the West in the same way that suggested by the use of Foucauldian Said accuses the West of essentialising the East for imperialist ends. Lisa Lowe 1 Lecturer, Department of Comparative (1991) questions the lack of heterogeneity , Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn in Orientalism with regard to the University .

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between British and French Said’s approach to . Like Foucault, Said sees language as a While many of these criticisms have battleground where speakers and societies drawn mainly on various aspects of compete for power and domination. Orientalism, only a few have mentioned Foucault argues that the formation of the problem of agency in the methodology discourse is subject to the use of power Said adopted in theorising Orientalism (e.g. which yields both repressive and Bové 1986). Therefore, the purpose of this generative effects at the same time. essay is to revisit Said’s methodology and Nevertheless, with the strong influence of its application to Orientalism. I will and the cult of the death of examine the impact of Said’s use of the author, to entrust discourse, which is Foucauldian discourse on the notion of theoretically deprived of agents, with a ‘author,’ or in this case the Orientalist generative function seems an awkward agents. I will then explore the problem of business. This problem can be seen in agency which becomes manifest as a by- Foucault’s concepts of “archaeology” and product of the unresolved tension between “genealogy.” In The Archaeology of subjectivism and objectivism defaulted in Knowledge and the Discourse on Language Foucauldian discourse. In light of Pierre (1969), Foucault explains the repressive Bourdieu’s sociology, I will critique control of discourse as a feature of Said’s concept of the ‘author’ through archaeology which we can see in Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and assess statements that attempt “to mark out and the possibility of reading Orientalist distinguish the principles of ordering, authors, who can, as I will argue, be exclusion and rarity in discourse” treated as active cultural agents and hence (Foucault 1969: 234). We understand their role pertaining to a form of habitus. discourse as a ‘limited system of presence’ in which only enunciations or the rarity of While Said did not refer to Bourdieu’s statements give meanings to discourse and work in his Orientalism , his explanation of not the unsaid. While archaeology refers to the transferable profession of the the formation of objective structure, Orientalists is similar to the concept of Foucault develops another concept called cultural agency advocated by Bourdieu. genealogy to account for the generative This paper does not intend to fill in the gap effects of discourse. In his later essay in Said’s methodology but rather to shed “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” (1977), light on the possibility of reading he explains how his use of ‘genealogy’ is Orientalism as cultural reproduction. In derived from Nietzsche’s view of the fact, I will argue that Said’s approach to development of morals through power. Orientalism, to a certain degree, already While the word tends to suggest the idea lends itself to the theory of cultural of ‘tracing back to the origin’, Foucault’s reproduction. Bourdieu’s sociology, also genealogy does not seek to establish a known as ‘generative structuralism,’ linear development of historical events. complements what critics view as a On the contrary, Foucault uses genealogy methodological shortcoming by shedding to deconstruct that very linearity that is light on a more dynamic sociological central to the traditional way of writing approach, as opposed to a usually held history—as he puts it, genealogy “seeks to ‘static’ discourse. makes visible all of those discontinuities

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that cross us” (1977: 162). However, the root of power and deconstruct Foucault’s notion of genealogy, as David precisely the discursive rules which situate Eick points out, remains a ‘hazy’ it (Eick 1999: 88). distinction from the concept of archaeology. It is questionable that Following Foucault’s archaeology, Said genealogy really has a generative function bases his argument on a network of texts that archaeology does not offer, when, in which forms a web of interrelated fact, one can argue that archaeology can discourse. Orientalism is a concept which pinpoint the same problem of historical works through its textual re-presence in discontinuity. Furthermore, Foucault does which stories, accounts and memoirs re- not explain if one needs to venture into the enact the presence of thoughts and realm of the unsaid, the absent, the concepts about the Orient as a textual unannounced, in order to reconstruct presence, which in turn marks itself as genealogy. If so, it would also call into representation in written format. Said’s question the need to inquire into the Orientalism , together with the subsequent subjective mode of the absent, which is book Culture and (1993) what Foucault excludes in theorising which is a postcolonial expansion of his discourse and archaeology for “[t]he thesis in the former, are an archaeological analysis of statements operates therefore project that attempted to map out the without reference to a cogito” (Foucault discursive representations of the Orient 2004: 138). Simon During raises the same and the colonies by the West and the problem in his article “Genealogy, empires. In the Foucauldian manner, Said Authorship, Power”: traces how the images of the West’s are constructed and distinguished through Where does this system of a rarefaction and objectification of constraint end? Where does the statements that provides a ground for positive programme of enabling investigating the representations of the the “unsayable or unsaid” to speak, Orient and the colonies. Wolfgang Iser begin? To give prisoners, gays, the (2006) notes the strong influence of colonized or the marginal a voice Foucauldian discourse in Said’s Culture is also to demand of them their and Imperialism : “truth,” to suppose that they are the originating subjects of a Edward Said’s postcolonial specific, more or less univocal, discourse, as developed in his book “voice,” and therefore, to some Culture and Imperialism , works as degree at least, to call them into an imposition in the Foucauldian that de-centred centre which sense on both colonial and constitutes the (post)modern world. anticolonial discourse. These are (During 1992: 127) the “objects” to be charted and it is this tripartite relationship through In effect, Foucault’s critics, such as which postcolonial discourse gains Dreyfus and Rabinow, see the concepts of salience. Hence the latter assumes archaeology and genealogy as incompatible, a critical position toward what it with archaeology encapsulated by the operates upon, although it has the statements and governing rules of same structure as the discourse on discourse and genealogy seeking to trace which it focuses its power. It is

