Note: I originally planned last year to publish a list of books useful for comprehending the events of 9/11 but of course that never came about. The problem was and still is lack of time to do much independent reading of any kind... So what follows are the few fragments I did manage to put on paper... while resting from a back injury in Istanbul and Bodrem, Turkey. Your frank opinion on these opinionated lucubrations wood as always be greatly appreciated along with suggestions for publication. Why do I keep harassing you with this guff? Unfortunately, it’s lack of any outlets or kindred spirits in the vicinity. --JD
1. Orientalism by Edward Said. This book though first published in 1978 would seem on the surface to have no direct bearing on 9/11; since it purportedly deals with the history of Western conceptualization and exploitation of Said’s native region, however, focusing for the most part on how Arab cultures and Islam have been misunderstood and misinterpreted by the West, perhaps this book is more relevant than it would seem. I undertook the task to reread the book this year and try to overcome my old hostility toward it – I hate to have sitting on the shelf a book that has defeated my patience but still requires a response. The first installment of my “rereading” is published here – a comment on Said’s preface to the latest edition of the book in 2003. I will publish detailed comments on the rest of the book
The suicide bombing phenomenon has appeared with all its hideous damage, none more lurid and apocalyptic of course than the events of September 11 and their aftermath in the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.
Edward Said’s preface to the 2003 edition Orientalism (Penguin Books, 2003) barely does more than allude to the catastrophe of 9/11 but it’s the very minimalism of the author’s response/comment that strikes me as most significant –in dealing with an event that was, when he wrote, still recent in public imagination.
The preface on the whole is relatively light reading, written in a direct and accessible style as though Said wants to encourage new readers who have heard about the notorious difficulty of his writings and of Orientalism in particular. The author reiterates many of his by-now familiar positions and arguments in favor of “worldliness” as a critical point of view as opposed to other-worldliness (I suppose) and the inclusion of political & historical contexts in literary or cultural studies; he also restates his objections to purely formal studies that exclude these. In fact, Said hardly needs to remount this rampart since his assault on formalism – in subsequent works by Said and his epigones – pretty much permanently disabled almost all of the various schools of formalism (and structuralism & post structuralism) that flourished in American academies up until about the late 1970s or early 1980s. He also boasts about the huge success of his book in terms of its influence and number of translations. At one point he expresses regret for the prewar tranquility of the field of comparative literature, singling out the great Eric Auerbach whose seminal work Mimesis symbolizes the greatness of spirit and depth of mind of the grand old tradition of philology that had no ax to grind but only an admirable generosity of spirit for all great works regardless of provenance and nationality. What Said doesn’t mention is that he is one of the main scholars responsible for the present warlike state of literary and cultural studies.
Overall Said is on solid ground when he reiterates his chosen academic and theoretical positions and defends them with common sense and the idiosyncratic appeal of his powerfully recognizable voice. If the author had stuck to the academic side of his work, there would be little to object to in this preface. But as we know, Said likes to pontificate on a wide variety of subjects, especially political ones, and he does so again here. Those who agree with Said’s political opinions will be regaled of course: others may be less enchanted. Let’s get to the (as we used to say) nitty gritty.
If one wonders why literary scholars are entitled to pontificate on the political issues of the day, the answer might be that, for Said, the issues of Orientalism continue in any number of US-related disasters in the ME you might name.
One paragraph for example lists the major political events, wars, and other disasters since the publication of Orientalism that have provided context and atmosphere for his writing. There is unsurprisingly a harsh condemnation of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, which was just erupting as Said wrote this essay. For Said, it is the perfect example of an “orientalist” policy gone awry. The events however that precipitated that invasion–9/11–are alluded to but just barely as if Said realizes that a full discussion of these specifically Islamist atrocities may weaken his tactic of blaming the West and the USA in particular for everything that goes wrong in the Middle East. Said writes:
The suicide bombing phenomenon has appeared with all its hideous damage, none more lurid and apocalyptic of course than the events of September 11 and their aftermath in the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. (xiii)
Is it just me who finds this sentence a bit strange? First, it’s amazing to hear 9/11 described as a “suicide bombing”; I was under the impression that the terrorists, having dispensed with mere bombs, were using large bodied passenger jets as explosive devices and the human passengers inside as kindling. By calling 9/11 a “suicide bombing” Said is showing how reluctant his mindset is to take in the simplest facts of the post- 9/11 world. And isn’t it a bit illogical as well? If I’m not mistaken, the sentence confuses cause & effect in implying the same agents for “suicide bomb phenomenon” and its “hideous damage” with the “aftermath” – that is the Iraq and Afghan wars.
Moreover, as a grammar teacher, I must point out that the sentence “suicide bombing phenomenon....with all its hideous damage” must be read as occurring again in the “aftermath” which is an absurdity.
For someone who lived in NYC at that time, as did Said, this is a remarkably thick skinned and perfunctory response to the unprecedented horror of those attacks.
One might also fault the phrase’s moral grammar as well. Said cannot finish even one sentence of condemnation of what is the single most stunning and (as he writes) ‘apocalyptic’ attack ever perpetrated by terrorists – many Americans are still trying to digest the implications of the incredible human & physical destruction perpetrated that day (incubated in a brilliant but evil mind whose possessor is fortunately dead) by the violent means we know by Saudi terrorists (and one Emirati) subscribing to Islamist ideology. The ultra violence that resulted in the deaths of nearly five thousand people was not a “suicide bombing” but the most destructive act of war ever carried out on US soil.
