The significance of Edward Said: The text and its creation of the categorically Oriental

The text is a mysterious thing. It is somewhat innocuous as a mere text yet, the text carries a presence and a weight. Said re-asserts alongside Foucault that the text can create not only knowledge, but also the very reality they appear to describe. Texts purport to contain knowledge and expertise that academics, institutions, and governments accrue to (p. 94). Texts produce a tradition or discourse (p. 94). The oriental discourse suffuses ‘what it means to be Orient’ with formally imposed Occidental-style meaning, intelligibility and reality. Said even says that this Oriental discourse has metamorphosized from a scholarly discourse to an imperial institution (p. 95). Once produced, a ‘dialectic of reinforcement’ is enacted whereby ‘the experiences of the readers in reality are determined by what they have read’ reproducing the very oriental categories and experiences supplied by the text (p. 94).

The text becomes alive when it transits from a merely textual apprehension, formulation or definition of the Orient to a real practice in the Orient’s life (p. 95). By virtue of the production of certain texts, Orientalism manages to override the Orient imposing its system of thought over the Orient ontologically by treating the Orient as an unchanging object of study thereby reifying and objectifying the Orient. As the object of study, the orient is endowed with a historical subjectivity characterized by passivity, uniformity, non-activity and non-autonomy (p. 97). It creates the a-historical Orient and transfixes its very being at that moment. The Orient is watched. His behaviors form the reservoir of peculiarity (p. 103). He is the Occident’s spectacle. Better put, he becomes what Said calls the ‘living tableau of queerness’ or similarly put, ‘foreignness’ or ‘otherness.’ The Orient became the fascination of Darwinian anthropologists and phrenologists (p. 99) and the object of missioning and colonizing or “moral voyages” (p. 100). The text became the basis and medium by which the Occidents “understand” the Orients, as an essentialized other. The Orient against the backdrop of a Judeo-Christian monotheism became seen as humanized, antidemocratic and barbaric (p. 150). Through the expedition of Napoleon and the texts of Sacy, Renan et al., Orientalism’s discursive identity was fashioned.

‘Every interpretation, every structure created for the Orient, then, is a reinterpretation, a rebuilding of it (p. 158).’

The way this is done is best shown in Said’s analysis of Lane’s writings (read and cited by Flaubert and others) on e.g. An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836) (p. 158ff). Lane is often quoted as a source of knowledge about Egypt or Arabia. His writings sought to impart a sense of neutrality (p. 159). The description was one way: they spoke as he observed and wrote down. What was written was intended as authoritative and useful knowledge for the West (p. 159). His friend Sheikh Ahmed is described curiously. He is portrayed as a grass-eater and a polygamist and in such descriptions, the distance between Lane and the Muslim is laid. ‘Lane enters the Muslim pattern only far enough to be able to describe it in a sedate English prose (p 160-61).’ The account was accurate, general and dispassionate (p. 161). Festivals, rites, laws, character, music, magic, domestic life became objectified sections in a text. The narrative voice used by lane is ageless whereas his subject seems to go through an individual life cycle (p. 161). In a similar way the particular is subsumed under the generic categories, the Orient’s subject is subsumed under the ageless and timeless Western Narrative form. Through textual depictions such as this, an asymmetric of power established between the Occident and the Orient. Through the sheer, overpowering, monumental description, Lane makes the Egyptians totally visible (p. 162). Egyptians are described without depth and in swollen detail (p. 162-163). He blends religion, excess of libidinous passions and licentiousness with ‘Muslims.’ All this is done with a sense of detachment in relation to his Egyptian subjects. The establishment of detachment and distance is important because in such a way of doing, Lane preserves his authoritative identity as ‘a mock participant,’ gains scholarly credibility and legitimacy – the cold detachment of scientific study of human society (p. 163).
Through textual descriptions such as this, 1) consciousness of an oriental Other is established – also, an Occidental consciousness of himself or herself consists exactly in this knowing that the Orient is an other from oneself. 2) Authority of one over the other is created. 3), Oriental material is acquired and disseminated as a form of specialized knowledge (p. 165) which seems to me to be the very basis of a continued sort of subjection of one to the other. 4) Through writing, Lane for instance re-situated and re-made the experience of being Orient. Lane framed the Orient’s life as filled with eccentricities, with odd calendars, exotic spatial configurations, hopelessly strange languages and its seemingly perverse morality (p. 166). The experience of the Orient is framed as if it were a field of unimaginable antiquity, inhuman beauty and boundless distance (p. 167). Through the writings of Volney and George Sale (p. 168), the Orient’s life was seen as one with fierceness and an inordinate melancholy (p. 168).