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also marked by the same discourse about the faraway land. The rarefaction that distinguishes all Orientalist narrative which Said explores discourse, which are only at great length is the style of two French differentiated from one another by Orientalist scholars who engaged in the motivation that causes their studies in the nineteenth century — respective restrictions. (Wolfgang Silvestre de Sacy (1758–1838) and Ernest 2006: 175–176) Renan (1823–1892). Said identifies two themes in Sacy’s works and approaches to Similarly, in Orientalism , discourse is studying : one is his described as consisting of collected endeavour to become champion of Arabic statements on the Orient, but Said adds scholarship through his various political that it operates on two principal concepts roles, namely, as resident Orientalist at the which Said calls strategic location and French Foreign Ministry (Said 1979: 124), strategic formation . These two terms, and the other is his ‘dedicated sense of while they rely on discursive formation as pedagogic and rational utility’—the latter a central theoretical tool, reintroduce the theme is derived from Sacy’s role as ‘author’ into the analysis of power by professor of Arabic at the celebrated incorporating the presence of the author Collège de France and his utilitarian into the formation of texts: approach to the selection of Arabic poems in his Chrestomathie Arabe (1806). These My principal methodological two themes inform Sacy’s position as an devices for studying authority here Orientalist who strives to make his work are what can be called strategic useful to the French public through his location , which is a way of status as an Arabic specialist. Said argues describing the author’s position in that Sacy’s dedicated and utilitarian a text with regard to the Oriental approaches to his works can be seen in material he writes about, and texts bearing his name. strategic formation , which is a way of analyzing the relationship As for Renan, Said derives the theme of between texts and the way in his Orientalism from Renan’s contribution which groups of texts, types of of philology to Orientalist scholarship in texts, even textual genres, acquire France. Renan is identified as the mass, density, and referential trendsetter who imposed on the study of power among themselves and Oriental languages a scientific methodology, thereafter in the culture at large. in which language is broken down into (Said 1979: 20) units that can be categorised and compared in an objective manner. In this way, Said Said deploys strategic location as an places these authors/Orientalists in the text, extension to discourse: the author is seen and reads their presence as a personal as using the text to locate his position vis- imprint in the text; this is the point at à-vis the Orient. By ‘locating’, Said is which Said claims to depart from the referring to the author’s choice of discursive method of Foucault, to whom narrative styles, themes, images and motifs he admits being greatly indebted: which are woven into the particular way of presenting the Orient to the audience. This Yet unlike , to is how Orientalists construct their whose work I am greatly indebted,

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I do believe in the determining finds subjectivist modes of knowledge, imprint of individual writers upon such as and aesthetics, to be the otherwise anonymous collective focusing too much on personal accounts, body of texts constituting a especially individual understanding, rather discursive formation like than the external conditions which shape Orientalism.’ (Said 1979: 23) or influence public mentality. Having dealt with the problem of this objective/ For Said, individual names play an subjective contradiction, Bourdieu tries to important part in providing ‘labels’ and break away from relying on either mode of links to which other texts can refer. The knowledge. His sociology is a dialectically example that occurs quite frequently interactive mode of knowledge production throughout his book is how Edward which does not confine itself to either the William Lane’s Manners and Customs of objective or the subjective but rather the Modern Egyptians (1836) became a integrates functions of both objective major reference for writers about the structure and experiential production (See Orient such as Nerval, Flaubert and Bourdieu 1972, 1990a, 1990b, 1993a, Richard Burton. Lane’s authority can be 1993b, 1998). Bourdieu’s break with viewed as indispensable and it gives exclusive subjectivism or exclusive credibility to whoever cites him in their objectivism yields a new type of mediation works. The image of during the which he calls practice —an act which nineteenth century is therefore a product links social agents with social structures. of textual referentiality, in which each text David Swartz (1997: 58) suggests that looks to other texts for reference in terms Bourdieu’s introduction of a mediating of information and authority, through device called for an epistemological break labels carrying the names of individuals. which resulted in Bourdieu’s investigation of two questions. The first is how practice Critiquing Said’s ‘Author’ from and structure inform each other Bourdieu’s perspective reciprocally; practices by social agents constitute social structures and, in turn, are

