Pomo Periscope XV: Orientalistic Pomo

13 October 2007 at 1:33 pm Nicolai Foss Leave a comment

| Nicolai Foss |

One of most influential modern disciples of pomo was the late Edward Saïd, a follower of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. His famous, highly problematic, but surprisingly widely accepted thesis in Orientalism concerns the (alleged) European construction of the Islamic orient as a something radically different from Europe, a construction that developed from the 18th century on and became an instrument of European colonialism and imperialism vis-a-vis the Orient. However, the construction was just that, a mere construction; “Orientalism” was at best a mirror of Europe and not of the Islamic “Orient.” (Here is an intro to the critique of Saïd, and here is a forthcoming bashing).

In his new book The New Orientalists: Post-modern Representations of Islam from Foucault to Baudrillard Ian Almond brilliantly turns the tables in this debate. Thus, he shows that if anyone can be said to be guilty of “orientalism” it is … Foucault, Derrida and Baudrillard. Foucault exalting Khomeini’s revolution, Derrida denying any essence that may be described to islam, and the leading pomo philosophers discussing each others’ positions on the orientalism issue rather than taking into account serious research findings from anthropology, sociology, etc. are invoked as examples of pomo orientalism. Here is the blurb:

The west’s Orientalism — its construction of the Arab “Other” — has been exposed, examined and expurgated under the critical theory microscope in recent years yet the issue has acquired renewed urgency in light of the current climate of fear and hysteria about the Islamic world. At the same time post-modern thinkers from Nietzsche onwards have employed the motifs and symbols of the Islamic Orient within an ongoing critique of western modernity, an appropriation which — this hugely controversial book argues — runs every risk of becoming a new and subtle form of Orientalism. Examining the work of Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Julia Kristeva and Slavoj Zizek and of post-modern writers from Borges to Salman Rushdie and Orhan Pamuk, Ian Almond also draws on Muslim thinkers including Akbar S. Ahmed and Bobby S. Sayyid in this timely project. The result is a provocative examination of the effects and implications of this “use” of Islam for both the post-modern project and for Islam itself.