Said Biffs.

[sechan19]

I've caught our dear friend Edward Said in an instance of what my mother likes to call "intellectual laziness" and what I like to call "a serious biff." At this point in Orientalism he's making an argument about three types of Orientalist texts that each involve pilgrimage to the Orient as their basis. He describes the three types of texts, by means of describing their authors, as follows:

"One: the writer who intends to use his residence for the specific task of providing professional Orientalism with scientific material, who considers his residence a form of scientific observation. Two: the writer who intends the same purpose but is less willing to sacrifice the eccentricity and style of his individual consciousness to impersonal Orientalist definitions. Three: the writer for whom a real or metaphorical trip to the Orient is the fulfillment of some deeply felt and urgent project." (157-158).

He then goes on to give an example of each category: Edward William Lane's Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, Sir Richard Burton's Pilgrimage to al-Madinah and Meccah, and Gerard de Nerval's Voyage en Orient. He elects to use these texts to demonstrate the "relative spaces left in the text for the exercise and display of authorial presence" (158). And then he spends the next eight pages discussing Lane's book. There the chapter ends (a problem in itself), and when we pick up the argument again he's jumped to Chateaubriand?

So, like... I'm wondering if we'll ever see Burton and Nerval again – or if they were just a red herring or something. And in the meantime I'm thinking, "Dude, that’s a pretty bad biff right there. That's an argument that goes nowhere; the logical equivalent of a dangling participle, if you will."

Now, for the most part, I've enjoyed Said's argument (although he spends a lot of his time hitting the reader over the head with an anvil, which is annoying), but this is pretty reprehensible for a major intellectual figure. Perhaps it's just bad editing, but it's disappointing to say the least.

EDIT: And now I've gone far enough forward to find that, while Said does mention Burton and Nerval he certainly doesn't dedicate eight pages of comp. lit analysis to their works, which begs the question of whether this biff falls into the category of "intellectual laziness" or "intellectual dishonesty."

Comments

[lordameth.livejournal.com]

I find that scholars do that all too often, making reference to something they assume the well-read and imformed reader will already know. Maybe if you've read Burton and de Nerval then you already see his argument perfectly and it doesn't need to be explained...

I'm by no means defending him; I have never cared much for Said. But having not seen the precise context etc I'd have to wager laziness, or a faulty argument, a misstep, over malicious dishonesty.

[reteva.livejournal.com]

Well, I lean toward intellectual dishonesty, myself. Said's argument is basically that all pedagogy participates in a faulty, racist view of the Orient. However, while Sir Richard Burton is undeniably a bastard about many things, a racist bastard about the Orient is not really one of them - he loved the Orient. So, I must assume that excluding Burton is vital to Said's general argument and that Pilgrimage to al-Madinah and Meccah is not quite as inflammatory as is necessary for this text. (Although, why mention it all in that case?)

One of the great drawbacks of Said's argument (which has its merits) is its very inflexibility. Of course, it's been my experience that most inflexible arguments are faulty. But there you are. I agree with you about scholars; you have to be on your toes with everyone it seems.