determined by them. Such a relationship While the author seems to gain more can be seen in the concept of habitus in presence in Said’s textual analysis than in which Bourdieu combines actions by Foucault’s classic discourse, the role of the social agents with structural factors of author is still limited: Said tends to treat their society. The second is in the way authors as being part of the text rather theoretical and practical knowledge should than text producers. This points to the be handled by social scientists. Bourdieu’s problem of the role of agents in relation to sociology is a response to the notion of the structures, which, as Eick points out, is not ‘disinterestedness’ of scholars and their elaborated in Foucault’s usage of so-called ‘object of study.’ Bourdieu discourse or archaeology, and the contends that the academic tradition, generative function of Foucault’s notion of especially in the social sciences, has genealogy remains largely abstract. become absorbed in a theoretical approach Bourdieu sees the problem as bringing to the point at which theory itself has structuralist theory to an impasse— become the sole narrative of a social event, structuralism is unable to go beyond a no matter how varied each single context treatment of knowledge confined to appears to be. Bourdieu’s concern is that objective structure alone. Bourdieu also

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scholars lack reflexive vigilance towards While Foucault is generally associated practical knowledge and are likely to with structuralism, we may hold that he subscribe to a type of academic ‘narrowly’ escaped the objectivist disinterestedness that divides sociological approach that dominates structuralism in from practical reality. Yet it is that he was aware of the genealogy of still important for researchers to have a discourse through the generative effect of conceptual which is able to agency as we can see in the works after capture and theorise social patterns in a The Archaeology of Knowledge such as critical manner. From this direction, “Discourse on Language” (1971), Bourdieu developed an approach to Discipline and Punish (1975), The Will to sociological research which he terms Knowledge (1976–the first volume of The “reflexive sociology,” a theory that aims to History of Sexuality ). However, while make scholars aware of the ‘scholastic Foucault tried to trace the genealogy of fallacy’ of detaching academic tradition ideology, power, sexuality and explain the from the social world. ‘history of the present,’ the motivation of those agents or carriers of these values Structuralism, especially that of Lévi- were ‘left out’ and this has subjected Strauss and Althusser, is criticised by Foucault to a great deal of criticism. Bourdieu as engaging in objectifying Charles Taylor, one of his severest critics, social events into reductionistic structures attacked Foucault for an ‘unintelligible’ which dissociate the written report from account of history which fails to recognise social reality. Sameh F. Hanna points out the ‘purposeful actions’ of agents whose that such a gap is the result of the roles in shaping cannot easily objective implementation of clear-cut be dismissed (During 1992: 137). Said is structuralist binary oppositions, which aware of the importance of the experiential leads to the omission of agency—the mode of production and the problem of cause of the structuralist scholastic fallacy. academic disinterestedness, for, as he states in the introduction to Orientalism , This neat delineation of the social his life as an Arab Palestinian living in the phenomenon which underlies the US does make him a part of the whole concept of ‘structure’ purportedly project of Orientalism, as someone living provides a tool for describing and with the impact of Orientalist discourse. predicting phenomena, but in fact This has allowed him to incorporate his it constrains social reality within personal belief into his academic pursuit: deterministic patterns by means of which all phenomena are projected My own experiences of these as exact actualisations of the matters, in part, made me write structuralist model. To further this book. The life of an Arab consolidate the objectivist character Palestinian in the West, particularly of their model, structuralists in America, is disheartening. There confine themselves to describing exists here an almost unanimous the material reality of the social consensus that politically he does world, excluding the social agents’ not exist, and when it is allowed representations of this reality. that he does, it is either as a (Hanna 2006: 41) nuisance or as an Oriental…The nexus of knowledge and power

