<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" http-equiv=Content-Type> <META content="MSHTML 5.00.2014.210" name=GENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"> </DIV> <DIV><BR> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I am slightly hesitant to jump into this debate, because of the unnecessary anger and insult it is generating (so much for democratic discourse).  But let me take my chance and add my proverbial two cents anyway.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I read "Orientalism" several years ago, almost immediately after it was published.  I also read Ahmad's "In Theory"</FONT> <FONT face=Arial size=2> a few years ago when it came out (95? 96?)   I don't remember the details of the arguments any more.  So what I am saying is largely based on my memory. As far as I remember, a major theme of Ahmad's critique of Said was that in spite of his (Said's) claim to apply a Foucauldian analysis, he failed to historcize "Orientalism."  "Orientalism", in Said's text, appears in an overarching, transhistorical, hence un-Foucauldian manner.  I don't know how I will feel if I re-read "Orientalism,"  but at that point it made sense.  However, if my memory serves me right, I also had a feeling at that time that Ahmad played a few cheap tricks in that article, for example quoting Namprudipad (spelling?) and other Indian writers on the Indian colonial situation and thinking aloud (textually speaking), he wished Said knew these works.  Since Ahmad and I happen to be from the same part of the world, I was probably (over?)reading a few cultural clues in the article and detecting a bit of intellectual dishonesty.  But that is probably not very relevant.      </FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>What is important,  in my view, is that if the crux of Said's argument is that Orientalism has had a presence in European discourse for a long time, long before capitalism, it may be a valid point, but not  a very theoretically interesting one.  OK, the west always perceived the orient as its civilizational other, so the point is....?  Most of the civilizations, historically constructed their "others" in other actual or imaginary civilizations through elaborate processes of exclusion, inclusion, erasure, remembrance, and forgetting.  Upto a particular point, the west was quite similar to other civilizations in that regard.   What is more important to me is to see how, at what historical juncture,  a link was formed between orientalism and the west's hegemonic position in the world.  In other words, at what historical point the othering of the non-West is supported by an elaborate system of political-economic and cultural dominance.  That is why locating "orientalism" within a historically specific analysis of modern Eurocentric capitalism is so important.  One does not have to be a classical Marxist with a base-superstructure metaphor to make this argument.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Samir Amin's "Eurocentrism"  is mentioned in the discussion.  Although Amin saw a parallel between his book and Said's, he also argued, I think legitimately so, that it is not until a very recent point in history that Europe developed a unified awareness of its own being.  In that particular sense, Amin, although draws from a more orthodox Marxist vocabulary and frame of reference, probably shows a greater sense of historicity that Said. </FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Manjur Karim</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>