Comments on Orientalism. Two Reviews: Representation and Authority

Extract

Gilbert Durand, the theorist of the imaginary, is fond of saying that the study of human beings is “like being in a room and watching yourself go by in the street:” what is said of the object is always applicable to the subject. That is why the discourse of academic disciplines concerned with humans is peculiarly vulnerable. If you produce a theory of the imaginary, like Gilbert Durand, that theory will also be applicable to the discourse which produces it, immediately relativizing the theory as an imaginary product. If you study a culture or group of cultures having the character of the “Oriental,” your study, as Edward Said's book points out, is itself open to analysis as a manifestation of “Western” culture. A book which indicates, as his does, that “Western” representations of the East (beginning with the notion of the East itself) have purposes which relate to purely Western needs and projects can be seen in its turn as a representation of Orientalism having purposes of its own, such as the furtherance of Arab politial causes. A review which points these things out is itself asking to be reviewed in terms of its own representations and purposes. And so on.