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creating “the Oriental” and in a between the East and the West since the sense obliterating him as a human 1950s, when the East was seen as political being is therefore not for me an threat. The rise of and exclusively academic matter. Yet in Russia, and South it is an matter of some East prompted the US to establish very obvious importance. I have programmes in universities, been able to put to use my and Said’s Orientalism project aims to humanistic and political concerns trace this kind of political construction of for the analysis and description of the East which has been conducted under a very worldly matter, the rise, the dominant light of Western imperialism. development and consolidation of It is not Said’s intention to decide whether Orientalism. Too often literature such an act should be considered as an and culture are presumed to be attempt to rewrite, or produce, an politically, even historically, “inventory” (1979: 26): his goal is, rather, innocent; it has regularly seemed to enunciate the unexamined discourse otherwise to me and certainly my which permeates his life culturally and study of Orientalism has convinced politically. me (and I hope will convince my literary colleagues) that society Like Bourdieu, Said is aware of the need and literary culture can only be to deploy both subjective and objective understood and studied together. modes of knowledge: he relies on (1979: 27, original italics) discourse as a basis on which textual representation gains shape and density; Said does not deny his ideological agenda Said also adds the authorial perspective on when theorising Orientalism. His status as discursive formation which allows him to an Arab Palestinian informs his perception understand the relationship between text of the Western discourse on the oriental, and author. Yet, in my view, the text- especially Islam, and, to be fair to Said, he author connection receives insufficient does not pretend to assume a neutral, theoretical elaboration from Said. This academic position as an ‘extreme’ problem can be analysed in two steps. structuralist would. Said’s unhesitant adoption of such a position is derived from Firstly, in conforming to the discourse Gramsci’s notion of “inventory” in his model and establishing Orientalism as a Prison Notebooks (1929–1935). Gramsci’s network of interconnected texts, it is inventory refers at the same time to an inevitable that Said should follow the line individual’s stocktaking of his or her of approach established by Foucault which consciousness and the record of one’s makes him treat discourse as mere accumulated history: when one starts with representation . The emphasis on critical observation, one cannot escape representation as an object of study is a one’s own historical traces which imbue result of his attempt to avoid labelling one’s identity “without leaving an Orientalism as ‘truth’. Said argues even inventory” (Said 1979: 25). Said’s more fervently in his 1994 “Afterword” personal history as an Arab immigrant that Orientalism is necessarily ‘outside’ may serve as his starting point, but he the Orient, and that its representation, himself views his life in the West as mainly in the form of written documents, deeply influenced by the political tension is not the Orient itself in all its reality.

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Such exteriority is what enables literary and that his Orientalism to circulate as a symbol which Orientalist discourse is ahistorical , since it stands for the Orient. Yet Orientalism was treats different historical events with the widely misread by the academic and same logic (Kopf 2000: 199). These general public as a ‘true’ account of the criticisms are made on the basis that there West’s hostile sentiment towards the East, is no clear distinction between the a claim which is strongly denied in Said’s structure of discourse and the agent’s “Afterword.” The indispensable function subjective involvement, as well as of representation and the exteriority of between Said’s own interpretation and discourse, nevertheless, cause a kind of historical fact. Hardly any critique credits theoretical glitch in which the Said for his attempt to incorporate the consideration of individual experience experiential aspect of agency into the cannot be properly integrated. Said could structure of Orientalist discourse. only reduce agency and subjective experience into what I call the textual Secondly, the absence of a concrete presence of the author . The life and works theorisation of the objective/subjective of many Orientalists are treated by Said as dialectics shows that Said does not text , which is arguably nothing more than sufficiently explore the notion of the a ‘representation’ of the author. Such is Orientalists’ which enables the case with Sacy and Renan whose life them to speak for, or on behalf of, the and work are treated by Said as textual Orient. While he does present the imprints in the discourse of French connection between the status of Orientalism. Their presence is perhaps too Orientalists and their affiliation to political readily assumed as texts, from which we, and academic institutions, this relationship after all, do not know why and how they is rather treated as a given and still leaves came to gain the position they occupied one wondering how Orientalists come to and from which they spoke. This problem possess enough power to legitimate or points to Said’s lack of elaboration on the certify their knowledge of the East. The process which Orientalists need to go underdeveloped rationale of the through in order to gain the power to relationship between the author and his speak for the Orient and also to his environment raises the problem of the overemphasis of representation, or the end origin of power and legitimacy, for which product, which forms the Orientalist discourse alone cannot provide the discourse. This tension between upholding appropriate analytical tool. Paul A. Bové discursive exteriority without omitting the also voices his concern about the lack of author’s textual imprint has become the analysis of the social reality surrounding weak point on which Said’s attackers often Orientalists: pick, of whom the most severe was Michael Richardson in 1990, when he The problematic nature of the accused Said of “situating his critique in “author” rarely leads Said away the realm of ideas divorced from concrete from critical tactics that themselves relations of living” (Richardson 2000: rest upon the presumed coherence 209). David Kopf criticises Said’s and identity of the “subjects.” He methodology from a historian’s rarely analyzes in any detail the perspective, arguing that the way in which constitutive material and Said studies Orientalism belongs to institutional realities in which

