Do you
>not think Marx -- and some Marxisms -- are infected by eurocentrism. I am
>with Amin and Meszaros on this, amongst others. You've yet to say what is
>notable, or what is the argument, in that first chapter.
Daniel,
I think Manjur is correct about Samir Amin. He critiques Said's Orientalism as "provincial" (!) in his Eurocentrism for reasons quite similar to those Yoshie has cited. For example, Said's inability to differentiate early European travel/explorer literature from the high point of imperial haughtiness in the late 19th century as Maxime Rodinson has done (referring here to Rodinson's Europe and the Mystique of Islam, which both praises and critiques Said's book).
Amin insists on the appropriateness of making critical comparisons between Islam and heretical Christian sects while (he argues) Said understands such comparisons to be inherently invidious, and compromised by orientalism.
Trautmann faults Said for an overly moralistic critique that does not deal adequately with the real contributions of the work of the early orientalists in the Indian context (and do note that the greatest orientalists often did not come from European countries with empires, complicating Said's relation between power and knowledge); moreover, Trautmann demonstrates that it is instructive to compare, instead of conflate, the orientalists and the race scientists who suppplanted them after the Mutiny.
I am not defending these criticisms (Daniel is surely right however that Orientalism criticism precedes Aijaz Ahmad's piece) because I don't have Said's Orientalism in front of me, and it has been a decade since I read it. But they do seem to be important criticisms that need to be engaged carefully and respectfully by the interlocuters. Also don't know whether Said's reading of Verdi holds up. It would be a great debate to follow; there was one here once regarding Wagner. It seems to me that Said's 'bourgeois' interest in opera is quite to his advantage and ours!
The debate the late Micahel Sprinker organized seems quite interesting.
As long as we are talking about great books as well, has anyone read Joseph Needham's four volume history of science and technology in China or his collected essays on the comparative study of science in China and the West. Seems that it surely belongs on the list. But, Michael, please note I have not read this work (only a few Needham comparative essays on the concept of natural law and the conception of time which are indeed tremendously stimulating).
Yours, Rakesh