Translating <i>Orientalism</i>

Wen's interessiert, woran ich gerade sitze, der lese die folgenden Zeilen (auch wenn ich in die Umwandlung des Word-Formats nicht allzu viel Zeit investiert habe ...)


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The publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism is this year celebrating its 30th anniversary. [1] Yet the work’s continuing currency in academic scholarship points towards the fact that its theses and insights are far from being invalidated. Surely, Said’s work has its very own limitations and constraints, and despite the varied criticism that has been formulated over the past decades, its impact can hardly be overestimated. Following the breakdown of European imperialism after World War II, a flood of criticism was launched by a number of intellectual movements originating in the former or soon-to-be independent colonies. Together with other works – Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, Kwame Nkrumah’s Neocolonialism. The Last Stage of Imperialism and Ashis Nandy’s Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism, to name just two immensely influential publications [2] – Said’s laying bare of the dominance of Orientalist thought in imperialist discourse concentrated previous efforts to provincialise the eurocentrism of the allegedly neutral and objective European sciences and their influence not only on cultural developments. One of the successful results was the establishment of an academic field called “Postcolonial Studies”, which owes much of its input to the critical reception of Said’s work. [3] His Orientalism has become, to sum up, a landmark not only of philological, but also of political scholarship.

The attempt, then, to adopt Said’s frame of analysis for a study of early modern perceptions of “the Orient” may at first glance appear naïve. Very obviously, the work traces discourses which gain influence only in the 18th and 19th century; Said’s Orientalism is closely bound up with the rise of European, and i.e. foremost: French and British, expansionism, colonialism and its subsequent transformation into imperialism. Richmond Barbour justly intervenes that “[t]o project his [i.e. Said’s] findings backward, to read precolonial ethnography as if its rhetoric bespoke European dominance of the world, or its defensive tropes necessarily foretold aggressive expansion, is anachronistic. [… P]re-Enlightenment “orientalisms” expressed material, political and discursive relations profoundly different from those Said finds typical of modernity.“ [4] Yet Barbour’s criticism only extends this far. Admittedly: Said does argue that “[t]he Orient was Orientalized not only because it was discovered to be ‘Oriental’ in all those ways considered commonplace by an average nineteenth-century European, but also because it could be – that is, submitted to being – made Oriental.” [5] The interconnection between cultural and colonial or imperial dominance clearly cannot be dismissed and needs no further amplification. And yet, despite the principally different constellations of power in the early modern period, I not only propose, but moreover insist on the necessity of making use of the core of Said’s work and translating it into this earlier context.

Discourse theory, which Orientalism heavily relies on methodologically, at once allows for and forbids this translation. Foucault conceives of discourses as specifically embedded in local time and place, best identified through their so-called énoncés, the central statements around which every discourse revolves. These central statements are repeated in a process which Said terms the “restorative citation of antecedent authority” [6]; but yet they simultaneously and necessarily remain fluid and undergo a limited variation: The ambiguities of language as well as the individual background of experience with which each participant invests individual meaning into the discourse’s énoncés – both of these influences contribute to shifts in meaning and thus, essentially, reflect back on the status and currency of every discourse. In short, this process of variation despite (or through) citation, then, implies that a discourse does not have clearly defined borders, but is constantly overlapped, questioned and/or reinforced by related discourses. Thus, not only synchronic, but also diachronic origins of every discursive statement, of every énoncé, are difficult, if not impossible to locate.
With regard to the attempted translation of Orientalism into early modern contexts, Said vaguely states that “[…] the Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West.” [7]

The idea at present, however, is not to historicise Orientalism, not to identify and trace the genesis of its academic discourse during the early modern period and consequently expand and enforce the book’s argument. Rather, the underlying aim is to prove the perhaps obvious fact that Orientalism is much more persistent than the analysis of Orientalism in the context of the modern arts and the modern academy may suggest. Said’s above admission has already indicated this, and in the book’s introduction in particular the author continues to raise awareness for the intricate complexities extending beyond the focus of his work, pointing out the roots from which modern branches of thought and writing have been able to spread out. In its profoundest sense, “Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the time) ‘the Occident’ [… It acts as a] starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, “mind”, destiny and so on.“ [8]