The essence of the text and writing can be briefly put, to be change-effecting. It has the power to (re-) generate, (re-) formulate and (re-) constitute the medium through which we experience the world.

Notes and Reflections: John Stuart Mills on the conception of Truth and the liberty of thought and discussion

“Every truth which men of narrow capacity are in earnest about, is sure to be asserted, inculcated, and in many ways even acted on, as if no other truth existed in the world, or at all events none could limit or qualify the first (p. 53).”

When we silence discussion, refuse to hear an opinion or rather, forbid man to speak simply because he may err, Mills argue that by doing so, we are assuming the infallibility of our opinions. The likelihood however, is that we can never reach absolute infallibility or certainty especially in a rapidly changing modern landscape.

Judgment is given to man so they may use it (p. 20). To assume something is the truth, we must first grant the complete liberty of contradicting and disproving of our opinions. An opinion must be put out against objections and difficulties in order to prove its validity without which, no validity maybe presumed. One of the most common ways members of society forbid an opinion to be heard is to claim that the opinion is not useful to members of society (this is not withstanding the fact that the usefulness of opinion is itself a matter of opinion and hence, disputable and open to discussion).

No one state, church, sect, group or institution should assume infallibility of an opinion or doctrine for others (p. 25). This is so for many reasons. (1) To discover for oneself and to the world something that deeply concerns it and of which it was previously ignorant and to prove that the prevalent temporal or spiritual interest is false is the most precious gift that can be bestowed on mankind (p. 29). It is a unique human faculty to judge and reason based on empirical facts presented to the human being. This is not a prerogative of the West or a privileged segment of anyone of society. The naturalness of reason (including its paralogisms and syllogisms that can make us reason wrongly) is shown in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
(2) Any opinion that is not vigorously and earnestly contested (p. 54) or in other words, not attained without sufficient struggle for its validity will be received with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds (p. 54). (3) As a result, the meaning of the doctrine will become dogma and its real meanings and heartfelt conviction of these real meanings will be in danger of being lost (p. 54).

Reasoning that the opinion is immoral or impious and therefore should not be heard is invalid for no opinion can be considered an infallible truth unless it can withstand the onslaught of other opinions. Moreover, it seems to me that there is no reason for persecution or the hearing of an alternate opinion unless there were some sort of truth in the very opinion to be heard.

As Mills argues, the nature of truth is such that “… it maybe extinguished once, twice or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it… (p. 30).” In other words, even if truth were to be suppressed in present time, what has truth will one day in favorable circumstances arise again. It cannot be put to death forever. “Our merely social intolerance, kills no one, roots out no opinions but induces men to disguise them, or abstain from any active effort for their diffusion. (p. 33).” It seems that it is in Mills’ opinion that teal infallible truths will withstand even time just like how Socrates was put to death but Socratic philosophy rose like the sun in heaven (p. 33). Intellectual pacification Mills firmly states is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind (p. 34). What is truth maybe prevented from spreading, but they do not disappear (p. 34).

Based on the idea of fairness, all opinions should be heard in a thorough way. Based on the dignity of thinking beings, all opinions should be heard in a thorough way. That which is not fully frequently and fearlessly discussed is not a living truth but a dead dogma (p. 36). Truth thus held is mere superstition held by the suspension of judgment or led by authority and sheer inclination. It is not one held by a rational thinking being. Only in light of the full force of the difficulty of the problem can anyone discover for himself the portion of truth that met and overcome that very difficulty (p. 38).

Persons possessing simple minds will not be able to understand and resolve such difficulties (p. 39). Not many people have weighed and considered all the bearings of a problem and experience the entire character of the issue. Most, torpidly and passively assent but in doing so, whatever opinion that is passed down will cease to connect with the inner life of the human being (p. 41-42). Nothing, not any religious or traditional doctrines must be received as “closed” truisms that is to be repeated in rote.

