SEMINAR MEMBERS RESPOND
 Michael Busch
On Lalami and Orientalism
Jan 15, 2009
In her essay on the scope of Edward Said's Orientalism, Laila Lalami traces the orientalist lineage of justifications of British hegemony in the 19th century to the rationale for expanded American power in the 21st. On its face, this is a valuable contribution insofar as Said is interested in examining the intimate, mutually constitutive relationship between extensions of western power in the east and the production of orientalist knowledge.
Still, while Lalami establishes congruencies between then and now, she spends no time questioning the unique flavors of our current moment. Instead, a one-to-one correspondence between Balfour/Baring on the one hand and think tank pundits/the Bush administration on the other is tacitly assumed. Is it the case that Western power simply repeats the same patterns and prejudices across time and space? To a certain extent, the answer might be yes. But this line of thinking runs the risk of papering over distinctly American contributions to orientalism's "archive of information commonly and...unanimously held." (p. 41)
For one, the current popular treatment of Middle East affairs has largely succeeded in stripping the region of its politics. This was no more evident than in the aftermath of 11 September, when analysts, scholars, and politicians fell all over themselves to explain to American audiences why "they hate us." The classic orientalist dichotomizations of "us/them" and "rational/irrational" were on full display as a checklist of primordial enmities and psychological repressions were identified as root causes of 9/11. But political explanations were absent, doubtlessly suffocated by fears that they might be seen as justifications for terrorism. Perhaps the closest anyone came to linking politics with Middle Eastern resentment was Christopher Hitchens, who labelled the terrorists "Islamofascists," a term more notable for its rhetorical value than for any actual meaning. But Palestine, or the residue of American military presence in the region? Forget about it.
A similar, but more subtle and outrageous, move can be witnessed in the run-up to the Iraq war when the Bush administration largely succeeded in supplanting politics with policy. According to those in the know, democracy promotion would magically transform the Middle East into a land of peace and harmony. Social, ethnic, religious, and economic cleavages would cease to matter in freedom's warm embrace. As Lalami points out, the depoliticization of the Iraqis found no greater expression than Kanan Makiya's promise that American troops would be celebrated as liberators with "sweets and flowers." Not only would the invasion be cheap, but post-conflict statebuilding would take care of itself under the guidance of democracy's sure hand.
But perhaps these are simply updated examples of the sort to which Said seeks to draw our attention. If so, then what are we to make of this quote from a Bush administration official who seems to do away completely with the notion of "accredited knowledge" needed to justify the exercise power. Speaking to The New York Times, the official claimed that scholars and newspaper reporters existed "'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality ... That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
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