EDWARD SAID'S VIEW OF ORIENTALISM, like anything he wrote, should be suspect, since his dishonesty is well known (is "honesty" perhaps a Western concept-- but we must include ancient Israel in that West?). A good demolition job is Keith Windschuttle's "Edward Said’s `Orientalism revisited' '' in The New Criterion (17, 5, January 1999). Said's three big claims are that (a) Orientalist scholarship was a crucial motivation and means for Western imperialism, (b) Western countries needed the East as an "other" for their own cultural self- definition, and (c) Orientalists mischaracterized Islamic culture, which is too diverse to be captured as a unified culture. All three claims are false, and Said is bad both on details (wrong basic facts) and the big picture (he contradicts himself). My favorite bit of the essay:

The decisions of the British to move into North Africa and the Middle East in the 1880s, for instance, were based on rivalry with the French, the need to guarantee the sea routes to India and China, and to protect British financial interests from nationalist challenges after Egypt became bankrupt. Philology did not come into it.

[ http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/03.06.23a.htm ]

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