Odds and Podcasts

[hulegu]

Anyhoo, I can definitely recommend Robert Irwin's For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and their Enemies. The first half is an engaging chunter through the highways and byways of Islamic and Arabic studies, before hitting the fireworks in the second half when Irwin gives Edward Said a good thrashing. Good stuff.

Also, check out the April Fool's

Comments

[river_rain44]

I'm intrigued by the recent "backlash" (for lack of a better term) against Said. Like so much in scholarship, I think there is never really a "right" answer. I found much of Said's writing to be brilliant and necessary--maybe because I'm old enough to remember Reagan? LOL Or because I'm American? Anyway, he offered a critique that I think needed to happen. He was overtly despised by the American government for decades, btw. At the same time, it's good to put him under the academic microscope, too. I'd be interested to read Irwin's take on the whole thing.

[hulegu]

Well, I suppose that now Edward Said's dead, embittered academics will be shuffling down to the graveyard to give his corpse a good kicking. Or maybe not. Irwin's problem isn't with Said per se - it's with his methodology and the following debate. In a nutshell, Irwin has little time for the post-modern aspect of Said's critique, namely the argument that "it's not the scholarship that's at fault; it's the scholars" etc. As Irwin points out, there was plenty of critical reaction to Orientalism immediately post-publication, much of which Said dismissed somewhat casually. Still, the debate rages on.

[river_rain44]

embittered academics... That's hilarious...and very likely accurate! *grin*
At least when I was exposed to him (granted, in an anthropology class) it was made very clear that he received a lot of criticism from both with and without Academia.
I can't help but kind of like people who freak everybody out...even when I don't agree with them. I think it might be in part because I am studying in such a hidebound and traditionalist field (art history).