In any case, even before he has given a full mention of the destruction and horrors of 9/11 or named its perpetrators, or the number of American casualties, he rushes on to the next topic, which of course is a condemnation of US foreign policy. Later Said names his favorite enemies in the US foreign policy establishment (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle etc) but on the other side not a word about Mohammed Atta or Al Qaeda. Bin Laden is condemned in the rogue’s gallery of the final sentence of the preface, but Americans George Bush and Rumsfeld outnumber him in that gallery.
If Said had examined this event more carefully and honestly, he might have tried to place it in a meaningful historical and moral context, maybe even revised his anti-orientalist critique, and granted the validity of some Western fears and suspicion of Islam but he does not. The actuality of the horror of these attacks on four different sites in one day should have forced him to move beyond the old "blame America" paradigm & admit the autonomy of motivation of these “Oriental” subjects – as the expression of an equivalent misguided “Occidentalism” on the part of Arab Muslims. (Said reveals a moral and intellectual obtuseness in these statements that could well alienate potential readers before they even get to his book.)
The other mention of 9/11 comes in a paragraph devoted to the evil influence of mass media on education in the way these institutions portray the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Said claims that the media have created “… the demonization of an unknown enemy, for whom the label ‘terrorist’ serves the general purpose of keeping people stirred up and angry…” He goes on: “… media images command too much attention and can be exploited at times of crisis and insecurity of the kind that the post-9/11 has produced.” (xx)
This is a reasonable fear on the part of Said, and many other liberal commentators have deplored the degradation of public discourse caused by these events. It’s curious to note nevertheless that this is one of the only two mentions of terror or terrorism in the piece – and in both cases quotes indicate Said’s rejection of these terms.
As far as I’m concerned, however, a statement later in the essay is so questionable as to cast doubt on the basic premises of the book itself. It comes in the midst of a discussion of East West misunderstandings caused by the Iraq War in which Said first deplores the abandonment of “rational argument” and “moral principles” by US ideologues and officials in favor of jingoism and contempt for other cultures and then examines the obstacles to rationality by Mid Eastern governments and societies.
Admitting that the mindset isn’t much better in “Arab and Muslim countries,” he writes,
citing another source:
The region has slipped into an easy anti-Americanism that shows little understanding of what the US is really like as a society. Because the governments are relatively powerless to affect US policy toward them, they turned their energies to repressing and keeping down their own populations, which results in resentment, anger and helpless imprecations that do nothing to open up societies where secular ideas about human history and development have been overtaken by failure and frustration, as well as by any Islamism built out of rote learning, the obliteration of what are perceived to be other, competitive forms of secular knowledge, and an inability to analyze and exchange ideas within the generally discordant world of modern discourse.(xxi)
Said also notes significantly the disappearance of “critical thinking” in favor of “orthodoxy and dogma” in public discussions in these countries. I can agree and sympathize with his concern.
But what strikes me as less reasonable is sentence two (“Because the governments are relatively powerless to affect US policy toward them, they turned their energies to repressing and keeping down their own populations, which results in resentment, anger and helpless imprecations that do nothing to open up societies...”). This idea is, recycled, one of the oldest excuses for inaction heard in the Middle East since time immemorial. It is nothing more than the expression of the perennial blame game, in which the US is to blame for everything that goes wrong in the Middle East because middle Easterners are “powerless and helpless.” Said here is guilty of stereotyping the people he’s trying to defend. So instead of looking lucidly at the political situations in these countries, Said provides one more excuse for middle Easterners to duck responsibility, and entirely misses the the self-directed political movement that came out of the Arab Spring.
[This kind of reasoning plays very well in the ME of course because official censorship makes all criticism of heads of state off-limits, so discontent is always channeled to the USA, the safe target; hence the liberal dose of hypocrisy in the stream of anti-Americanism in this region.)
Poor powerless dictators and a helpless populace--in short the usual suspects.
Even more important is the recent fact that the Egyptian people, inspired by the example of the Tunisians, lost the fear that previously had made them helpless against the big strong man with all his thugs. And triumphantly showed they were not helpless or powerless. They revolted against a blight that at thirty years and counting seemed permanent, fighting for their rights in the streets using their own ideas, impulses and tactics until they toppled the stone face.
So the revolutions of the “Arab Spring” significantly challenge the old blame America game—and, better, impress us with Arabs’ self-directed talents & abilities to act independently and for their own purposes.
If Said were alive, I wonder what he’s say about all this? He might genuinely celebrate the powerful movement toward democracy and freedom or he might regret the loss of one of the biggest propaganda weapons in his arsenal.
Said ends by a grand and noble statement- to the effect that “the human ... desire for enlightenment and emancipation is not easily deferred, despite the incredible strength of the opposition to it that comes from the Rumsfelds, bin Ladens, Sharons and Bushes of this world. I would like to believe that Orientalism has had a place in the long and often interrupted road to human freedom.” (xxiii)
This statement might have seemed more plausible six months ago, but now we can clearly see who Said left out of his list of oppressors: Pres. Ben Ali, Pres. Mubarak, Pres. Saleh of Yemen, Basher Al Assad and many more tyrants who for decades have been ruling Arab countries in the Middle East or North Africa.
As for Said’s views on 9/11 expressed in this preface, as already noted, they are shockingly minimal and schematic. He does not complete one sentence about the event. His real vitriol in the piece, sadly enough, is reserved for two fellow scholars, Bernard Lewis and Fouad Adjami. And although he places Bin Laden in the rogues’ gallery at the end, the al Qaeda mastermind is outnumbered by two Americans.
In deflecting attention from who was really ruling, oppressing, imprisoning, torturing and assassinating his fellow Arabs, Said may not have been leading his fellow Arabs toward freedom at all but toward one more form of political futility, which when you look at it closely, resembles the kind of victimology Said is supposedly against.