It is this generalised conception of Orientalism that I wish to elaborate on and take as the basis for its translation into early modern contexts. It opens up a trajectory which allows us to isolate and abstract a number of aspects identifying Orientalist thought in 18th and 19th century discourses from their contextual relationships of power and knowledge: “Every writer on the Orient assumes some Oriental precedent”, writes Said, “some previous knowledge of the Orient, to which he refers and on which he relies. [… E]ach work on the Orient affiliates itself with other works, with audiences, with institutions, with the Orient itself.” [9] Consequently, it becomes possible to read 17th century perceptions and representations of “the Orient” parallel to their later transformations as reflecting “[…] a distribution of geographical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, historical, and philological texts; [… they are] an elaboration not only of a basic geographical distinction […] but also of a whole series of “interests” which [… they] not only create[…] but also maintain[…].” [10]
It is this “distribution of geopolitical awareness” into a network of texts that can act as a starting point for analysis. The subsequent task, then, is to dissect its inherent discursive “interests”. Here, Barbour emphasises, “[i]t is crucial […] to distinguish early modern Europe’s strategic and economic relations with, from its domestic constructions of, Asia.” [11] This implies that, to a limited extent at least, it is necessary to keep in mind the “flexible positional superiority” which Said presents as a characteristic of modern Orientalism. Early 17th century visitors to the Orient, be they merchants, diplomats or travellers, will have been very well aware of the political, military and economic imbalance between any evolving European regional power and the Ottoman Empire, and thus are almost sure to have felt far from having the “relative upper hand” [12] in many encounters. On the contrary: Much stood to be gained by establishing economic ties with the Ottoman Empire. The outlook on possible advantages reflected back on the intricate dynamics at work between the European powers themselves. As we straightforwardly learn from a “Memorandum on the Turkey trade”: Not only is it “[…] the Kinge of Spayne (who cane never be longe without warres with the Turke)”, but also “the frenche Kinge” as well as the Venetian traders who had to be considered adversaries to English-Turkish trade. The two latter powers, having “[…] their ambassadours at Constantinople will seeke by some indirect practise to discountenaunce suche of her Majestes subiectes as shall trade thither.” [13]

Or so it seems. Richard Knolles’ Generall Historie of the Turkes takes such an account to extremes. Reflecting, as the quoted Walsingham-Memorandum does, on the current power constellations, he acknowledges “[…] that at this present if you consider the beginning, progesse, and perpetuall felicitie of this the Ottoman Empire, there is in this world nothing more admirable or strange; if the greatnesse and lustre thereof, nothing more magnificent or glorious; if the power and the strength thereof, nothing more dreadfull or dangerous: which wondering at nothing but at the beautie of it selfe, and drunke with the pleasant wine of perpetuall felicitie, holdeth the rest of the world in scorne, thundering out nothing but still blood and warre, with a full persuasion in time to rule over all, presining [sic] unto it selfe no other limits that the uttermost bounds of the earth, from the rising Sunne unto the going downe of the same.“ [14]
Having conceded to the Ottomans their supremacy with all its apparent ambiguities, Knolles at the same time feels called to relativise his stark dramatisation by openly claiming for the Christian world a superiority understood in terms of religion, morality and tradition – and which crystallises above all in the profoundness of its world knowledge: The Ottoman past, he writes, “[…] is not well knowne unto themselues, or agreed vpon euen among the best writers of their histories.” Without question, the credibility of their accounts is strictly limited and proves of “[n]o great reason in my deeming: […] giue the authors thereof leaue therewith to please themselues, as well as some others, which […] borrow, or rather force their beginning […] without any probabilitie at al; and that with such an earnestnesse, as they could not elsewhere haue found any so honourable ancestors.“ [15]

The Generall Historie’s “lack” of congruency between the material and political imbalances on the one hand and the cultural perception underlying its perspective on the other is, however, not necessarily to be interpreted as the provoking distortion of a simplified representation. Rather, the opposite is the case – Said’s conception of Orientalism very much allows for this “misrepresentation”. To refer back to M.G. Aune’s words, Knolles’ lack of truthful reflection marks one of a “[…] range of rhetorical strategies to manage the instability and asymmetry of these encounters […]” [16], and as such can be inserted “[…] above all, [into] a discourse that is by no means in direct, corresponding relationship with political power in the raw, but rather is produced and exists in an uneven exchange […]” between powers political, intellectual, cultural and moral. [17] Consequently, there cannot be any degree of “misrepresentation”: What any study of Orientalism lays bare is its “internal consistency […] despite or beyond any correspondence, or lack thereof, with a ‘real’ Orient.” [18] In very much the same way as later writings on colonial subjects, Shakespeare’s Cleopatra and Marlowe’s Tamburlaine too are inflected representations, filtered through specific lenses of perception, and cannot be taken as neutral mirror images of a supposedly transcendental reality. [19]

How obviously these Orientalist inflections apply already to Early Modern English thought needs to stressed all the more since “[e]arly Stuart England possessed [… no] working knowledge of […] Asia.” [20] Again, the Generall Historie provides ample proof of this: Knolles derives his authority on the Ottoman Empire not from personal experience, but solely from his study of Greek, Latin, French, German and Italian sources. Nonetheless, this lack of “working knowledge” Barbour proved no constraint to the book’s success [21]: For the very reason that, by relying on its European sources, it was integrated into the process of “restorative citation of antecedent authority” [22], it conformed with and strengthened the then predominant discourse on the Orient.

