Short description
A critique of Edward Said's influential work, "Orientalism", a book that for almost three decades has received wide acclaim, voluminous commentary, and translation into more than fifteen languages.
Long description
This is the first systematic critique of Edward Said's influential work, "Orientalism", a book that for almost three decades has received wide acclaim, voluminous commentary, and translation into more than fifteen languages.
Review
...the immensely erudite and clear-minded Ibn Warraq...refutes every point that Said made in his most famous book, Orientalism...Defending the West is...a book of great learning...No one, except cultural historians, need ever read, let alone refute, Said again. -- National Review, April 7, 2008 vol. LX, No. 6 [This] is, on the whole, a book of great learning, full of information that to most readers will be recondite, but that is nonetheless entirely relevant to its overall theme...If I were a teacher of the humanities, however I would give my students Said's Orientatalism to read, then Warraq's Defending the West, to demonstrate the difference between militant malice and erudition. --Book Review Digest, Aug. 1, 2008 Ibn Warraq's critique of Said's thought and work is thorough and convincing, indeed devastating to anyone depending on Saidism. It should force the Saidists to acknowledge the sophistry of their false prophet. --Middle Eastern Quarterly, Winter 2009 free minds owe Ibn Warraq their genuine gratitude. -- Free Inquiry, Vol. 29, No. 3, April/May 2009
Table of contents
- Preface
- Three Tutelary Guiding Lights
- Classical Antiquity
- Early Christianity to the Seventeenth Century
- Indian Orientalists
- Western Archaeologists
- Empire and Curzon
- Edward Said and His Methodology
- The Pathological Niceness of Liberals, Antimonies, Paradoxes, and Western Values
- Orientals as Collectors
- Painting and Sculpture
- Occidental Influence on Eastern Art
- Nineteenth-Century Orientalist Art
- Painters as Writers
- John Frederick Lewis
- Hegel and the Meaning, Significance, and Influence of Dutch Genre Painting
- Charles Cordier: Orientalist Sculptor
- Religion, Piety, and Portraits
- Oriental and African American Orientalists
- Orientalism and Music
- Literature and Orientalism.