5 - Turmoil in the field

Summary

The winter 1963 issue of the humanities journal Diogenes included an article (originally published somewhat earlier in French) entitled “Orientalism in Crisis,” by Anouar Abdel-Malek. A veteran of the Egyptian communist movement, which the Nasser regime had ruthlessly suppressed, Abdel-Malek now lived in exile in France. His 1962 book on Nasser's Egypt, later published in English as Egypt: Military Society, was a trenchant critique of Nasserism in theory and practice. But in “Orientalism in Crisis” Abdel-Malek had a different purpose: he sought to convince his readers of the urgent need to “undertake a revision, a critical reevaluation of the general conception, the methods, and implements for the understanding of the Orient that have been used by the West, notably from the beginning of the last century, on all levels and in all fields.”

Abdel-Malek argued that the arduous labors of even the best Orientalist scholars had often been undermined by defective, if not pernicious, “postulates, methodological habits and historico-philosophical concepts.” These included the treatment of “the Orient and Orientals as an ‘object’ of study, stamped with an otherness…customary, passive, non-participating…non-active, non-autonomous…understood, defined – and acted [upon] – by others.” This was in turn linked to what Abdel-Malek saw as “an essentialist conception of the countries, nations and peoples of the Orient under study” which reduced them to ethnic stereotypes, ultimately tending toward racism.