The public theatres and their performances likewise amplified this Manichean discourse. If their stages allowed audiences to “[…] ponder the possibilities of alternate cultural orders […]” [23], these alternate orders were certainly also “[…] entertainments [which] thrive[d] on polar opposition […]” [24]: “Ethnocentrism galvanized polarities congenial to the theatre […]. Elizabethan drama plots – with opposing parties set off by two stage doors – gather into dualistic patterns. Economies of time […] likewise simplify obscure or overdetermined processes. On the London stage, Turks were represented as the demonic antagonists of Christians, and converts to Islam were ridiculed and punished […].“ [25]

Public reception of such performances was, of course, by no means passive, and proved on the contrary to be a process of productive consumption. As the “[…] experience of drama is rarely confined to the moments and the places of performance […]”, “[…] audience members become agents in the shaping and realizing of meaning […] and ultimately […] of public discourse.” [26] The theatre’s polarising Orientalism, in other words, did not remain an on stage, artistic containment: far from this, it effectively disseminated across early modern English culture, where it took on varying forms and degrees.

Returning to Barbour’s initial reservations concerning the possibility of translating Orientalism, then, the current argumentation appears to have reversed the question: With the parallels now laid bare, in what – if anything at all – does this projected early modern Orientalism differ from its later form as described by Said? In which ways are the “[…] discursive relations [so] profoundly different from those Said finds typical of modernity […]”? [27] Essentially, there is perhaps one characteristic that reveals these Orientalisms fundamental divergence: The very Orientalist modes of knowledge production which were in their modern forms to provoke the resistance of colonised people expressed in their early modern incarnations perhaps themselves an act of resistance (of “flexible positional superiority” in Said’s terms) producing and reinforcing binary world images in order to compensate actual power relations in the face of an encompassing Ottoman threat.
It is this constructed, ontological and epistemological Orient, this discursive reflection of geopolitical awareness, that I propose to consider as an underlying analytical grid for the ensuing translation of Orientalism. […]



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NOTES

1 Edward Said, Orientalism. London: Routledge, 1978.
2 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1963; Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-colonialism. The Last Stage of Imperialism. London: Nelson, 1965; Ashis Nandy, Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism. Dehli and Oxford: University Press, 1983.
3 For an overview of the various traditions leading to the formation of “postcolonial studies”, see above all Robert C. Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001.
4 Richmond Barbour, Before Orientalism, p. 3. M. G. Aune adds: “The Ottoman and Mogul Empires, rather than European states, were economic and military centers of power in the early modern period. Encounters and exchanges between these cultures and Europe were often asymmetrical, and characterized by anxiety and fear on the part of the Europeans and indifference on the part of the Ottomans or Moguls. Imperial projects in the New World were clearly established in the sixteenth century, while such projects in Asia and Africa, comparatively, developed more slowly. European interest in these areas tended to focus on trade and commercial competition rather than colonization. This is not to say that the Europeans did not portray themselves as culturally or morally superior; the writing of travelers, diplomats, merchants, and others all deployed a range of rhetorical strategies to manage the instability and asymmetry of these encounters.” M. G. Aune, “Early Modern European Travel Writing After Orientalism“. Review article, in: The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, vol. 5 (2005), no. 2, pp. 120-138, here: p. 121.
5 Said, p. 5-6, emphasis original.
6 Said, p. 176.
7 Said, p. 5.
8 Said, p. 2-3.
9 Said, p. 20. Emphasis original.
10 Said, p.12. Emphasis original.
11 Barbour, p. 5.
12 Said, p. 7.
13 Sir Francis Walsingham (?), “Memorandum on the Turkey trade”, 1578 (?), in: Susan A. Skilliter, William Harborne and the Trade with Turkey 1578-1582. A Documentary Study of the First Anglo-Ottoman Relations. Oxford: University Press, 1977, pp. 28-33, here: p. 28-29.
14 Richard Knolles, The Generall Historie of the Turkes. London, 1603, unpaged preface (=“The Author’s Induction on to the Christian Reader unto the Historie of the Turks following).
15 Knolles, op. cit., p. 2.
16 M. G. Aune, op. cit., p. 121.
17 Said, p. 12.
18 Said, p. 5, emphasis added.
19 Said, p. 21.
20 This seems to have remained so even despite the availability of contemporary accounts by merchants and explorers such as Richard Hakluyt. Barbour, p. 6.
21 “With six editions in the seventeenth century and an abridgement in 1701, the book was widely read for many generations.” Barbour, p. 16-17.
22 Said, p. 176.
23 Andrew Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare's London. Cambridge: University Press, 1987, p. 85.
24 Barbour, p. 66.
25 Barbour, p. 5.
26 Gurr, op. cit., p. 5; p. 2.
27 Barbour, p. 3.