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these “authors” work. As a result, whole Orient together in one single when Said claims that individual ‘discipline’, as well as by rethinking the writers modify the tradition, he is, relationship between social agency and like [T.S.] Eliot, 2 whom he institution. In fact, Said develops a follows on this, weakly echoing concept similar to that of Foucault’s some form of a “genius” or “great institution, which he mentions in The man” theory of history. (Bové World, the Text and the Critic (1983). It is 1986: 27) the notion of affiliation , which entails the status of writers (in this case critics) and The problem of such an unexplored texts, together with their relationship to the relationship between the author (agency) social conditions of the societies in which and discourse (structure) can be seen in they live. Affiliation is “what enables a Said’s over-reliance on Foucault’s model text to maintain itself as a text and this is of institution and discipline. In The Birth covered by a range of circumstances: of the Clinic (1973), Foucault traces how status of the author, historical moment, those in the medical profession gain power conditions of publication, diffusion and over the public through their medical gaze, reception, values drawn upon, values and which allows them to observe and talk ideas assumed, a framework of wisely about the human physical consensually held tacit assumptions, condition; Foucault argues that the public presumed background, and so on and on” perception of doctors has been constructed (Said 1983: 17 4–175). This meaning of through this ‘gaze’ and statements affiliation, Randal Johnson remarks, seems perpetuated around this profession, which, to be similar to Bourdieu’s model of field, purportedly, explain how doctors maintain habitus and trajectories since it places their power through the establishment of writers and their texts at the centre of a medical discipline and the clinical complex system of cultural relationships. institution. Similarly, in Discipline and However, Johnson also points out that Punish (1977), Foucault explains how although “at first glance similar to legal punishment in the modern era has Bourdieu’s model, Said’s formulation is given rise to professions connected with largely intuitive and ultimately vague, and the act of disciplining, such as it never really inquires into the socially psychologists, programme facilitators and and historically constituted institutional parole officers. framework which, in fact, sustains literary practice. Nor does it ever inquire into the While it is rational to see a connection objective position that criticism itself— between the rise of the West’s interest in and therefore the critic—occupies in the the Orient and the birth of Orientalism as a field of social relations” (Johnson 1993: career, Orientalism does not completely fit 18–9). into the discipline/institution model set out by Foucault. The problem may well be It is therefore necessary to turn the resolved by a reassessment of the role of intuition and vagueness of such a institutions in a specific socio-cultural relationship into a systematic framework context, in order to avoid lumping the which focuses on the question of legitimacy , a property which enables us to question why agents come to have the 2 Bové here refers to T.S. Eliot’s notion of power to speak for or represent something, “Tradition and the Individual .”

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where or who is the source of power of text. The insistence on exteriority places which is able to grant legitimacy to agents emphasis on the ‘end product’ rather than and how that legitimacy is maintained and tracing back to the process. This is the passed on to the next generation of agents. point at which I seek to offer an alternative To put these statements into the context of analysis of the role of the author in Orientalism, we may ask: what quality Orientalism by borrowing Bourdieu’s enables Orientalists to carry out their work concept of agency and social structures. as legitimate cultural reproduction 3 and what imbues their studies with the The first point to be considered is that authority to represent the Orient in the Said’s conceptualisation of the author’s target culture? This is where Bourdieu’s textual presence does share something sociological model can provide answers to with Bourdieu’s concept of habitus . Said these agent-related problems. points out that, during the rise of imperialism, Orientalism became a The textual presence of the profession and the Orientalists’s career author and the orientalist’s was defined, certified, endorsed and Habitus transferable from one generation to : the break with discourse another through a social system which and representation maintained the validity of Orientalist cultural reproduction. The Orientalist As discussed previously, Said introduces profession, argues Said, was realised ‘the imprint of the author in the text’ to his through the continuous process of analysis of Orientalist discourse, with lexicographical and institutional particular reference to Silvestre de Sacy consolidation; a set of terminological and . While returning the choices was created to cater for Orientalist author to the text shows Said’s awareness usage in the same manner as scientific of the individual’s contribution to terminology and Orientalist lexicography discourse, the theoretical framework that was adopted by members of Oriental he borrows from Foucault’s discourse Studies institutions as part of academic restricts his object of study to only the tradition. To adopt Orientalism as a career exteriority of representation, which does was to take up impersonal usage of not allow him to go beyond the boundary Orientalist academic traditions, and it is precisely this impersonality of the discipline which allowed Orientalism as a 3 I use “cultural reproduction” by following career to be transferable and capable of Bourdieu’s use of the term in his book La being passed down to successive Reproduction : Éléments pour une théorie du generations of Orientalists (Said 1979: système d’enseignement (1970) and his article 156). “Reproduction culturelle et reproduction sociale” (1971). The word “reproduction,” as used by Bourdieu, has a strong association As for Bourdieu, the key terms for his with the systematic production of both cultural definitions of habitus are “durable, goods and the very parameters that determine transferable dispositions,” which refer to the mode of production itself. Reproduction, in the way agents internalise social structures this sense, refers to the propagation of both the and form a habitus as the result of an products and their conditions, which suggests interplay between subjectivity and an ongoing process rather than an enclosed objectivity. The concept of habitus was event.

