Ye Olde Staging Point

Edward Said is dead.

Said's work had a powerful impact on my academic life and my historical interests. I first read--and was completely captivated by--Said's classic work Orientalism while studying history in college; I followed it up with his Covering Islam and proceeded to reread each more than once. Said was a brilliant wordsmith with an amazing ability to both enlighten and entertain. He opened my eyes to the conflict and biases that dominated interaction between East and West, Empire and Orient. He almost single-handedly infused me with an interest in Near East history and is one of the reasons I pursued that line of study in college and graduate school.

It was several years before I thought to re-examine Said's work with a more critical eye, and by that time the seeds of doubt--sown by my reading of other scholarly works that seemed to contradict Said's persuasive theme--had been planted. Another reading of Orientalism and some of his other works followed, but this time it was not just his assertions and arguments that caught my attention. It was the way he sidestepped and skipped events and people that didn't support (or even seemed to contradict) his primary argument. It was the subtle implication, lurking behind his words and occasionally finding overt expression in them, that there was something sick and evil inherent in Western culture, and that this taint ran so deep that no Westerner would ever be able to rise above it or speak with real insight about the Middle East. It was the way he painted the entire history of the Middle East from the Ottoman Empire on as one of arrogant, incessant victimization by the West without even the remotest acknowledgment that the history of the region might have been influenced by other factors. I put down Orientalism this time realizing that I had been swept up by the passion of an ideological work, not a historical one.

There is a mentality alive today that believes that so long as the cause is just and the message worthwhile, then it's acceptable to ignore or rewrite the facts to fit the ideology. This view holds that it's more important to produce a compelling and persuasive argument for the right cause than it is to accurately depict the truth of a situation. This is to be expected (although not admired) in the field of politics and punditry, in the works of the Michael Moores and Ann Coulters of the world. But when the attitude crops up in the writing of history and the education of tomorrow's thinkers, something is wrong. I've read enough of Said's work to suspect that his conclusions were drawn long before he turned the first page of his pre-writing research; Orientalism and its ilk are perfect examples of scholarly works pursuing not the facts, but rather following a convoluted path that weaves in and out of the truth, determined to arrive at a preordained conclusion. Others have documented these problems better than I could (link stolen from Instapundit; it's just one of many out there).

I've never been able to get angry about Edward Said, even after my disillusionment with his work. I can only muster a sense of disappointment and sadness that his considerable talents, devoted to such a crucial and fascinating subject, went astray somewhere along the road, when he choose--perhaps without realizing it--that it was more important to trumpet the message eloquently than to verify its truth. His influence on today's scholars--particularly in the Middle East itself--is profound. Rest in peace, Mr. Said. Would that your skills had been devoted to a pursuit of truth and not ideology.