HISTORY GONE WRONG? 417orientalist critique boils down to a lawyer's brief for the defense.
Lawyers are paid to do that kind of thing. Scholars have a higher
obligation.
In that regard, one must reject the implication that outsideness
disqualifies: that only Muslims can understand Islam, only blacks
understand black history, only a woman understand women's
studies, and so on. That way lies separateness and a dialogue of the
deaf. It also excludes the valuable insights of outsiders and lends
itself to racism. I knew a Boston Brahmin once who could not
understand why a student of Italian background would want to work
on Christopher Columbus ("I thought Columbus was Italian," was
the student's reply); and another who was surprised to find an
African-American doing Roman history—as though he were any
more Roman than the other.*
Discrimination in such exclusionary fields, moreover, invites a
loyalty test: is a given scholar on the right side? This applies both to
outsiders, who can "earn" acceptance by right-think, and to insiders,
where it overrides even color. Thus an Afro-American historian or
politician who does not meet the standards of political correctness is
an "oreo"—which is the name of a well-known cookie consisting of
a chocolate, cream-filled sandwich.
In the Middle Eastern anti-"orientalist" camp, the shibboleth is
anti-Zionism. Any indulgence for Israel is proof of error and
irrelevance, if not worse. Thus Edward Said and followers have
worked to exclude and denigrate Bernard Lewis, a leading authority
in the field, as "orientalist" and "essentialist," but also "too close to
the Israeli cause to be regarded as capable of impartial judgment."
To be sure, "Lewis has given as good as he has got. Nevertheless,
Said's critique has found a body of support among Western scholars,
while it has been echoed with relish by Islamists and others in the
Middle East."^38
On the other hand, some outside scholars qualify because they
agree politically with the gatekeepers. So Edward Said makes an
- I consider the outside-inside dichotomy to be the most unfortunate, anti-
intellectual aspect of the "orientalist" thesis. Interestingly, in an essay at self-definition
destined to appear as afterword to a new edition of the Said book, he says nothing
about this. Instead, he focuses on criticisms of the book's alleged anti-Westernism,
which he says take the form of one or both of two erroneous inferences: that orien
talism is symbolic of the entire West; and that, in distorting Islam and the Arabs, it is
by implication an assault on a "perfect" system. A vigorous defense against strawmen.
Said, "East Isn't East."