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modified a number of times by Bourdieu sociology as “genetic structuralism.”4 The himself. The defition that is most reciprocal interplay of subjectivity and frequently employed can be found in his objectivity in habitus lies in the notion that The Logic of Practice (1990b): agents internalise the social patterns deemed relevant and the act of a system of durable, transposable internalising becomes habit-making dispositions, structured structures through inculcation. These habits, then, predisposed to function as argues Bourdieu, are no longer structuring structures, that is, as consciously selected but rather principles which generate and ‘predisposed’ or ‘prereflective’ habituation organize practices and (Swartz 1997: 101). representations that can be objectively adapted to their The question of internalisation and outcomes without presupposing a consciousness receives a rather different conscious aiming at ends or an interpretation from Said. In Orientalism , express mastery of the operations the discursive framework to Said’s project necessary in order to attain them. assumes that the subjective experience of (1990b: 53) the Orientalists is already incorporated into their texts. Let us take the case of While Said and Bourdieu recognise the , which Said uses as objectivity and transferability of social an example of how Orientalist academic positions, the way Said explains how traditions, such as impersonal terminology, Orientalists approached their new-found can be detected in Orientalist writings, and position is a far cry from Bourdieu’s explains how Lane incorporated his own complex characterisation of habitus . The narrative into a work in which the author key differences, apart from Said’s generally presents himself as a scientific discursive/textual approach, are the observer. Said describes An Account of the notions of the consciousness and Manners and Customs of the Modern internalisation of external social structures. Egyptians (1836) as striving to provide For Bourdieu, habitus is necessarily a “immediate and direct, unadorned, and “disposition,” a term which, as Swartz neutral description, whereas in fact it was suggested, combines two fundamental the product of considerable editing” (Said components, namely structure and 1979: 159). This is, as Said argues, the propensity , which imbue habitus with the typical Orientalist narrative style which is reciprocal capacity of “structuring the result of a predominantly scientific structures” and “structured structures”

(Swartz 1997: 103). Habitus is a form of 4 mental habit derived from and conditioned In the interview with Cheleen Mahar in 1985 Bourdieu identified his sociological approach by the surrounding social structures. It also as ‘genetic structuralism’ which combines the shapes structures through social actions concepts of field and habitus —the two conditioned by the agent’s perception of components that enable the cohabitation of an the world; one may see it as a structure objectivist and subjectivist structure of with a generative function—hence knowledge. The term ‘genetic’ comes from the Bourdieu’s occasional reference to his subjective creation of knowledge through habitus , while ‘structuralism’ refers to the field, or the objective conditions wherein knowledge is generated (Mahar 1990: 33).

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mode of study. For a work to be accepted literature; Disraeli, Mark Twain, and circulated in the scholarship of and Kinglake are three other Orientalism, Orientalists need to adopt an obvious examples. But what is of impersonal, objectivist mode of writing interest is the difference between which is believed to endow their work writing that is converted from with scientific reliability. The irony that personal to professional places the desire to present the Orient as a Orientalism and the second type, purely objective and untouched entity as also based on residence and the result of disguised efforts in editing, is personal testimony, which remains one of Said’s motifs that he uses to “literature” and not science: it is illustrate the ambivalent nature of the this difference that I now want to scholarship. While the Orientalists’ end- explore. products appear unadorned and devoid of personal voice, the whole process used to To be a European in the Orient produce this effect involves a high degree always involves being a of conscious choice —a kind of subjective consciousness set apart from, and determination which causes Orientalists to unequal with, its surroundings. sit patiently before their works, carefully But the main thing to note is the editing in order to make ‘their’ Orient intention of this consciousness: appear transparent. What is it in the Orient for? Why does it set itself there even if, as is Said further argues that this sort of the case with writers like Scott, consciousness also explains why Hugo and Goethe, it travels to the Orientalists always remain outside the Orient for a very concrete sort of Orient even though some Orientalists, experience without actually Edward Lane included, made the Orient leaving ? (Said 1979: 157, their residence. He points out that choices original italics) made by Orientalists regarding the Orient are always a separate consciousness; the For Said, the Orient is a kind of structure Orient can never be internalised into the that never gets internalised by the consciousness of a European; no matter consciousness of Orientalists, even though how much the Orientalists try to make it these Western writers reside in the very appear lucid and logical to the eye of the Orient they write about. Said cites an West, it still remains a detached entity. example from Lane’s account of the Said illustrates this argument by pointing Egyptian marriage tradition, which held out the dilemma of Western writers that Egyptian men of suitable age must travelling to the Orient in the nineteenth seek matrimony, otherwise they will be century: deemed disreputable. Lane then briefly recounts his personal experience relating Moreover, there developed a fairly to marriage in his work about the large body of Oriental-style Egyptians—his Egyptian friend, on European literature very noticing that Lane was not married, frequently based on personal offered to arrange a mariage de experiences in the Orient. Flaubert convenance for him, which in turn put comes to mind immediately as one Lane under pressure. Lane terminates his prominent source of such narrative abruptly with a period and a dash

