I have read much of Irwin's work and the review of DANGEROUS KNOWLEDGE in the TLS, at which point I ordered the book for my college library.

Today I read the analysis of Said's ORIENTALISM at the end of Irwin's volume. The volume itself reflects Irwin's immense learning in the topic and his commentary on Said rings true, jibes with my limited knowledge in the field of theory--Gramsci and Foucault--and the general ignorance of the American literary professoriat on matters Middle Eastern.

It is a shame that the original reviews have been buried under political correctness and that it has taken so long for a thorough-going corrective analysis of the topic in its entirety published.

If Said's book holds its place in literary criticism/theory courses as a watershed, one can only hope that Irwin's dissent be given a significant place of response.

It has been a long time since I read Said, so I might be misremembering, but I think it means that many of the stereotypes about the Middle East overlap with the stereotypes about "femininity." Mysterious, exotic, sexual, irrational, tempting...

This Orientalist discourse, he maintained, is racist, condescending, controlling, dehumanizing, feminizing and "essentialist"...

I haven't read Orientalism, but I wonder if someone could explain what Said meant by "feminizing", and why that particular word would be lumped in with all those negatives?

He was a displaced Palestinian, even though his family was wealthy enough to get out in 1947. The fact that he spent much of his childhood in Cairo does not that fact.

Kamiya’s article on Edward Said is so confused, convoluted and quite frankly pointless. How dare he and or Salon editors, choose such an offensive and bold title and use a blatantly racist picture. Kamiya seems to take personal offensive to Said’s work and tries, quite pathetically, to disprove an internationally renowned scholar’s seminal work with another point of view. Kamiya states that Irwin “pretty much demolishes Said’s attack on academic Orientatlists”, I see absolutely no prove of this. He concludes his article by stating that “ America needs to figure out how to deal with the Arab and Muslim world”, Kamiya’s odd hostility toward Said are an indication of how much we need to learn…

Why did SALON bother to publish this bizarre article, I have no idea.

Then he starts to mumble. Lewis's Orientalism is still abetting mass murder. That's something that actually matters. Dead people. Lots and lots of them. Get real.

Isn't this a bit disrespectful of your readers, not to mention of Said himself? You are above such stupidity. Are you race-baiting, mongering for hits, or just forgetting basic consideration?

Why not change the illustration? I respect you greatly, but would respect active introspection more.

"As is your freedom to do so. None the less, once you start clattering on about French post modern philosophers, and reality, in the same sentence, you really are navel gazing. One wonders how you found the time to clamber down off Mt. Olympus to lambast little me, though."

What are you yapping about SR? Although your incoherent point was addressed by drichmond?, I didn't say anything about French post modern philosophers and reality. Get it together.

When it was revealed that Said had made up his personal life story about growing up in Jerusalem (he was raised in Cairo, like Arafat), someone referred to him as the 'Arab Tawana Brawley'. If he was willing to fabricate something so basic as his own personal history (I can't really blame him, there are so many benefits to playing the 'poor displaced Palestinian' card) much of the rest of his scholarship is suspect.

Not to excuse European imperial designs on the middle east, but didn't the Muslim world invade and conquer parts of Europe earlier, and more successfully than Europe conquered the "Orient"? Europe seems to have gotten over that (though Milosovic brought it up occasionally), the middle east ought to get over the brief time that the European powers conquered their land and look internally to solve their problems.

Said's concept of orientalism is far more complex than Kamiya is willing to admit. Said never suggested that orientalists weren't genuinely fascinated by Arab culture or that they had malicious intentions. The deeper issue is that the field of "oriental studies," like anthropology, was rooted in colonialist ideology.

Historians like the 19th century music scholar Henry George Farmer contributed to oriental studies and were proponents of Arab ways of life, but that doesn't mean they weren't orientalists. At a basic level, orientalism deals with stereotypes. It is pointless to argue that broad stereotypes about the Middle East, both positive and negative, haven't existed in Europe and "the West" for centuries.

Kamiya seems to have taken personal offense at Said's thesis. Instead of claiming that he's the victim of inaccurate scholarship, Kamiya should talk to Palestinians and Iraqis about their lives and try to develop some degree of empathy.

I happen to agree with Kamiya's analysis, but I must say: I am so happy to have found a place like Salon, where I can read articles that are both so intellectual and important in today's world. I never thought I'd be readings articles like this about Orientalism after leaving college - and how unfortunate that I thought that, since ideas like these ought to be discussed and mulled over in the real world, not just in academe. thanks, Salon.

1. Said may have been right about some things in his work but this does not put him above critique and reevaluation. If you disaree with Irwin or Gary disagree don't denounce them and call for a tar and feathering.

2. Have there been any scholarly studies done about Occidentalism in the East. I get really tired of well meaning folk flaggelating themselves and the rest of us for the sins of the "West" without any understanding that these sins are human sins not "Western sins". Anybody would think that colonialism was purely a manifestation of depraved European Culture. Think the Persian Empire, the endless invasions and colonisations of one SE Asian country by another, and then of course there were the various Turkish and Arab invasions and colonisation of Africa and parts of Europe. Oh yes, and there was that slave trade out of Africa that had nothing to do with Europeans other than as slaves occasionaly.

Colonialism is bad, racism is bad, chauvinism is bad etc but no group of human beings holds a monopoly on these things.