Popular opinions are seldom or never the whole truth. Mills says: “They are a part of truth; sometimes a greater, sometimes a smaller part, but exaggerated, distorted and disjoined from the truths by which they ought to be accompanied and limited (p. 47).” With human progress though, we can substitute a partial and incomplete truth for another. We will and can improve because new fragments of truth is wanted and adapted to the needs of our time.

Truth is about reconciling and combining opposites (p. 49). It requires minds sufficiently capacious and impartial to make adjustments. Mills did not suggest that the route to truth will be a smooth one. In fact, he recognizes that it is a tough battle and struggle and often use terms such as “fight” and “combating” to describe the attainment of truth of any sort. Obedience to any sort of morality, submitting oneself to any sort of Supreme Will passively is argued by Mills to be, servile.

An exploratory essay of a philosophical understanding of what does it mean to think?

To think is to center one’s consciousness as all unity of thought. It is to be conscious of an inner sense that is the highest principle of all synthetic judgments and that all object stands under the necessary conditions of synthetic unity of the manifold of intuition in a possible experience. To think is not only to be capable of analytic judgment or to locate an intuition within the bounds of certain given concept but to be able to advance beyond the given concept viewing it in relation with other concepts. To be unable to do so is to be quite eternally bounded to any given system or concept and to be trapped in one’s own mind. To think is to combine the manifold that can never come to us through our senses Kant says. Thinking is independent of sensibility to quote Kant in S21 – deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding - of some of his observations. To think is thus never just to be a holder of contents of our daily experiences. To think rather means to learn to use the faculty of spontaneity to create concepts or new categories of unity for which we can continually till the end of our lives ground unique and/or logical thought and being and so as to continually build different ways of experiencing and viewing the world. Thinking is original and definitely ours. ‘I think’ is something that belongs to us and that accompanies all our representations. That humans have different categories of thought is the most precious quality of being human. To think is to imagine beyond what is already given. It is to be able to determine our inner sense with understanding – the original power of combining the manifold intuitions. To think means to learn how to formulate new categories of thought. It is to create new categories of combination. It entails the need to understand the reasons for such categories and the reason(s) why we should stick with them revamp them or dispose them. To think is to restore the individual with the power to decide in this finitude of life how to go about her way of life without necessarily succumbing to any reified method blindly. To think is hence an arduous task that only the valiant and sincere will undertake. It is the will to originality and the will to see the readily given not as a privilege but as an insult to the human mind. To think entails the exploration of the depths of the human potential even if in the end, the humanly attempt maybe futile. It is the paradox to acknowledge the success of failures. To think is to not only doubt but to realize that doubt is always present in most of our daily affairs and that the only thing the separates us from these doubts is the will to knowledge.

To think is to know that we do not know too much well like Socrates’s wisdom that he knows naught. To know for Kant is to know our limits of knowledge as Kant says, “accordingly, I have no knowledge of myself as I am but merely as I appear to myself.” It is not the dogma of “I think therefore, I am” the author of whom we need not further mention. To think is to realize that even the knowledge of ourselves is limited for we are intuit-able only according to/within relations of time as intuitions.

To think is a will to be different and to deviate from the average called ‘normality.’ To not think is hence to be normal within which, one cannot be much too different. The will to be different can quite rightfully be called the will to knowledge because it entails needing to re-formulate ground works for moral and ethical disposition and action and concepts of understanding the world often, anew. It is hence, the will to be open to contradictions and falsehood and the will to overcome them because it is a gamble of which the stakes are the sensibility of the individual’s entire subject hood. It is the subject’s trial to face falsehood. It is something that all human beings must go through to reach out towards truth and the universal that is paradoxically not to be found outside the individual but within the individual. As one searches outward more, one penetrates the inward even more. It is the realization that there is no linearity in thought and no end to paradoxes and inquiry. Should the will to think not end, then the vigour in the mind of the pursuer of thought will only heighten.

It is the will to the fundamental believe that the individual and the human mind and potential is priceless. It is the will to present to others, an individual-hood as an ongoing project of possible progresses and regresses.