If you plan to read it also read Wael B. Hallaq’s recent “Restating Orientalism: A Critique of Modern Knowledge”, which claims that Said’s critique of orientalism didn’t slice far enough into the flesh. Wael’s work is indeed a finer and more penetrating critique of not only orientalism but loads of other fields.
> In this landmark theoretical investigation, Wael B. Hallaq takes Orientalism as a point of departure for rethinking the foundations of the modern project. Refusing to isolate or scapegoat Orientalism, Restating Orientalism extends the critique to other fields, from law and scientific inquiry to core ideas of academic thought such as sovereignty and the self. Hallaq traces their involvement in colonialism, mass annihilation, and systematic destruction of the natural world, interrogating and historicizing the set of causes that permitted modernity to wed knowledge to power. Modern knowledge has created and justified a political concept of sovereignty that has unleashed unprecedented forms of domination. Restating Orientalismoffers a bold rethinking of the theory of the author, the concept of sovereignty, and the place of the secular Western self in the modern project, reopening the problem of power and knowledge to an ethical critique and ultimately theorizing an exit from modernity’s predicaments. A remarkably ambitious attempt to overturn the foundations of a wide range of academic disciplines while also drawing on the best they have to offer, Restating Orientalism exposes the depth of academia’s lethal complicity in modern forms of capitalism, colonialism, and hegemonic power.
I don’t know whether to be disheartened or pleased at a book having been so often times used to bring it such a state.
interesting syntax 😉
Sometimes me English is no good!
Some books should be given a wide berth. This is one example.
Have you read the book Erasmus?
No but as Ibn Warraq has written a book entitled “Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism ” I know what to expect.
‘Ibn Warraq’ is a fake name. You don’t even know who the real author is.
I prefer to judge a book from reading it myself rather than relying on the views of a hostile anti-Muslim polemicist.
If you plan to read it also read Wael B. Hallaq’s recent “Restating Orientalism: A Critique of Modern Knowledge”, which claims that Said’s critique of orientalism didn’t slice far enough into the flesh. Wael’s work is indeed a finer and more penetrating critique of not only orientalism but loads of other fields.
> In this landmark theoretical investigation, Wael B. Hallaq takes Orientalism as a point of departure for rethinking the foundations of the modern project. Refusing to isolate or scapegoat Orientalism, Restating Orientalism extends the critique to other fields, from law and scientific inquiry to core ideas of academic thought such as sovereignty and the self. Hallaq traces their involvement in colonialism, mass annihilation, and systematic destruction of the natural world, interrogating and historicizing the set of causes that permitted modernity to wed knowledge to power. Modern knowledge has created and justified a political concept of sovereignty that has unleashed unprecedented forms of domination. Restating Orientalismoffers a bold rethinking of the theory of the author, the concept of sovereignty, and the place of the secular Western self in the modern project, reopening the problem of power and knowledge to an ethical critique and ultimately theorizing an exit from modernity’s predicaments. A remarkably ambitious attempt to overturn the foundations of a wide range of academic disciplines while also drawing on the best they have to offer, Restating Orientalism exposes the depth of academia’s lethal complicity in modern forms of capitalism, colonialism, and hegemonic power.
I’m planning to read Wael’s this year insha’ Allah. I have it in Arabic. BTW, Wael comes from a christian background from Palestine originally.