Post-orientalism knowledge and power in a time of terror : with a new introduction by the author

This book is a sustained record of Hamid Dabashis reflections over many years on the question of authority and the power to represent. Who gets to represent whom and by what authority? When initiated in the most powerful military machinery in human history, the United States of America, already deeply engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq, such militant acts of representation speak voluminously of a far more deeply rooted claim to normative and moral agency, a phenomenon that will have to be unearthed and examined. In his groundbreaking book, Orientalism, Edward Said traced the origin of this power of representation and the normative agency that it entails to the colonial hubris that carried a militant band of mercenary merchants, military officers, Christian missionaries, and European Orientalists around the globe, which enabled them to write and represent the people they thus sought to rule. The insights of Edward Said in Orientalism went a long way in explaining conditions of domination and representation from the classical colonial period in the 18th and 19th century to the time that he wrote his landmark study in the mid 1970s. Though many of his insights still remain valid, Saids observations need to be updated and mapped out to the events that led to the post-9/11 syndrome. Dabashis book is not as much a critique of colonial representation as it is of the manners and modes of fighting back and resisting it. This is not to question the significance of Orientalism and its principal concern with the colonial acts of representation, but to provide a different angle on Saids entire oeuvre, an angle that argues for the primacy of the question of postcolonial agency. In Dabashis tireless attempt to reach for a mode of knowledge production at once beyond the legitimate questions raised about the sovereign subject and yet politically poignant and powerful, postcolonial agency is central. Dabashis contention is that the figure of an exilic intellectual is ultimately the paramount site for the cultivation of normative and moral agency with a sense of worldly presence. For Dabashi the figure of the exilic intellectual is paramount to produce counter-knowledge production in a time of terror. Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is the author of, among other works, the acclaimed Authority in Islam: From the Rise of Muhammad to the Establishment of the Umayyads, in religion and philosophy. Post-Orientalism is a sustained record of Hamid Dabashi's reflections over many years on the question of authority and power. Who gets to represent whom and by what authority? Dabashi's work picks up where Edward Said's Orientalism left off. Said traced the origin of the power of representation and the normative agency that it entails to the colonial hubris that carried a militant band of mercenary merchants, military officers, Christian missionaries, and European Orientalists around the globe. This hubris enabled them to write and represent the people they sought to rule. Dabashi's book is not as much a critique of colonial representation as it is of the manners and modes of fighting back and resisting it. He does not question the significance of Orientalism and its principal concern with the colonial acts of representation, but he provides a different angle that argues for the primacy of the question of postcolonial agency. Dabashi uses the United States as an example of a country that initiated militant acts of representation in Iraq and Afghanistan. He attempts to unearth and examine the United States' deeply rooted claim to normative and moral agency, particularly in light of the world's post-9/11 political reality. -- Provided by publisher "Post-Orientalism is a sustained record of Hamid Dabashi's reflections over many years on the question of authority and power. Who gets to represent whom and by what authority? Dabashi's work picks up where Edward Said's Orientalism left off. Said traced the origin of the power of representation and the normative agency that it entails to the colonial hubris that carried a militant band of mercenary merchants, military officers, Christian missionaries, and European Orientalists around the globe. This hubris enabled them to write and represent the people they sought to rule. Dabashi's book is not as much a critique of colonial representation as it is of the manners and modes of fighting back and resisting it. He does not question the significance of Orientalism and its principal concern with the colonial acts of representation, but he provides a different angle that argues for the primacy of the question of postcolonial agency."--Publisher description Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 5 Introduction: Knowledge and Power in Time of Terror......Page 7 1 On Exilic Intellectuals......Page 17 2 Ignaz Goldziher and the Question Concerning Orientalism......Page 33 3 I Am Not a Subalternist......Page 139 4 The Creative Crisis of the Subject......Page 171 5 Pilgrims' Progress: On Revolutionary Border-Crossing......Page 201 6 Endosmosis: Knowledge without Agency, Empire without Hegemony......Page 225 7 Towards a New Organicity......Page 245 Conclusion: Changing the Interlocutor......Page 287 Index......Page 299