Philosophy

"Contrary to Said, Irwin reveals, the towering figures of Oriental scholarship tended to be unworldly, solitary figures, who, far from demonizing the Arab world or Islam, were sympathetic to it and were often regarded as suspiciously un-Christian by their contemporaries. Many were opposed to Western imperial designs on the Near East. Like scholars through the ages, they spent most of their time working diligently on often dry-as-dust textual or linguistic problems. They were also often slightly loony. The father of Orientalism, Guillaume de Postel (1510-1581), was, Irwin notes, "quite barmy": The "foremost expert on Arabic and Islam in Europe" also believed that a woman named Johanna was the angelic pope, the new Eve, the mater mundi who possessed X-ray vision that allowed her to "see Satan sitting at the center of the earth." Postel’s weird ideas led the Inquisition to investigate him, but the Holy Office, in a kinder, gentler moment, decided that he "was not a heretic, merely insane…

"Terry Eagleton argues that he does not, that Said was wrong about details but right about what really mattered. Eagleton mocks Irwin’s "gentle, ivory-tower" belief that Orientalism "is mostly a story of individual scholars" and derides what he claims is Irwin’s inability to comprehend Foucault’s ideas: "He gives the impression that he could recognise an ideological formation about as readily as he could identify Green Day’s greatest hits."

read the rest: http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2006/12/06/orientalism/index.html

As "Orientalism" was a foundational text at the school I attended in the 90s, I am glad to hear it is coming under some scrutiny, and even more glad that Eagleton is defending it still.