Restating Orientalism: A Critique of Modern Knowledge

Description

Since Edward Said’s foundational work, Orientalism has been singled out for critique as the quintessential example of Western intellectuals’ collaboration with oppression. Controversies over the imbrications of knowledge and power and the complicity of Orientalism in the larger project of colonialism have been waged among generations of scholars. But has Orientalism come to stand in for all of the sins of European modernity, at the cost of neglecting the complicity of the rest of the academic disciplines? In this landmark theoretical investigation, Wael B. Hallaq reevaluates and deepens the critique of Orientalism in order to deploy it for rethinking the foundations of the modern project. Refusing to isolate or scapegoat Orientalism, Restating Orientalism extends the critique to other fields, from law, philosophy, and scientific inquiry to core ideas of academic thought such as sovereignty and the self. Hallaq traces their involvement in colonialism, mass annihilation, and systematic destruction of the natural world, interrogating and historicizing the set of causes that permitted modernity to wed knowledge to power. Restating Orientalism offers a bold rethinking of the theory of the author, the concept of sovereignty, and the place of the secular Western self in the modern project, reopening the problem of power and knowledge to an ethical critique and ultimately theorizing an exit from modernity’s predicaments. A remarkably ambitious attempt to overturn the foundations of a wide range of academic disciplines while also drawing on the best they have to offer, Restating Orientalism exposes the depth of academia’s lethal complicity in modern forms of capitalism, colonialism, and hegemonic power. Review: It’s about Orientalism, but so much more… - This book is extraordinary. It utterly radicalizes what Edward Said was attempting to do. It unhinges the problem of Orientalism from the framework of Western liberalism that, as a faithful secular humanist, Said presupposed (but didn’t interrogate), and instead locates it within the problem of sovereignty (both political sovereignty and more deeply epistemic and ontological sovereignty, how we know things and conceive of reality thru the brutalism of dominating them). Hallaq shows sovereignty to be the fundamental matrix out of which the West operates and on which its understanding of “the human” and of supposedly “inert” nature rests. His mobilization of Islam and its traditions of science, philosophy, theology, poetry, mysticism and much else as a case study and counterpoint to how Western sovereignty works, following up on his book *The Impossible State,* is alone worth the price of the ticket. In short, this is a book that once read everything (and I don’t exaggerate, I mean everything) is understood differently. Get the book, take your time, and read every page. Review: Most important book of last 5 decades - In my opinion the most important book of last 5 decades. A must read for anyone who wants to understand the episteme of modern man and modernity by and large. I recommend this book particular to Muslims and people interested in decolonial studies, it’s not your typical decolonial book, which floats on surface and discusses superficiality; it goes for the jugular vain of modernity. as for the Muslim thinker, it shows you, how colonization forces decimated traditional Islamic epistemology&Wolrd view, with the help of Orientalist scholars. the thesis of the book is that western/Modern knowledge is Sovereign knowledge, with no metaphysical benchmark, bound by no ethics .A s a consequence of this thought structure modernity raptured that way it did. such as environmental catastrophes, Genocides ( not only physical but decimation of indigenous culture which for hallaq is of utmost importance) all that it happened in colonization/colonial era. one thing among many, which fundamentally changed my worldview is that all of western knowledge is deeply embedded in Power configuration(unique to modernity). Hallaq argues there is no difference between Orientalism(the study of the other, mainly eastern) and economics, business politics, science, anthropology, history and all of the modern knowledge because they’re embedded in Power/knowledge structure. for example, "department of business and economic schools are single-mindedly geared toward the training of students to learn the methods and principles of economics and business, to teach them planning organization, and techniques intended to cultivate and sharpen their efficiency. the ultimate purpose is to create homo-economicus, a subject whose machine-like faculties are harnessed to work the economy, improve it, make it necessary correction when needed, and, in case of business cultivate subliminal phycological and social techniques to promote consumerism and the circulatory flow of the market's power" (186) this is a just a snippet of what the book is about. now think of these students in undergrad studies, who are from the beginning of their time in university thought about only maximizing gain and minimizing loss. hallaq argues the inevitable consequence of such thought structure are making, fashioning subjects whose ultimate desiderata is to make profit for the colossal corporation who are complicit in environmental destruction, the changing of "third world countries" domestic law, the toppling of regime for corporation's benefits. Hallaq argues this reality engenders from the thought structure of modern sovereign knowledge and the typical student sophomore year taking down notes, thinks of herself to be innocent of corporation atrocities; but by the time she done with her studies and enter these corporation, she herself becomes the ruthless figure, that she once was repulsed by. Hallaq describes Modern Sovereign as physco-epistemic disease. this short thread of mine by no means does justice to the book, far from it. but I can you assure its one of those life changing books, that’ll change your episteme/World view.