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(Said 1979: 163). Said interprets Lane’s drawing a line between the Orientalist and personal narrative as an Orientalist’s self- the Orient. Lastly, the arbitrariness of his conscious detachment from the Orient. His interpretation can jeopardise the solid hermeneutic reading of Lane’s positioning exteriority of discourse that he claims to of himself vis-à-vis the Orient represents maintain as his object of analysis. an instance of strategic location , which, as Exteriority, or representation, is crucial to discussed earlier, is Said’s attempt to Said’s thesis because it keeps him safe marry discursive exteriority with from being criticised for being an experiential knowledge. While it is ‘essentialist,’ or making personal interestingly provocative to read Lane’s judgements about historical utterances. narrative style as belonging to the Going beyond the text by talking about Orientalist scientific tradition, it is ‘consciousness,’ in this case, risks falling questionable to interpret Lane’s reference from ‘critical’ to ‘judgemental,’ and to his personal account as a conscious again makes us wonder, as David Kopf determination to separate himself from the has remarked, whether Said’s Orient. My opposing view is threefold. hermeneutics can be used to analyse Firstly, Said risks ‘essentialising’ the West. historical discourse (Kopf 2000: 194–6). To say that the West remains a consciousness apart from the Orient in Said’s attempt to combine discursive turn shows that Said needs to assign a structure with experiential mode may not certain quality, in this case ‘scientific be successful but his concept of strategy is detachment,’ to the West which is an clearly an interesting move. Said, like essential quality that allows the West to Bourdieu, recognises the importance of distance itself from the Orient. strategy as perpetuating social actions. Nevertheless, we cannot deny that the Said sees strategy as a ‘bridge’ between distance between the East and the West discursive exteriority and the individual’s exists both in geography and social textual imprint. He uses strategic location attitudes, and Said has proven quite to explain how authors position substantially that the textual themselves in relation to their works on representations of the Orientalists’ the Orient, while strategic formation deals attitudes towards the Orient are governed with the way in which texts are linked and overwhelmingly by their scientific grouped together and how referentiality academic environment. Yet it is due to the among texts gains them power at the larger requirement of discursive coherence that cultural level. Said’s use of the term Said needs to use Orientalism as a “strategy” can be viewed as a way of portmanteau in order to hold a number of incorporating the individual’s comments statements together and thus gain the on, or criticism of, events or texts with the power of textual density. Secondly, while structure of discourse–and strategy is Said’s explanation for the distance is solid, necessarily goal-oriented, since it requires considering the strong academic tradition the devising of a stratagem that leads to an of scientific impersonality in the expected outcome. For Said, actions– nineteenth century, it cannot be denied that either personal or collective ones–pertain his reading of the Orientalist’s personal to the formation of Orientalist discourse as experience is arbitrary; Said’s rather ironic the combination of a calculated political assessment of Lane puts him in the same agenda, or “manifest” Orientalism, and an position, where he is always conscious of internalised perception about the Orient, or

