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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (33957)	7/8/2002 8:51:05 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Notice how Said says outright that white people are no longer allowed to present themselves as experts on "Negroes" or any non-European culture, without giving a single instance of this alleged Orientalist patronising in the book he's reviewing. He's very clear that it's the tone and substance of the entire book. However, you can take his attack on Lewis' assertion about Western music as at least one piece of evidence. Notice how he does not make this prohibition conditional on what the scholars do or do not know. It's quite clear he's talking about the frame. And it's also quite clear, with his discussion of Lewis only knowing Turkey and that not too well, that he thinks Lewis lacks first hand knowledge. Notice, and he says this quite clearly, it's Lewis lack of first hand knowledge that is the issue, not his ethnic background. No, it is western scholars trying to explain the mideast to other westerners that is forbidden; scholarship is now supposed to be totally subservient to group identity politics. This is, of course, your own conclusion. There is, unfortunately for your assertion, a great deal of westerners explaining the middle east to westerners that Said not only doesn't condemn. There is an entire field of endeavor out there that he helped establish that has a great many westerners in it. Nor is Said enamored of identity politics. His background could hardly leave him at that point. Another way to state his conclusions, just drawing from this brief review is: (1) the world(s) Lewis writes about is/are far more complex and differentiated than his arguments assume; (2) anyone who writes about those worlds should take into account the culture of actors as seen from the inside of the culture and of the actors as active participants in the shaping of that culture (not let it be the only view but make certain it is part of the account); (3) watch out for one's own cultural stereotypes, try to stand some distance from them, as difficult as that might be. Fairly good suggestions. Most anthropologists would recognize them. And a few sociologists.