Étiquette : critique

Article de Sadik Jalal al-‘Azm paru dans Khamsin. Journal of Revolutionary Socialists of the Middle East, 8, 1981, p. 5-26

PART I. ORIENTALISM

In his sharply debated book, (1) Edward Said introduces us to the subject of ‘Orientalism’ through a broadly historical perspective which situates Europe’s interest in the Orient within the context of the general histori­cal expansion of modern bourgeois Europe outside its traditional con­fines and at the expense of the rest of the world in the form of its sub­jugation, pillage, and exploitation. In this sense Orientalism may be seen as a complex and growing phenomenon deriving from the overall historical trend of modern European expansion and involving: a whole set of progressively expanding institutions, a created and cumulative body of theory and practice, a suitable ideological superstructure with an apparatus of complicated assumptions, beliefs, images, literary pro­ductions, and rationalisations (not to mention the underlying founda­tion of commercial, economic and strategic vital interests). I shall call this phenomenon Institutional Orientalism.