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“latent” Orientalism. In this way, strategy of strategic location, which he consistently for Said is twofold: it aims at carrying out argues throughout his book, showing the a well planned and well developed project Orientalist’s attempt to understand the in order to achieve imperial causes and East, while remaining outside it. The this project is maintained by a ‘positive paradoxical inside/outside strategic unconscious’ which keeps the European location occurs as an overruling pattern imperialists believing in the imperial which governs Said’s interpretation of project. narratives about the Orient—a kind of “master narrative” that structures the But actions are not really Said’s unit of discourse of Orientalism. The strategy analysis. What Said studies is text and he relies hugely on hermeneutics—the detects strategies by analysing the relationship between the Orientalist and Orientalists’ and European writers’ “style, the East is only possible through an expertise, vision,” as we can see in a interpretation and convergence which section dedicated to Orientalism’s make the Orient appear sensible to the worldliness (Said 1979: 226–254). The Europeans. The following quotation is way he detects such strategies is by his Said’s explanation of this master narrative: interpretation of the writers’ styles, which, he further claims, reveal their vision of the The second method by which Orient and their native countries. One of Orientalism delivered the Orient the examples is his analysis of E.M. to the West was the result of an Forster’s narrative style in A Passage to important convergence. For India , in which Said argues that the decades the Orientalists had sympathetic narrative that Forster assumes spoken about the Orient, they had in order to portray the British prejudice translated texts, they had against the Indians is meant to bring the explained , , Orient closer to the West, but only for a dynasties, cultures, mentalities— brief moment, after which that narrative is as academic objects, screened off undermined by an anticlimactic ending. from Europe by virtue of their The last lines of the novel conclude with inimitable foreignness. The Aziz and Fielding, both declaring their Orientalist was an expert, like friendship, and yet–– Renan or Lane, whose job in society was to interpret the Orient the horses didn’t want it…the for his compatriots. The relation earth didn’t want it…the temples, between Orientalist and Orient the tank, the jail, the palace, the was essentially hermeneutical: birds, the carrion, the Guest House, standing before a distant, barely that came into view as they issued intelligible or cultural from the gap saw Mau beneath: monument, the Orientalist scholar they didn’t want it, they said in reduced the obscurity by translating , their hundred voices, “No, not sympathetically portraying, inwardly yet,” and the sky said, “No, not grasping the hard-to-reach object. there.” (cited in Said 1979: 244) Yet the Orientalist remained outside the Orient, which, The irreconcilability of East and West in however much it was made to Forster’s novel is for Said another instance appear intelligible, remained

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beyond the Occident. (Said 1979: agency and subjective interpretation 222) implied in what Said refers to as a ‘hermeneutical’ relationship. This is where By viewing that the relationship between we can start to view Orientalists as agents the Orientalist and the Orient as essentially who made choices according to their hermeneutical, Said makes interpretation habitus. They are not simply a textual the means by which Orientalists locate presence belonging to Orientalism’s themselves vis-à-vis the Orient. Yet this master narrative in which their actions and narrative of inside/outside strategic personal experience are flattened into a location can be criticised as arbitrary; it is coherent and well-surfaced discourse. not easy for everyone to agree on the extent to which the Orientalists ‘commit’ Conclusion to remain ‘outside’ the Orient or to what extent the Orientalists need to do this in Said’s Orientalism has long been regarded order to be considered ‘inside’ the Orient. as inaugurating the fields of cultural This criticism echoes Eick’s observation studies and postcolonial studies with its of Foucault’s discourse as a grand grand-scale analysis of East-West narrative rather than a tool. Furthermore, encounters. Following the dominant mode the ‘hazy’ distinction between the of criticism at that time, Said manages to generative role of agents and the objective explain the history of the representations formulation of structures in Foucauldian of the East by arranging the relevant discourse, as observed by Dreyfus and statements into a unified discourse.While Rabinow, are reflected in the uncertain his arguments are convincing and, to a location of inside/outside in which the large extent, ‘ground-breaking’, his notion Orientalists situate themselves. While of the ‘author’ seems to lack a proper being ‘outside,’ the Orientalists are able to ground on which it can be adequately ‘objectify’ the Orient from a neutral, developed. Orientalists are viewed as a scientifically acceptable position and yet textual author who left their imprints on they are always motivated by the desire to history rather than agents who actually grasp the ‘essence’ of the Orient—that is, experienced the East, made sense of the to experience the Orient from ‘inside.’ But encounters and finally produced influential it is hard to say where the ‘inside’ ends cultural records. This is not sufficient if and where the ‘outside’ starts, as there we want to pursue the issue of Orientalism seems to be no clear distinction between further since discourse may not be able to the generative function initiated by the explain certain aspects such as why the desire to capture the ‘inside’ of the Orient, Orientalists are conditioned into remaining and the attempt to represent the Orient ‘outside’ while desiring to understand the objectively from the ‘outside’ position. ‘inside’ and what process makes their The vagueness of the inside/outside works a legitimate representation. location is therefore open to interpretation Bourdieu’s sociology, as discussed in this by scholars. In this way, Said’s view of article, has strong potential in explicating ‘’ as the Orientalists’ act of what Foucauldian discourse fails to deliver. mediating between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ While another detailed analysis of the partakes of the ‘haziness’ of the distinction application of Bourdieu’s theory on between the two locations. Translation as Orientalism is needed, it can be said that mediation is, therefore, an act that requires concepts such as habitus and strategy , as

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discussed in this article, could be Conscientious Intellectual: Nietzsche, promising concepts that shift the object of Foucault, Said. in Power: study from texts to actions, which means A Genealogy of Critical Humanism , Orientalists can be studied as ‘players’ and pp. 1–37. New York: Columbia not just ‘labels.’ University Press.

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