Restating Orientalism: A Critique of Modern Knowledge

296 Pages·2018·2.3 MB·English

by  Wael Hallaq

RESTATING ORIENTALISM
Restating Orientalism
A CRITIQUE OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE
Wael B. Hallaq
Columbia University Press
New York
Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu

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Cover design: Martin Hinze
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction
I Putting Orientalism in Its Place
II Knowledge, Power, and Colonial Sovereignty
III The Subversive Author
IV Epistemic Sovereignty and Structural Genocide
V Refashioning Orientalism, Refashioning the Subject
Notes
Index
Preface and Acknowledgments
T
he arguments of this book have been in the making for more
than a decade, particularly since 2009, when they became an
almost permanent staple in my course offerings at Columbia
University. Throughout these intellectual exercises, I have come
to learn that there is no single important aspect of modernity that is not
touched, to one degree or another, by the issues that the problem of
Orientalism raises. This, then, is a book that is as much about modernity
as it is about Orientalism, just as the concerns of my The Impossible
State were as much about this condition as they were about the state.
More importantly, and as this book intends to show, I have learned that
Orientalism euphemizes a series of theoretical and substantive inquires
that pertain to the constitution of the modern self as much as they are
about a supposed “Other,” historical or otherwise. Although I am largely
unconcerned with the modalities of Europe’s self-formation against an
Orient, the constitution of the modern self—whose sources certainly
transcend the Orient—remains for me a prime concern. In all the
colonialisms and genocides that it contributed to, Orientalism emerges as
a symptom, rather than the cause or chief culprit, of a psychoepistemic
disorder plaguing modern forms of knowledge to the core. I have learned
that in the very act of setting up this discipline as an analytical category,
Orientalism itself undergoes considerable diminution and expansion, all
at once.
The relative demotion of Orientalism complicates rather than simplifies
our analytical task. Although this field of discourse is symptomatic of a
pervasive psychoepistemic disorder, and as such could be treated like
any other field of knowledge, it remains the most obvious corridor through
which knowledge about the Other is transmitted. This crucial fact
imposes on us a situation in which Orientalism must be recognized as
both an accomplice to oppression and violence and, once liberated from
its present condition, a necessary bridge to a different conception of the
Other. The argument that those parts of academia that stand in the
service of modern forms of capitalism, colonialism, and hegemonic power
must eventually be made to vanish cannot, and must not, include
Orientalism without qualification.
The tension between rejecting and retaining Orientalism requires a set
of analytical procedures and resources that must reckon with certain
givens. Essential to these givens is Edward Said’s important work, most
especially his remarkable Orientalism. Although my book is not, at the
end of the day, about his work as a terminus ad quem, and despite the
sustained and vigorous—but hopefully fair-minded—critique I direct at it, I
record my gratitude to him and to his staying memory, and do so with the
full recognition of his influence on my early formation. Without his
contributions, I very much doubt that this book would have been possible,
just as much as his celebrated book has spun, and thus made possible,
an entire field of discourse. On a psychological level, Said provided a
model of nearly unmatched intellectual courage that has stayed with me
since 1979, when I was first exposed to his work.
I have incurred a large debt to several people whose suggestions
helped in sharpening the book’s arguments. Gil Anidjar and Sudipta
Kaviraj, both of Columbia, read the book with great care and provided
detailed critique. Their intellectual companionship has been enriching in
more than one way, and beyond the bounds of the present project.
Humeira Iqtidar, of King’s College, London, subjected the book to a
thoroughly constructive critique, from which I derived great benefit. No
less generous with his attention to an earlier draft was Omar Farahat, of
McGill University’s Law School. His warnings, among other things, as to
how some of the book’s arguments might be misconstrued were
invaluable, and will, I hope, minimize the sort of misconceived reactions
that befell The Impossible State. Dariouche Kechavarzi-Tehrani, one of
Columbia’s most brilliant students, read two successive drafts of the
manuscript, each time providing various insights and extensively
engaging me over cognate questions that have arisen in Latin American
postcolonial literature. Abed Awad read the manuscript from a jurist’s
perspective and offered a number of valuable comments. His generous
help and support over the years have been inestimable. During the year
or two preceding the writing of this book, I benefited from discussions
with Sohaib Khan, who was an exemplary and challenging interlocutor.
