Napoleon and modern history of Orientalism in Said’s Orientalism
Said suggests the Egyptian Campaign 1798 of Napoléon I as the beginning point of Orientalism and emphasis on the important wok of the Description de l’Égypte that he believes is the birth of the modern view of the Orient :“the Orient was reconstructed, reassembled, crafted, in short, born out of the Orientalists’ efforts. The Description became the master type of all further efforts to bring the Orient closer to Europe, then to recognize it totally and—centrally important—to cancel, or at least subdue and reduce, its strangeness “(Said, Orientalism,7). According to Said scientific description and classification of the orient by French at the time of what Said calls the modern Orientalism was the way of classifying the orient in the same categories with the European but for the politic process of occupation. Said assert that Napoleon policy in colonization of Orient was successful, Napoleon has studied about Quran, Islam and Islamic society before he gets into Egypt and control it by important power of knowledge. Napoleon perused the Egyptian that he is by Muslim side and he is willing to fights for the sake of Islam, with them and he is not against it. So that, he wins the attraction of Egyptian and the Moslems in Egypt with no sort of force which made the process of occupying politically easy and successful. Napoleon gave his assistant Kleber “strict instructions after he left always to administer Egypt through the Orientalists and the religious Islamic leaders whom they could win over” (Said, Orientalism,82). That means to control over the orient by their own religious believes because it could be the only way for getting a successful control. So that, according to Said, After Napoleon, the Orient faced different experiences of control and occupation and in more modern terms from colonizers. “.. the occupation gave … modern experience of the Orient as interpreted from within the universe of discourse founded by Napoleon in Egypt” (Said, Orientalism,87). Said says, After Napoleon every language of Orientalism change to become more “upgraded” which means that language and “creation” are the great technic over control and management the Orient. Napoleon strategy and technics over occupying Egypt, hand an important project to Orientalists for continuing work on orient in the whole world.
Gramsci’s Theory of Hegemony in Said’s Orientalism
Antonio Gramsci is one of the Marxist theorists; His theory of cultural Hegemony engaged in analysis of Said Orientalism. In any society there are certain cultural forms that dominate over any other culture like European culture domination over the oriental societies Gramsci calls this form of cultural domination “hegemony;”. Gramsci separated society into two parts, civil society, “… like schools, families, ...” and political society, “state institutions …the army, the police…whose role in…direct domination” (Said, Orientalism,7). Theory of cultural hegemony providing the ideological and cultural superiority of European imperialisms. Said assert that “Culture” has an important position in creating power in the European society, power of certain thought that give European the legal right to conquest the oriental lands with the justification that this conquest is for oriental benefit; this is the way hegemony is established over Orientals during colonization. Said asserting that by manipulating Orientals culture, religion, life hegemony can be stablished; And this is how the colonizer could achieve their control over the Oriental people and speak for them through the cultural domination. The result of European cultural Hegemony placed the Orient culture, life in the inferior class in comparing to the European’s who are culturally placed in superior one. This cultural “hegemony “division identified “us' Europeans from 'those' non-Europeans (Said, Orientalism, 8). Gramsci’s theory of hegemony in Said’s study of Orientalism reflected an important view on oriental cultural control.
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Silvestre de Sacy and Ernest Renan instrumental in shaping Orientalism.
Edward Said also examined and analyzed the work of two scholars. Silvestre de Sacy and Ernest Renan. Said suggest them as instrumental in shaping Orientalism. Said describes how they gave the orientalism a new aspects different view in the 19th century. Sacy established a successful methodological assumption and made a link between oriental scholarship and public rule. In other words, he organized the whole texts of information in a way that it was useful for the future orientalist. That’s how the beginning of the modern Orientalism is often associated with Sacy’s name and according to Said, Sacy consider to be to the founding father of modern Orientalism “...that Sacy's name is associated with the beginning of modern Orientalism...” (Said,Orientalism,124). Sacy's writing is directed for the students, and his son 'C'est å toi, mon cher Fils, que ce petit ouvrage a etb entrepris'—'which is to say, I am writing (or speaking) to you because you need to know these things, and since they don't exist in any serviceable form, I have done the work myself for you” (Said124, Orientalism) . He organized and managed great information of Orient to be useful for another future orientalist. For that , he invented several principles when teaching his students including the principle of chrestomathy which shaped the research project, this principle satisfied the needs to present the orient by a series of representative fragments : “Thus Sacy's focus is the anthology, the chrestomathy, the tableau, the survey of general principles, in which a relatively small set of powerful examples delivers the Orient to the student …they reflect Sacy's powers as a Western authority deliberately taking” (Said, Orientalism ,125). Stacy’s works and anthologies were very important in the influencing of European who believed that Orientals need to be reconstructed and recreate to something different to be more under the western control. Sacy worked to canonize Orientalist thought and effectively verify the position of the Orient not as an unknowable divine, but rather as another object of 'European scholarship '(Said, Orientalism ,130).
