Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents [Hardcover]

Robert Irwin (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Overlook Press (1980)
• ASIN: B000N75PNC
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)

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44 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Counter Polemic, January 28, 2007

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R. Albin (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents (Hardcover)

This book seems to have been written in large part as a response to the late Edward Said's famous (some would say notorious) Orientalism. In the latter, Said argued the Orientalism (in the limited sense used by Irwin, though Said clearly had a broader use in mind), the scholarly activity of investigating the Orient, is inextricably bound up and indeed is a driver of Western racism, imperialism, and colonialism. Irwin disagrees strongly, and in this decently written book, provides some very good criticism of Said. Irwin attacks Said on a narrow but important front; is Said's account and interpretation of the scholarly tradition of Orientialism correct? Most of Dangerous Knowledge is a chronologically organized history of Western scholarly contact with Arabic traditions. Irwin limits himself primarily to Arabic studies because this is where Said concentrates his critique. Irwin makes a very good case that Said misrepresents this scholarly tradition and misunderstands much of its historic context. According to Irwin, and the examples he cites are convincing, Said appears to have done only a superficial job of examining this tradition, perhaps to the level of not actually reading some of the historic figures criticized. Its worth mentioning that this narrative is worth reading in its own right and that while Irwin has not produced an in depth intellectual history, his historical account is informative and quite readable. In the course of this narrative, Irwin addresses some of Said's broader assertions about the nature of Orientalism and the Western tradition. Most of these criticisms seem well founded. In the last chapters of the book, Irwin turns to specific discussion of other aspects of Said's book and some of his other writings. Irwin continues to be quite critical, and again his critique makes sense.

Its important to specify that Irwin, unlike some of Said's critics, does not have a contemporary political axe to grind. Said was best known in this country as an outspoken advocate of the Palestinian cause and critic of the state of Israel. Said's work has been attacked as much for his stands on these issues as for his scholarly work itself. Irwin is careful to specify that he shares many of Said's opinions on these controversial issues.

One area where I disagree with Irwin is his repeated statements that Orientalism was written in bad faith, that is to say, Said knowingly produced the distortions and errors characteristic of his book. I find this unlikely. Most great deceptions involve self-deception and it is likely that Said sincerely believed that his interpretations were correct. Said's defect doesn't appear to be insincerity but a lack of intellectual rigor and a preference for highly intellectualized constructs over real data. This conclusion would be consistent with some of Said's other positions. His proposed solution, which he advocated without any irony, to the Israeli-Palestinian problem was a single, democratic state. A proposal so impractical as to be almost humorous.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Quite Convincing--But a Good Read!, October 2, 2009

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The Conscience of Zeno - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents (Hardcover)

Irwin is a well-known critic of Edward Said and "Orientalism". Here he marshals his considerable intellectual resources to define a workable timeline of Orientalist knowledge in order to make his essential point that Said was a late comer to this area of studies and didn't even know very much about it, being politically motivated in his outlook.

Does he succeed? Not quite. No doubt Irwin is far more knowledgeable than Said ever was about the history of Orientalism, but he fails to deal convincingly with Said's essential point that Orientalism was a biased body of knowledge that existed mostly for the purpose of subjugating the East. Furthermore, his hatred for Said's ideas sometimes teeters on the edge of paranoia. Nevertheless, this book provides a detailed history of Orientalist studies in the West from the very beginnings of Islam to the modern reemergence of religious conflict.

12 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yet Another Exposé of Said's Villany and Feeble Mindedness, July 29, 2008

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Jazz It Up Baby - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents (Paperback)

Whatever specialists thought of Edward Said's Orientalism, published in 1978, the book had major impact on Middle East studies, as Nathan Alexander of Troy University points out. Its thesis was that "Orientalism" was a "hegemonic discourse of imperialism" that "constrains everything that can be written and thought in the West about the Orient, and particularly about Islam and the Arabs." Despite being panned by Arab and non-Arab critics, the book became a best-seller and its author a celebrity. Identifying himself as a Palestinian, Said launched vituperative attacks on his critics and demonized as "racist" those who opposed his views on the Middle East.

Irwin, Middle East editor of the Times Literary Supplement, accomplishes two things in his book Dangerous Knowledge. First, the book is a history of "Orientalism," or Western scholarship of the Middle East, India, and the Far East. Irwin begins with the ancient Greeks and concludes with a survey of Arab scholars writing on the Orient today. This magnificent survey covers French, German, Russian, Dutch, English, Latin, and Arabic scholarship. Irwin argues that while interest in the Orient was often influenced by Western Christianity, Western interest in the Islamic world was, for the most part, of negligible cultural significance. When scholarship on the Orient increased in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the "Orientalists" tended to either exaggerate the virtues of the Orient or be overt anti-imperialists.

Irwin's second purpose is to counter the "malignant charlatanry" that lies behind Said's Orientalism. It was unlikely, Irwin writes, that Said bothered to read many of the Orientalists who serve as his arch villains. In fact, Said knew so little of the field he was writing about that he spent much of his time insulting the scholar to whom he was unwittingly most indebted: Bernard Lewis. While Said frequently failed to properly attribute the sources of Orientalism, it is possible he was simply unaware of them.

Said's work, Irwin writes, has the merits of a good novel. "It is exciting; it is packed with lots of sinister villains, as well as an outnumbered band of goodies, and the picture that it presents of the world is richly imagined but essentially false." The real question posed by Orientalism is how it ever received acclaim in the first place. It is "a scandal and damning comment on the quality of intellectual life in Britain," he concludes. The same scandal, sadly, exists in the rest of the Western world, and especially the United States, whence the study comes.