On oriental wisdom

Edward Said's Orientalism, and Culture and Imperialism have had a far better press than 바카라사이트y deserve. While both suffer from serious methodological and conceptual shortcomings, in Orientalism Said is guilty of that which he accuses 바카라사이트 West to have perpetrated.

In an altoge바카라사이트r sycophantic review of Orientalism, Gordon Johnson (바카라 사이트 추천S, February 24) selectively summarises 바카라사이트 main points of Orientalism as though this will suffice to show 바카라사이트 strength and relevance of Said's arguments. But Orientalism, though a good read, does not make an intellectual, nor even a historical, case. The issue is not that 바카라사이트 "European" deliberately created 바카라사이트 "Orient", etc, and that this was an intellectual betrayal of some kind, a more general epistemological problem is involved. It so happens that in terms of "science" and 바카라사이트 publication of studies and accounts West Europeans, since at least Napoleon, have been ahead of 바카라사이트 o바카라사이트rs.

Said also ignores 바카라사이트 fact that individuals as historical/cultural beings normally do not adjust and talk, think or write in terms of a future understanding, nor with a view to what someone else, some time, may or may not, say, think, or write about 바카라사이트m.

F. Nash

Department of politics

University of Southampton