Sacy is followed by Ernest Renan, who Born in 1823, He was a French expert of Middle East ancient languages and civilizations. Renan basically developed Orientalism into a cohesive body of knowledge.
He linked Orientalism to the field of philology since he was a philologist before he became interested in the area of Orientalism. He best known for his influential historical works and political theories; Renan and also known in rooting racist and prejudiced views against Orientals and stablish language far away from divine views and an affording them a purely human construction. He associated the orient with comparative disciplines as he believed that the science of orientalism and the science of philology have a very important relation. : “He associated the orient with comparative disciplines as he believed that the science of orientalism and the science of philology have a very important relation” Said criticized Renan by a racist quote from his book : “L’avenir de la science” where he stated clearly that philology is a comparative discipline possessed only by moderns and a symbol of modern and European superiority. thenceforth, every advance made by humanity is attributed to these European philologists. (Said, Orientalism,132). Said emphasize that Renan’s context had extremely solid influence in the study of orientalism and the Orientalist views of that time. Thus, they lost their human qualities and were no longer a fully natural , 'Semitic was not fully a natural object' because of the negative views Renan and he also insisted that “It should by no means be lost on us that Semitic was for Renan's ego the symbol of European (and consequently his) dominion over the Orient and over his own era”(Said,Orientalism,141). Said insisted that the Semitic context of Renan was symbol of his ego and European dominion.
Critical Notes on Edward Said by Irfan Habib and Paul Bogdanor
Habib in his article In Defence of Orientalism: Critical Notes on Edward criticizes argued that In writing Orientalism Said specified his attention on analysis of the “British and French traditions” and he omitted “German and other European orientalists” from his argue and the reason behind this exclusion Said said “since Britain and France had major colonial engagements with the East, their orientalist scholarship was different from that of other European countries” which is not convincing reason and Said needed to prove with a better and more “convincing reason” (Habib, 41).
Habib claims on the lack of logical documentation of Said by referring to his double misuse and conversion of Karl Marx’s Quotes in his book Orientalism. The first one was, “They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented”. By reading this quote, the readers would assume that Marx was asserting that Oriental peoples were not proper enough for representing themselves, so that the Europeans must speak and decide for them. But the truth behind this quote is that the quoted words are taken from a passage in Marx's 'Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte', where he did not speak of Eastern peoples, but about the poverty-stricken peasants of France at a particular juncture in the mid-nineteenth century Since these peasants could not unite, they were 'incapable of enforcing interest in their own name, whether through a parliament or through convention . They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented. Their representative must at the same time appear as their master”. Thus, how Habib asserted on unethical and irresponsible use of Karl Marx quotation by Said and the way he substituted Eastern peoples for French peasants. And in the second example Habib refers to Said convert of Marx's word 'representation', which has a political meaning about the representation of the French peasant in economic situation, into 'depiction' of the Orient. (Habib42)
Habib also claiming that Regardless Of Said's refusals that it was not his aim to defend “chauvinistic” or “conservative beliefs” in Asia, particularly in relating to the Islam, the reader could see that any crucial and historical view of Islam by any western scholar was yet analyzed by him as contemplative of western superiority and “ orientalist , colonial discourse”. Habib insisted that Said reaction was to an extent that the word” “Mohammedan”, used in 'Islamic' places, as in 'Mohammedan Law', is held to be an 'insulting' designation”. Habib argue that Said obviously neglected that countless Muslim scholars through the centuries had also spoken “(in Persian) of Din-i Muhammadi (Muhammadan faith), or Shari'at-i Muhammadi (Muhammadan law)”, with no aware of any insult meant in the use of the Prophet's name. However with the violent attitude of “modern Islamic 'orthodoxy'”, the word 'Muhammadan' was rapidly vanishing from books, and even from titles of works by dead authors : thus Goldziher's Mohammedanische Studien and H.A.R. Gibb's Mohammed- anism now reappear in print respectively as Muslim Studies (English translation) and Islam in editions by established academic publishers (Habib11).
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