Friday, September 2, 2022

Another look at Orientalism

 I took another look at Said's Orientalism

September 2, 2022

I took another look at Edward Said's famous study Orientalism. Historical distance provides another perspective.

It is true that the contention that Jesus as a child lived in what is now the Arab world, and that accounts for his presence as a Muslim prophet, (with) the ensuing notion of subordination of Islam or the humanism of it; in short, European-Arab relations on the basis of religion, can not be solved that way. 

But, the Western relationship with Egypt and the Middle East is not confined to religious conflicts in the tone of the Crusades. The relationship between the ancient West and Egypt, not even to mention its source in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys of Modern Iraq, is even older than the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth, or humorously what J.M. Coetzee called "the school days of Jesus of Nazareth" (i.e. exile). Even if we totally reject origin stories, which would be unwise, the political relationship between Egypt and Rome, through both Caesar and The Queen, and the political administration of Egypt by Rome thereafter, cemented the relation between the ancient East of the agricultural revolution and the ancient West of the administrative consolidation. 

The nature of it, for the Romans vis-a-vis Egypt, let us say, was like looking upon the place were everything that you took for granted, had to be won and be created, was in flux and uncertainty, and was not a given, in the barest sense of the word/idea.

You could also say, that for the Romans, whose biggest fear was chaos (and entropy). The sight of a place where the people feared above all not the overgrown, but the lack of anything at all, who feared infertility more, even, than poverty, was jarring to the psyche, and a reset to the soul. 

In short, a place where everything you thought was fundamental, had to be created. This is why the fascination with Egypt as the lower foundation, the crypt; the mystery of the tomb. But - this is a modern innovation on the truth, like the overlay of the Crusades on the true fundament of the East-West relationship, which is, to create plenty from lack. Or, to grapple with realism, to actually create "enough" from total lack

What appears to be total lack may in fact be total potentiality.

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