Orientalism, Anti-Orientalism, Relativism

The question of Orientalism, as everyone knows, has been the subject of intense debate in the last quarter century. Figuring most prominently in these discussions are the contributions of Edward Said and the reactions they have inspired. But these contributions themselves have a long history. Said’s Orientalism (1980 [1978]) is the first work in a trilogy that also includes The Question of Palestine (1979) and Covering Islam (1981).1 On various occasions, Said has reconsidered and refined the positions he took in Orientalism. Almost seventeen years after the first edition of this book, Said wrote the article “East Isn’t East: The Impending End of the Age of Orientalism” (1995).2 In fact he had already reassessed the question in “Orientalism Reconsidered” (Said 1985).3 Orientalism has met with unique fortune. The culmination of several decades of critical research, the bookhas served as the point of departure for new contributions by authors from different parts of the planet—and not only from the territories, nations, and ethnic groups that have endured the centuries-old expansion of Europe and of Europe’s extensions. Participants have also come to this project from the ex-colonial metropolises themselves, and more generally, from what we usually call the West or the Occident. Among the most conspicuous of these authors is, of course, Noam Chomsky. Others, from different areas of the globe, are not as well known but, as is the case with Talal Asad, they have contributed greatly to the clarification of these questions. As the public at large is aware, the term Orientalism is reserved in certain sectors for describing a distorted way to encounter phenomena pertaining to other cultures or civilizations, or to peoples, still subjugated or only recently liberated, located for the most part to the east of Europe.