Finally, parts of the last chapter were presented as a lecture at Yale Law
School in November 2015. Gerhard Böwering, Owen Fiss, Frank Griffel,
Paul Kahn, Anthony Kronman, and Daniel Markovits engaged me in
intense, fruitful discussions during the lecture and afterward. To all
colleagues named, to Robert Demke for his competent editing, as well as
to the anonymous but perspicacious readers of the press, I record my
sincere gratitude. Needless to say, any error or weakness that this book
may continue to harbor remains mine alone.
A word about the intellectual genealogy of this book. Unlike most
commentators addressing the problem of Orientalism and other forms of
knowledge, I come to the present project from within the field of
Orientalism, having written in it and about it for nearly four decades. In
some strong sense, it seems to me that most issues I have written about
throughout this period, whether in the legal, historical, or philosophical
fields, have been a series of engagements that are woven together
around a single thread, despite the sometimes rather dissimilar materials
and varied scholarly problems I have studied. While this book is far from
being the culmination of my work, it is nonetheless the latest installment
in this project, which is to say that it continues much of the work I have
produced over the last two decades. What I say here therefore issues
from, and often presupposes, earlier deliberations, and by necessity I
could only invoke these deliberations with extreme brevity, if not merely
gesture to them with citations. Of particular relevance are two books that
lay the grounds for the present work, and the reader whose purpose is to
genuinely engage the present book is strongly advised to read these
works before poring over this one. The first of these, offering a fairly
comprehensive background, is Shariʿa: Theory, Practice,
Transformations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), while
the second is The Impossible State (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2013). Indeed, I regard the present book as a sequel to the latter,
both together making a particular segment of my larger project more,
though by no means entirely, complete. While The Impossible State was
intended to interrogate the Muslim self and its place in, and exit from,
modernity, the present project is about the place of the Western self in
the modern project, as well as about possible exits from this condition.
Yet, to confuse the two Selves, to argue that one entirely depends on the
other, will amount, by the logic of this book, to denying the particularity
and uniqueness, and thus autonomy, of cultures. I shall insist that while
the colonized Other and its historical legacies and traditions provide a
rich heuristic repertoire for ethicizing the colonizer’s self (partly the
concern of The Impossible State), the ultimate challenge facing Western
modernity must be met from within the Western self, whose first act of
self-liberation resides in the shedding of sovereignty over all that exists.
The two books therefore complement each other and stand within a
mutually enhancing dialectic.
Finally, a recommendation about the modality of reading this book is
in order. It so happens that the discussions and arguments it proffers
gain in expansion and density as the book proceeds. A case in point is
the theory of the author, whose full elucidation extends over the
introduction and the first three chapters. The same is the case with the
concept of sovereignty, to the elaboration of which the whole book is in
effect dedicated. There is no complete treatment of any central concept
that can be gleaned from a single chapter or part of the book. The reader
is therefore urged to suspend judgment of the merits of each argument or
concept until the entire book has been perused.
Introduction
I
Anyone familiar with debates on Orientalism comes to the realization that
there is a profound ambiguity in the meaning of the term that designates
this field of scholarship.1 Essential to this confusion is the matter of
classification. Is Orientalism an academic scholarly field or is it an
ideological construction, to be treated no different than one would treat
any bias-laden discourse? The assumption guiding both the question and
the quest for classification is that scholarly discourse is not and should
not be ideological, that ideology in fact stands at the other extreme end of
dispassionate, objective scholarship.
This is what seems to have driven one author, in his own quest to
avoid the “volatility” of the term, to “follow a simple expedient.” He
decided to employ the “nonpejorative” form “orientalism” to refer to the
“ongoing Western tradition of intellectual inquiry into an existential
engagement with the ideas, practices and values of the East, particularly
in the religious field,” whereas capitalized “Orientalism” would be
reserved for the “ideologically-motivated ‘epistemic construction’ and
‘corporate institution’ ” that Anouar Abdel-Malek, A. L. Tibawi, Edward
Said, and several others have criticized.2 Operating on the assumption
that there is such a thing as objective and biased Orientalism, this author
attempts to show that because there are “orientalists” (mostly Indologists)