> As for the image of Islam in the medieval world -- Rodinson v. Said -- I
> plead ignorance.
Me too.
I can say that the danger of trans-historicizing is
> matched by the danger of positing a clean and specific break, and by
> romanticizing the non- or pre- capitalist worlds.
Fine point.
> For Said, the "break" or shift occurs a bit earlier, in the C. 18, when
> Orientalism becomes grossly triumphalistic (as it is today, which is the
> key point).
But Trautmann argues that this does not fit Sir William Jones in
particular. Has Said responded to him?
>
> There is nothing transhistorical in that book (that I can see), and if you
> re-read it I think you'd agree.
Yes, the book seems worth re-reading esp after the attack on him (covered on the counterpunch web page) and Paglia's criticism for his blindness to objective archaeological achievement (she did not comment on the actual critical archaelogical work inspired by Said, but she probably knew nothing of it--i have seen it cited here and there).
> perceived to be "there." He was not dumping on dear old Aeschylus, nor
> assimilating the Greek World, nor totalizing.
Of course this is the last thing one would expect from Said.
> Also: Pace Amin, ES does not say comparisons are invidious. He slams the
> guy SA in effect defends (pp 63 of ES) for saying that Islam is "second
> order Arian heresy". Maybe this is unfair, I'd have to look it up, but it
> sounds bad.
Why? Islam has its roots too. Not that I know what an Arian heresy is other than to eat off the same thali with a dalit.
> cultures and societies of the Arabic and Asian worlds. In re. the former,
> he singles out for high praise: Rodinson, Geertz, and Jacques Berque.
Rodinson was a hero of Said's lamented hero Eqbal Ahmad, no. Wasn'it it MR that published a collection of Rodinson's essays?
> counts as _knowledge_ about "them". But there is no actual Orient, or a
> real orient/-als which they and we distort. But the core acts otherwise,
> as if they were Real, and in so doing, help make it so. Therefore, the
> Orient, etc is true and false, real and not-real or what Marx would have
> called, in a lovely, paradoxical phrase, "socially objective."
Yes, just like with 'races'. On the aribtrary entrenchment of such categories--and the importance of the state and the social sciences in the process--I think Bourdieu is stunningly brilliant. See his essay on the family as a realized category in a very recent book from Stanford U Press. Also the collection on classification, ed by David Hull and Mary Douglas which carries a subtitle on classification and the philosophy of Nelson Goodman. Something like that.
Best, Rakesh